A Personal Reflection on Death
Today, All Souls Day, we honor our dear departed ones by visiting their tombs to offer flowers and light candles and above all to pray for their eternal repose.
As we remember beloved family members and friends who were once with us and are now gone, we cannot help but be reminded of our own mortality. For like them, we too will one day pass from this world. How do we deal with our own death?
Our common reaction is often one of fear. We naturally fear death because it is something we have never experienced. It is the fear of stepping into an uncharted territory, the fear of the unknown.
I remember how as a child I had such a great fear of pain. I resisted sitting on the dentist’s chair or showing up for the doctor’s injection. I even suspect that my natural propensity to behave was because I feared punishment. And sure enough, my greatest fear was death. Imagining myself dying from a violent accident or an agonizing illness was simply terrifying and unbearable.
An aside. I wonder if today’s children feel the same way. The alarming incidence of suicide among the young and even elementary children makes me wonder if they actually fear life more than death. But that’s another pastoral reality we need to seriously address.
Now that I am old, how do I look at death? One might think that after 75 years of “mourning and weeping in this valley of tears,” I am now immune to pain and no longer fear death. That would be dishonest of me to say. I still fear death, but it does not paralyze me anymore.
Throughout life, I have encountered countless problems which I could not evade, either because of the call to duty or simply because of sheer inevitability. In such difficult times, I would put myself totally in God’s hands and pray that he take care of me. “Lord, I know that I’ll be going through insufferable pains. On my own I know I will not survive. All I ask is that you give me the strength to endure and the love to remain faithful to you.”
And here I am not just surviving but fully alive after all these years. An undeniable proof that God is ever faithful to his words. “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name: you are mine. When you pass through waters, I will be with you; through rivers, you shall not be swept away. When you walk through fire, you shall not be burned, nor will flames consume you… because you are precious in my eyes and honored, and I love you,” (Is 43:1-2,4)
While the fear of death is still in me, God’s love and the surety of his deliverance totally outweigh it. Today’s gospel confirms this assurance where Jesus tells us, “Everything that the Father gives me… I will not reject. This is the will of the one who sent me, that I should not lose anything of what he sent me.” Jn 6:37,39)
I pray that when my time finally comes, I shall face death with less trembling and more excitement to meet my Lord and Savior who has accompanied me all through this journey to the Father’s house.