The Voice of the Charmer

The taunt was shouted from the crowds on Calvary: "Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!" (Mk 15:29-30). Mockery was their intent and derision their aim. Yet perhaps there were others in the crowd who cried out this command, not as a taunt, but as a plea to the Lord to make the passion stop. Perhaps, not being able to endure the sight of His suffering any longer, we can hear these others pleadingly petition the Christ of the cross: "O Lord, save Yourself, descend from the tree, and live with us once again! We cannot bear your dying because of what that might imply for us: we are to follow you into death. We can accept your teachings on forgiveness, on love, on the poor...but do not include dying as the culmination of your curriculum."

Indeed, is this not the plea preached in our churches in the 21st-century, if not by our pastors than by our thinking and behavior? We seem to hold dearly to the notion that we are to avoid death at all costs. Caution seems to be the theme of the modern Christian's sermon-"Run away from things that can harm you. Flee from confrontations, flee from germs, flee from suffering, flee from the cross! Run away from death for nothing is more tragic than the loss of your life."

But let us not forget that the Lord once responded to such misguided advice by saying: "Get behind Me, Satan! You are a hindrance to Me; for you are not on the side of God, but of men" (Mt 16:23). For there is a very thin line that separates prudence, caution, and good sense from fear, anxiety, and paranoia. Safety was never the message of Christ, instead His constant exhortation to his followers was to be not afraid (c.f. Lk12:32, Mt 10:31, Jn 6:20, et al). So why is it that so many believers do not hear Him but continue to fear that which can kill the body while disregarding that which can kill the soul (c.f. Mt 10:28)?

This has not always been the case. Going before us in history our countless men and women who have not feared bodily death but instead went to the end of their earthly lives quite admirably. How are we to imitate their courage?

In order to counter our age's fear-induced paralysis of dying, it would do us well to remember their stories by first recalling a scene from the Phaedo. In it, Socrates is visited by his friends as he awaits his execution. They tell him: "There is a child within us to whom death is a sort of hobgoblin; him too we must persuade not to be afraid when he is alone in the dark." The wise Socrates replied: "Let the voice of the charmer be applied daily until you have charmed away the fear." We now ask Socrates the same question his friends then asked him: "And where shall we find a good charmer of our fears?" Perhaps the following stories will act as such a voice to us.

First to be recalled is the Spartans' defense of Thermopylae during the Persian Wars in the early 5th-century BC. The sizable force of Xerxes' army ought to have made the 300 Spartans left to defend the crucial pass of Thermopylae tremble. Surely a few hundred men, no matter how adept at war they were, were no match to a force which Herodotus tells us was of such a size that "save for the great rivers, there was not a stream [Xerxes'] army drank from that was not drunk dry" (The Histories, Book VII). Yet, as all of Asia was encamped outside the narrow pass that led south into Athens, a Persian spy was sent behind the rocks to observe what Spartan fear looked like as it apprehensively awaited the Persian charge. To the shock of the spy, and to the bewilderment of Xerxes as he listened to the spy's report, the Spartans were awaiting their end in relaxation rather than anxiety. Some of the Spartans were even stripped for exercise as if it were a splendid day to be outside. Others were occupied braiding each other's hair, ensuring that each would look good on the day of his death. Every last Spartan fit to fight died that day and it would be hard to imagine they would have wanted it any other way.

Next to be remembered is the Hebrew scribe Eleazar during the Hellenizing persecution of the Jews under King Antiochus IV Epiphanes in the 2nd-century BC. Being threatened with the rack if he would refuse to eat the flesh of swine in a sacrificial meal, some kind men pulled the old man aside and urged him to bring whatever meat he wanted to substitute it with the forbidden pork. Thus, they argued, he could deceitfully fool the king but save his life. Eleazar's response to them: "'Such pretense is not worthy of our time of life lest many of the young should suppose Eleazar in his 90th year has gone over to an alien religion, and through my pretense, for the sake of living a brief moment longer, they should be led astray because of me, while I defile and disgrace my old age...Therefore, by manfully giving up my life now, I will show myself worthy of my old age and leave to the young a noble example of how to die a good death willingly and nobly'...So in this way he died, leaving in his death an example of nobility and a memorial of courage, not only to the young but to the great body of his nation" (2 Mac 6:24-25,27-28, 31). The simplest swap of pork for beef would have extended Eleazar's life, but to what end?

We now move to the 1st-century BC to continue listening to the voice of the charmer. This is the time of the Roman statesman Cicero as he approached the later years of his life. Mourning the death of his beloved daughter, the famous orator began to dwell on what it means to age and eventually die in his work De Senectute. Quite different than common opinion regards old age, in this work Cicero is emphatic that growing old and dying is not a misfortune, but a grace given to the man who has ordered his life well. He asks: "What of the fact that the wisest men die with the greatest equanimity, the most foolish with the least?" This can only be explained by the fact that the wise man quits "life as if it were an inn, not a home." Cicero thus anticipated the day of his death not with dread but with rejoicing when he culminates his reflections: "O glorious day, when I shall set out to join the assembled hosts of souls divine and leave this world of strife and sin!" Cicero's wisdom, pagan though it was, put death in its proper context.

