Why So Much Talk About Death?

Death is a scary thing. Even with all the medical advances and prescriptions that we are blessed with in the 21st century, we still fear death. Stories of people dying much too soon seem to take up news feeds and Facebook pages. Death is not something that most of us are comfortable with, and yet, the Church time and again wants to remind us of our death. 

We have famous phrases from saints such as “Memento Mori”, which means “remember your death”, and we mark our foreheads with ashes to remember that we are dust. So why all this focus on death in the Catholic Faith? I think the biggest difference between the secular view of death and the Catholic view of death can be seen in today’s Second Reading. Paul is explicit that if we have been baptized into Christ's life we are also baptized into his death. What does that mean? Didn't Jesus come to give us life, not death? 

If we look back all the way to Adam and Eve we can see clearly that one of the consequences of the first sin is human death. We will now have to die. This is a result of our first parents turning their backs on the eternal life that God offered to them. But thankfully, the story doesn't end there. We have a God who is so good and loves us so deeply that he not only became one of us, but he went into the very deepest and darkest part of humanity, death, in order to make this same death the new gateway into eternal life. What started as a consequence of the fall has now become the way we attain heaven. 

Jesus Christ became man and died, so that death itself could be resurrected. He conquered death so literally through his resurrection that death became for us the final necessary step to gain eternal happiness with God forever. 

This is hard for us to grasp with human minds because we see death and evil and destruction all over the world and we cry out to God for help, but Paul is making the point that God has already won. Jesus took one of the worst consequences of the fall and entered into it so that we might have life and have it to the fullest. This is the good news of the Gospel. So while we are called to mourn loved ones who have passed, just as Jesus did with Lazarus, we can also have immense hope that death is the gateway between this world and the next and that if we have been baptized with Christ we have nothing to fear. 

From all of us here at Diocesan, God bless!

By Tommy Shultz