I do dislike this, in fact it would not be an overstatement to say I loathe it:
Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away into the next room. I am I, and you are you. Whatever we were to each other that we still are. Call me by my old familiar name, speak to me in the easy way you always used.
Put no difference into your tone, wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as you always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me. Pray for me.
Let my name be the household name it always was. Let it be spoken without the shadow of a ghost in it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. What is death but a negligible accident. Why should I be out of your mind because I am out of your sight. All is well, nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was before.
It was written by a Canon of St Paul's Cathedral, I can only think he had very few occasions when he was called to a hospital in the early hours, to be with a mother whose baby had died and who was literally tearing her hair out with grief.
Maybe he had never met an old man who loved his deceased wife so much that he felt his body had been torn apart, and wanted only death himself.
It seems as if he had never meditated on the Cross and God's taking on the ultimate human experience, and the horror of the death of the Man-God himself.
This is trite saccharine pap; we do people, and the doctrine of the Incarnation, no service by this sort of thing and not acknowledging death is horrendous!
13 comments:
I hate that text. Glad you have drawn attention to it.
I too used to hate it, and to this day try to dissuade the next-of-kin from having it at a funeral. But the fact (which I have only recently found out) is that it is taken massively out of context. It is from a sermon entitled 'King of Terrors' - that title itself should warn us that the author does not blandly subscribe to this saccharine view. Rather, the sermon presents, and attempts to work through, a contradiction between the terror of inexplicable rupture and the conviction of personal continuity. The passage in question is merely part of that dialectic. (There's a long discussion of it at findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2242/is_1610_276/ai_61947811 , if you're interested.)
So I think Henry Scott Holland is off the hook. But that doesn't make it any better for use at funerals, divorced from its context. (In fact I think HSH himself would have been appalled at the idea.)
We are broken hearted when people we love die. Granted after a time I do speak to those who have gone before me with great joy and I pray for them. We do live in this reality of the living and the dead as the creed says. However, I would prefer to have them here. I have sometimes thought about the two situations you mentioned in relation to my own life and I have to say I have no idea of how I would be able to come to terms with it. Please God I will never have to.
Me too. I was given it in a card when my mother, God rest her soul died. I felt like sending it back. Death is terrible - that's why Christ died for us - to free us from death. If death were nothing, neither would his sacrifice. But death remains terrible and I agree, Scott-Holland can have been with few bereaved families or dying people if that is what he thought.
Oh! You got me thinking..never thought much about it..but now you point it out....hmm...
Dear Fr Ray,
Fr Bob deGrandis got it right when he said: "The Catholic church has a huge theology on suffering but not on healing."
It may be November, the dark nights may be here and many Christians are depressed over the commercialism of Christmas in their High Streets. But come on, you lot! If you don't have faith or belief or joy in the Resurrection, then you may as well pack it all in and become Mormons. Or Jehovah Witnesses.
Yes, death as we know it was never intended, but is a result of the Fall.
However, we know those who die in Jesus rise in Jesus. Instead of trying to explain the Resurrection to a mother distraught at the death of her child or an old man who has lost his wife of fifty years, Christians should be evangelising the living NOW.
A few years ago, I knew a Christian man whose wife of forty-five years died from a painful cancer. Both of them smiled and laughed as he sat beside her bed in the hospice where she died. A month after she was admitted, he was diagnosed with bowl cancer and he died five months after her. None of their four children were Christians and they wept buckets of tears at the funerals of their parents. The children were all red eyed and miserable but their parents died smiling. Spot the difference!
The parents had been evangelised in life and had faith in Jesus so death held no fear or sadness for them. Their children had no faith and searched horoscopes, secular wisdom and New Age theories to find a meaning for life.
Jesus conquered our fear of death. Why do so many Christians dwell on images of the crucified Christ and not the Resurrected Christ? What hold them back from spiritual maturity? Why do they languish in Spritual misery?
Let's be grown up Christians and not weep like the pagans.
Yes, the Bible tells us Jesus wept. But only once.
