“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.

Kyria Polyxeni

(Not her real name.)

Kyria Polyxeni was 93, very devout, extremely kind, even to those hardest for anybody else to love. She lived alone and did her own housekeeping, cooking, shopping, and gardening.

She took a bad fall one day and spent months in convalescence. When we visited her in the hospital, she expressed a wish to die rather than be a burden to her family. We said no, she must accept to live for as long as God appointed her to live, and must continue to rejoice in Him during her remaining time, just as she always had, must cherish the gift of life and guard and protect it. I called the priest, who went to her the next day to tell her the same thing.

So she did. We noticed a marked change in her thereafter when we’d go visit her in the hospital.

Then one day we noticed she was no longer connected to the IV.

"Terminal dehydration," as they call it, is among the most common ways to hasten a person’s death (along with Terminal Sedation). So we made her drink a couple of glasses of water while we were there, and told her how important it was for her to keep on drinking plenty of water. We said she must not simply wait for more to be brought to her if she should run out; she should ask for more and keep drinking at all costs, even if she didn't feel thirsty. (The elderly often don't.) She understood.

That night, I telephoned her family and said, “Did you know, Kyria Polyxeni’s doctors have disconnected her IV? And that’s dangerous because –”

“We are very satisfied with her doctors,” was the curt reply, clearly meaning, “Butt out.”

But guess what? Kyria Polyxeni kept on drinking water, and kept on living. Her family brought her home but would not allow her any visitors. “She’s our baby now,” they said. “She’s ours to take care of, and we need to be left alone to do it.”

Several weeks went by and Kyria Polyxeni still lived. Then one day she telephoned the priest and asked for his blessing to die. She said she was pretty sure her time had really come now and it was not just wishful thinking. So Father Nicholas gave her his blessing to die.

Kyria Polyxeni telephoned her best friends, of whom there were many, and asked them all to come over that evening. They did, and when they were all assembled in her room, she said, “I called you here to say goodbye.”

“Where are you going?” they asked.

“Home.” And she pointed upwards.

Some of the women began to cry. She chided them. “I’m happy,” she said. “Please, share my happiness; rejoice with me. I’m going home!”

So they dried their tears, hugged and kissed her one by one, and departed.

Kyria Polyxeni lay down and closed her eyes. Her lifeless body was found early in the morning, peace and joy still written upon her face.

She died on her own terms, and God's, when the time was right. She died peacefully, in her sleep, without suffering Terminal Dehydration. May we all die like that. May we all live like that!

The Purpose of Life...

...is not to enjoy it.

The purpose of life is to have a share in God's own life, to be healed and glorified and deified, to be gods with God forever, rejoicing in Him (and also in all His works).

We can still do that when we can no longer play golf or bridge, can no longer knit or keep up our stamp collecting. We can still do that when we are confined to one room, or to one bed. We can still do that if our bodies are paralyzed, or even if they are burning at the stake. We can still do that when all else is taken away. Even if memory fails and language itself is taken from us and we find no words, the sweet communion of His Life remains at a level deeper than thoughts or words - the level where its seat always was anyway.

It is the Holy Spirit Who gives life, Who maintains life, Who makes life always worth living - up to the very moment when, in His own good time, He gives us a different, purer Life.