It must be admitted that these aforementioned heroes stand out in history as exceptions to the rule, for the majority of men still feared the gloom of death. However, with the resurrection of Christ in the early 1st- century AD a new group of people came into the picture that would make the exceptional quality of fearlessness in the face of death the general rule to live by. The Christians turned death upside-down and made it something to be embraced rather than feared...they will not be outdone by any pagan in charming the fears of the hopeless.

St. Paul, in too many passages to cite, displays this fearlessness in his many letters. Indeed, he seems baffled that others, who claim to follow a Lord risen from the dead, still cower amidst their fears. "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain...My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better" (Phil 1:21, 23). He pleads with the Christians of Corinth: "If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied" (1 Cor 15:19). If we have Christ, Paul wrote to the Romans, nothing can separate us from His victory over death won on Easter Sunday: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?...For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rm 8:35,38-39). Indeed, as the Apostle to the Gentiles would later go to the chopping block at Rome, one can imagine him taunting the sword that would soon sever his head: "O death, where is your victory? O death where is your sting?" (1 Cor 15:55).

A little while later in the early 2nd-century a bishop of Syria, St. Ignatius of Antioch, was summoned from the place of "the sun's rising [the east in Syria] to come to the place of its setting [the west in Rome]" to be killed as a witness to the faith of the Christians. Writing on his way to the church at Rome, one can still sense Ignatius' excitement as he reads the saint's letter anticipating his own death: "It is a fine thing for me to set with the sun, leaving the world and going to God, that I may rise with him...Let me be the food of beasts that I may come to God. I am his wheat, and I shall be ground by the teeth of beasts, that I may become Christ's pure bread....How happy I will be with the beasts which are prepared for me...May nothing visible or invisible rob me of my prize, which is Jesus Christ! The fire, the cross, packs of wild beasts, lacerations, rendings, wrenching of bones, mangling of limbs, crushing of the whole body, the horrible tortures of the devil-let all these things come upon me, if only I may gain Jesus Christ!...I shall become the freedman of Jesus Christ and I shall rise again to freedom in him" (Letter to the Romans).

Lest we think that a Christian must be killed as a martyr to prove he fears not death, a lifetime spent behind the monastic walls of Wearmouth-Jarrow in 8th-century England taught St. Bede the Venerable to also fearlessly give up his spirit, not only in life, but also in death. We hear the last words he spoke through the ears of his brother monk Cuthbert who recorded them in a letter for our edification. After giving the last of his possessions, "some pepper, napkins, and a little incense" to his fellow priests, Bede resigned himself to his imminent end and said: "If it so please my Maker, it is time for me to return to Him who created me and formed me out of nothing when I did not exist. I have lived a long time, and the righteous Judge has taken good care of me during my whole life. The time has come for my departure, and I long to die and be with Christ. My soul yearns for Christ, my King, in all His glory." Indeed, this desire was surely brought to fulfillment upon Bede's death-or rather as he would prefer to say-his "entry into that life which alone may be called life" (A History of the English Church and People).

The jolly figure of St. Philip Neri brings us to 16th-century Italy where we can listen to the charmer's voice next. Always known for cracking a smile and sharing a laugh, Philip was regarded by all those who knew him as an endearing and patient priest. An anecdote relates to us that this saint's joy could not be dampened even by a question pertaining to his own death. As the saint played a game of billiards with a friend, he was asked: "What would you do if you knew you were going to die this very day?" Without missing a turn, the priest picked up his cue stick and answered: "I suppose I would continue playing my game." For him who had prepared for death in the way he had lived his life, death was of no consequence. To one with such child-like trust in God, it would take something stronger than death to ruin his game of pool.

Just off the continent during the same time as Fr. Philip Neri was playing his games, the lord chancellor of England, St. Thomas More, was refusing to give his signature to a royal document that would in effect contradict his beliefs in the governance of the Church and the indissolubility of marriage. Threatened with the reality of execution if he remained so obstinate, Sir Thomas did not cower in the face of death but courageously embraced it as his path back to God. What prompted such comfort with the idea of death for him? Let us listen to his words as portrayed in Robert Bolt's play A Man For All Seasons. As the prisoner patiently awaited his martyrdom in the Tower of London, he comforts his grieving daughter with this short reflection: "Have patience, Margaret, and trouble not thyself. Death comes for us all; even at our birth-even at our birth, death does stand aside a little. And every day he looks towards us and muses somewhat to himself whether that day or the next he will draw nigh. It is the law of nature, and the will of God." Surely St. Thomas did not neglect to think of his eventual death during the course of his life and this familiarity with the idea made it more acceptable for him to surrender himself to it when his time finally came.

