Getting Ready for Death
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One
Death; the Disappointment vs. Realization of all Hopes
Every Christian knows that this life is preparation for the next one. And there’s a certain sense in which you can tell how you’re doing, particularly in your spiritual life, based on your attitude towards death. Because, of course, death is where you say goodbye to this life and enter the next so if you’re hope is set on seeing God, well, then death will be the fulfillment of your hopes. But if your hopes are set on things of this world, then death means the end of those things, in which case death will be the terrible disappointment of all your hopes.
Spir. Cant, stanza 11, #10: “Accordingly, the soul does not fear death when she loves; rather she desires it. Yet sinners are always fearful of death. They foresee that death will take everything away and bring them all evils… Since sinners love the life of this world intensely and have little love for that of the other, they have an intense fear of death. But the soul that loves God lives more in the next life than in this… and thus takes little account of this temporal life.”
So do you want to be someone who feels despair and the end of all your hopes when you die? Or do you want to be happy and peaceful at death, because you know that what you’ve always wanted is right around the corner?
Two
Detachment from Earthly Goods
If you’re going to be leaving behind all earthly goods, family, friends, fame, fortune, work, sex, food, and drink – then you don’t want to get hooked on these things. You want to be at the point where you can leave these things and not be upset because you don’t want to be upset at the prospect of possessing God in Heaven.
The problem is that we get attached to the good things of this life in such a way that we want them more than God. For example, we may think we need health or a spouse or kids or this or that profession or achievement or reputation or freedom to do what we want and we live in fear of losing these because we think we can’t live without them.
The fact is, we think we need these more than God so we want them more than God and that prevents us from receiving God in this life and the next.
What should we do? Strive after a relationship with God as our priority. Then strive after the good things of this life like health and relationships and achievements, truth and beauty. Practice denying ourselves, sacrificing the good things to which we are attached to curb our addiction. Accept the temporary or permanent earthly loss of them as a remedy to our disordered attachments
Teresa says, “Delight in the good things we have and accept it peacefully when we lose them knowing that what is good in all earthly things will be given back to us in their perfected and eternal form in Heaven.”
We just need to say “I don’t need this Lord, I need you!”
So why don’t you see whether you’re too attached?
If there’s something you’re not sure you can live without? A kind of food, a kind of drink, some kind of indulgence, some kind of project? Why not try making some kind of sacrifice of that thing (especially for Lent)? And if it turns out you can do without it, that’ll be a great consolation.
If you can’t, you’ll know what you need to work on and what you need to ask God to detach you from before you’re ready to meet Him.
Three
Detachment from Earthly Modes of Being
Not only will death separate you from external earthly goods, it’ll actually separate you from your body. That means you won’t have your senses, which means you won’t be able to feed your imagination with images. And since the intellect gets its ideas by thinking about [abstracting from] images, our intellects won’t be able to function the way they’re used to.
So how do you prepare for that? How do you detach from your body, your senses, your imagination, and even your intellectual activity?
Actually, that’s where St. John of the Cross’ discussion of spiritual progress makes so much sense. God Himself, at more advanced stages of prayer, can actually do this for us. He can show Himself to us in a non-imaginative, non-intellectual way. When He does, He is not only giving us a direct gift of Himself, He’s helping us practice the joy of life after death.
We think we need so much to be happy. As it happens, we don’t even need our bodies, our senses, or images, or even the power to generate ideas in the normal way.
All we need is God. And when we realize that, we’ll be ready for death.
Four
Desire to See God
God will give us the desire for Himself, and that desire will be powerful.
Because we only possess God perfectly, totally, and forever in the next life, we will have no fear of making the transition from this life to the next.
On the contrary, the desire of the saints for God is so strong, it becomes almost a panic, like the desperate, urgent search of a mother looking for a child she’s lost: (Dark Night, Book 2, ch. 13, #8): “as the lioness or she-bear that goes in search of her ubs when they are taken away and cannot be found, it anxiously and forcibly goes out in search of its God… it feels his absence and feels that it is dying with love of Him.”
If you feel that way towards God, you won’t be afraid of death. You’ll be excited for it.
Five
Eagerness for Death
St. John of the Cross said, “The soul desiring to be possessed by this immense God, for love of whom she feels that her heart is stolen and wounded, unable to suffer her sickness any longer, deliberately asks him… to show her his beauty, his divine essence, and to kill her with this revelation and thereby free her from the flesh…” (Spir. Cant. Stanza 11, #2).
St. John’s desire to be with God was so strong, that in one of his poems he says, “I pity myself, for I go on and on living,” and then repeated the refrain, over and over, “I die because I do not die” (Stanzas of the soul that suffers with longing to see God).
St. Teresa of Avila recommended that when we pray the Our Father, and we say, “deliver us from evil, Amen,” we should actually want this petition to be granted, and yet remember that the only way to be completely delivered from evil is to leave this life so as to be with God forever (Way of Perfection, ch. 42).
So again, one day you are going to die. And the way you have lived will determine how you will die.
Will you live focused on things of this world? If so, then you will die a death of terror and despair, as you lose everything you cared the most about. But if you live a life of detachment, and desire for God, then you will go to death with peace and more, excitement, because you know all your longings, all your hopes, everything you’ve ever really wanted – it’s all about to be fulfilled.