Blessings
James
James,
Thank you for you blessing, you are right but remember even the Lord wept at the death of Lazarus, his friend.
It is alright to weep, to ignore the horror of death is to despise something of great significance.
Have a look at todays first reading.
James, I think you are slightly unfair about how people come to terms with grief. It is very normal to have red eyes at a funeral, and somewhat necessary to grieve a loved one intensely following their death. I don't imagine grief will evaporate for faithful christians, but perhaps with age and wisdom we deal with these things better.
Here's a corker if you didn't like that 'horrendous' poem (which I actually find quite comforting 10 years after my older brother died): a really pithy piece of sympathy rubbish:
Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there - I do not sleep.
I am in the morning hush
I am in the graceful rush
Of beautiful birds in circling flight
I am the starshine of the night.
I am in the flowers that bloom
I am in the quiet room
I am in the birds that sing
I am in each lovely thing.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I did not die.
Saying that, I still have that card stuck to my wall to this day... I guess it was my late-father who send it to me!
Fr Ray,
I fear there is a spiritual malais at the heart of the theology many Christians have when they treat death as something horrendous.
Its a theology stuck at Good Friday which can't, or won't, move on to Easter Sunday. Its a theology which renders Christians helpless, spectators in a sinful world, unable to counter Satan's empire.
Jesus cast the moneylenders and others from the temple. Jesus healed. Jesus challenged wrong. Today's 'Vale of Tears' Christians just wring their hands and mumble; "Well, we have to offer up these horrendous things as suffering."
Of course, death is vile. The 40th anniversary of the Abortion Act - 7 millions deaths since 1967 - is evidence enough. But remember, Jesus brought the Good News. In His name we have all power and authority over pain, suffering and even death. Where is its sting?
Blessings
James
"O Death where is thy sting?" Its sting is in the agony it brings and yes, perhaps we do get stuck in Good Friday when so many words of comfort seem glib and unhelpful. Death is absolutely horrendous and I think it is of far greater comfort when that is acknowledged and those we love weep with us. It takes time to move to Easter Sunday and, for me anyway, trite poems and words do nothing to speed the process. I have been very thankful to have a parish priest who understands the journey through agony.
I fear there is a spiritual malais at the heart of the theology many Christians have when they treat death as something horrendous.
No Good Friday - no Easter Sunday. Unfortunately post conciliar Catholicism threw the baby out with the bath water and the loss of things like liturgical black necessarily limited the expression of proper sentiment. For instance, no one seems to realise that the use of white and happy-clappy sentiment for funerals as though the dead were not truly dead stunts the proper playing out of grief.
Fr Guy at the talk for parents on praying for the dead mentioned his dislike of the said poem..& also the eulogies given at funerals where everythings wonderful & the dead (oh can't say dead!) person has gone to a better place. Well really? How are we to know..?.The teaching of Purgatory is God's mercy. We have to pray to the Holy souls a lot.
Fr Guy gave us this,
Help, lord, the souls that thou hast made,
The souls to thee so dear,
In prison for the debt unpaid
Of sins commited here.
Those holy souls, they suffer on,
Resigned in heart and will,
Until thy high behest is done,
And justice has its fill.
For daily falls, for pardoned crime,
they joy to undergo
The shadow of the Cross sublime,
the remnant of thy woe.
Oh, by their patience of delay,
their hope amid their pain,
their sacred zeal to burn away
Disfigurement and stain....
(The Venerable John Henry Newman Cong. Orat. (1801-90)
& also his 'Dream of Gerontius' is wonderful too.
This awful reading suggests that death is little better than leaving the room for a quick fag. BUT it should be emphasized that it is a quotation taken out of context from a letter written by Canon Scott Holland CARICATURING THE ABSURD SENTIMENTS HELD BY MANY ABOUT DEATH. In reality it is a sarcastic observation. The rest of the letter sets out an orthodox exposition of death, resurrection and eternal life. Track it down, Fr Ray, and make amends.
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