The companion martyrs Sts. Philip Evans and John Lloyd followed in the footsteps of their English countryman over a hundred years later in 17th-century. Things had not progressed well for Catholics in England since the time of Thomas More and Philip Evans and John Lloyd found themselves, in spite of laws forbidding their presence as priests on the island, ministering to their congregations undercover like so many other clerics had done before them. At last caught and imprisoned at Cardiff Castle, it took months for them to be brought up for trial and sentenced to death. But upon their sentence and subsequent return to their cells to await their final day, they were surprisingly allowed a good deal of freedom such that: "When the under-sheriff came on July 21 to announce that their execution was fixed for the morrow, Father Evans was playing a game of tennis and would not return to his cell till he had finished it. Part of his few remaining hours of life he spent playing on the harp and talking to numerous people who came to say farewell...St. Philip died first, after having addressed the people in Welsh and English, and saying 'Adieu, Mr. Lloyd, though for a little time, for we shall shortly meet again'" (Butler's Lives of the Saints).

Let us next hear the charmer's voice on the other side of the world as we travel to the 19th-century kingdom of Hawaii where the Belgian priest St. Damien De Veuster spent the last decades of his life. Leprosy was spreading throughout the villages and causing the government much concern. It was decided a colony on the Molokai peninsula would be created where those infected with the disease could live together in quarantine. Realizing that even these sick lepers needed a priest, Damien volunteered to live with them even if it meant certain infection and eventual death for himself. But it seemed he was too busy to be fearful of the danger of contracting leprosy himself and dying. Rather, he plunged into his mission by helping construct the infrastructure, buildings, and coffins for the colony, by caring for and dressing his patients' wounds, by teaching both the young and old about the love of God, and, even on occasion, by sharing his pipe with those lepers who needed a smoke. A certain sort of Christian recklessness guided Father Damien's behavior, which enabled him to fearlessly love his lepers regardless of the risk to himself. Whereas most who work with the sick have the comfort of not living where they work, he provided himself with no such buffer that would separate his work life from his personal life. In fact, so immersed was he in caring for the village he loved, Molokai became for him his own grave where he would live the last 16 years of his life. Rather than run away from the colony and its threat of disease Damien stayed there and, as Robert Louis Stevenson put it, "shut-to with his own hand the doors of his own sepulchre" (An Open Letter to the Rev. Dr. Hyde of Honolulu).

Lastly, we must not forget that countless others have endured quite admirable, indeed quite holy deaths. Their fame never passed onto posterity, their names were never remembered except by those closest to them, and even these have since passed. Yet, one more charm we must recall.

It happened not long ago in a monastery. A sickly monk was examined by a doctor who gave the unfortunate prognosis: "It looks as if this illness will not be getting any better." "And?" asked the monk searching for more information. "You will most likely die from this," answered the doctor sadly. After a pause the monk replied, "And that is it?" And that is it. As if the monk could then sigh in relief assured by the doctor's expert opinion that nothing worse than death was approaching.

"No one has ever died who was not destined to die at some time" says St. Augustine (City of God, Book I). These lives we have examined, these deaths we have just reflected on should give us courage that the end of earthly life is not a highly unique phenomenon for any of us and it need not be perceived as an ultimate misfortune. May the frequent remembrance of their deaths charm away our fears for, indeed, not even death remains as an absolute evil that exists beyond the providence of God. It too lies within His sight, each of our deaths He already sees. Death does not exist beyond His control. The prayer in the Roman funeral liturgy cannot be more succinct and accurate when it states that in dying "life is changed, not ended."

As a person walking on a trail in unfamiliar woods approaches a steep incline, he cannot help but wonder: What is on the other side of this hill? Does the ground flatten out again into a sort of plateau and the trail leisurely continue on? Is the top of the hill a genuine peak opening his view at the summit to the decline of the grade below? Or does the surmounting of this incline only lead him to another that will inevitably lead him to heights yet to be seen? There is no way of knowing except by reaching the top and seeing.

Perhaps this simple image of the hiker and the hill might shape our perception of how we are to view death. Encouraged by numerous others who have bravely climbed the ascent to the top, we are spurred on by their example to see for ourselves what is on the other side of death. Death will be for us a type of surmounting that will inevitably lead us into view of what lies on the other side. But we must first go to the top of the hill to see.

And at the top of this hill, we hear again the two crowds cry out, one in taunts, the other in pleas: "Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe" (Mk 15:32). Yet, over and above these two groups, we can imagine yet another type of person watching the spectacle of Calvary and we can perceive him silently petition the Lord in his own heart: "Lord, do not come down from the cross at this hour! Finish the lesson for us and remain there. Show us what it means to live by what it means to die. Stay upon the cross that we may see and believe for we long to hear the voice of the true Charmer."