“Sister Death”

Recently, I heard the phrase “Sister Death”. I suppose it was an attempt to sound like Francis of Assisi, but besides being a silly pretense, it’s a thoroughly unchristian sentiment.

No, death is not my sister, and not your sister, either! Death isn’t even your friend. Death takes away your friends and sisters, and fathers and brothers, and mothers and fathers, and sons and daughters.

In our current culture of death, death is regarded as the answer to many things, from unwanted babies and unwanted elders to personal despair to diplomatic stalemate. But death is never the right answer, never the moral solution.

Death is not beautiful. Death is ugly and rotten and putrid. You are not beautiful in death, at least not nearly as beautiful as you were before death, for death has robbed you of your chief beauty, which was life, your unique, irreplaceable life. Death is darkness and nothingness, oblivion, a descent back into the nothingness from which we came. Death is the separation of our bodies from our souls and worse, the separation of both from God.

If death were our sister, or even our friend, the Creator of all the worlds would not have come, in Person, to demolish it for us. (Ditto if death were God’s holy sentence against us for our sin.) That’s why we address Him crying, “O Monophilanthrope! O only Lover of Mankind!” He is our friend, He is our Lover, and He alone. Not death. Death is the devil’s weapon and the devil’s domain. It was the fear of death, St. Paul writes, that kept us enslaved to our sins all our lives long. Death is the ultimate enemy, the last enemy to be destroyed.

But Christ died and filled the darkness of death with the Light of His immortality. Christ died and filled the ultimate aloneness with immortal Love. Christ died and made death another venue for our communion with Him. Christ died and poisoned death (“Epichranthi!”). Christ is risen, and has trampled down death. (Picture an ancient warrior standing upon the corpse of his newly-slain enemy and crowing over it, singing his boastful song of triumph.) Christ is risen and now, death cannot hold captive a single one of the human race. Christ is risen and death will never be the same again. Christ is risen and death is no longer a descent toward oblivion, no longer The End of the Story. Absolutely everyone will live again, reunited with his body, his very own body, yet now metamorphosed, as a butterfly’s body is the same one he had as a caterpillar, yet different. (And some, it appears, will have very ugly bodies, because now their bodies will display their inner condition rather than camouflage it.) Death as separation of body from soul is now only a temporary condition, and a blessing, to boot, because, for those who had struggled against sin, to be separated from our bodies is to be separated from the main factor that had defeated us.

And for those united to Christ by water and Spirit, in faith and love, His promise is that they “shall never die,” meaning never be separated from God at all, in body or in soul. Even as the body dissolves, God never forsakes it. Even as the spirit loses its body, God never forsakes it, either.

The hand of the Lord was upon me, and brought me forth in the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the midst of a plain that was full of bones. And He led me about through them on every side; now they were very many upon the face of the plain, and they were exceeding dry. And He said to me, “Son of man, do you think these bones shall live?” And I answered, “O Lord God, You know.” And He said to me, “Prophesy concerning these bones and say to them, ‘You dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will send spirit into you, and you shall live. And I will lay muscles upon you, and will cover you with skin; and I will give you spirit and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.’” And I prophesied as He had commanded me, and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold, a commotion; and the bones came together, each one to its joint. And I saw, and behold, the muscles, and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin was stretched out over them, but there was no spirit in them. And He said to me, “Prophesy to the spirit; prophesy, O son of man, and say to the spirit: ‘This says the Lord God: Come, spirit, from the four winds and blow on these slain, and let them live again.’” And I prophesied as He had commanded me; and the spirit came into them, and they stood up on their feet, an exceeding great army.

And He said to me, “Son of man, all these bones are the house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost, and we are cut off.’ Therefore prophesy, and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves, and will bring you out of your sepulchres, O my people; and will bring you into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall have opened your sepulchres, and shall have brought you out of your graves, O my people, and shall have put My spirit in you, and you shall live, and I shall make you rest upon your own land; and you shall know that I the Lord have spoken, and done it, says the Lord God.’”

-- from the holy Prophet Ezekiel, Chapter 37:1-14

Sister death, my foot! Or, rather, Christ’s foot, trampling upon it.