When Death Is Near

When we opened the door of his hospital room, we could hear his labored and uneven breathing. My friend’s uncle, now almost 90, was in his final battle with heart disease. I’d met him a few times over the years, but the man in the hospital bed looked little like the burly, overpowering man he’d been until the last few years. He was thin and gray, with his eyes closed, grasping at the sheets with bony fingers, using all his energy just to breathe. He hadn’t wanted his doctors to put him on a ventilator, so all he had helping him was an oxygen mask. I felt terrible, watching his agony.

But it was more than the hospital smell and the sound of his struggling breaths that was affecting me. There was a heavy, oppressive feeling to this room. Imagine gravity suddenly doubling and you’ll get the idea. The air itself seemed weighted and thick. It felt like I was being pushed down into my shoes. My friend felt it, too. He slumped into the only chair and I saw his shoulders fall forward. I didn’t like being there. It felt wrong and somehow, ugly. You know how they say you can sense the presence of evil? I believe it. Not that I thought my friend’s uncle was an evil man. He’d always been pleasant enough to be around, if a little bit loud. I’d never felt this sort of darkness around him before. But then, he’d never been on his deathbed before. So, as the old man struggled with each breath, my friend and I prayed for him. I have the Divine Mercy app on my phone and we spent the next several minutes praying those beautiful words out loud. I’d like to say that the dark, oppressive feeling in the room disappeared right away. Or that my friend’s uncle sat up, fully healed and asking for pudding. But none of that happened. Instead, he died later that night, alone, in his hospital room.

In the Divine Mercy prayers, we ask for God’s mercy on us, on the person who is dying, and for everyone in the world. Our sins offend Him every day and yet His great mercy is so much more than the weight of those sins. God delights when we ask for that mercy. We put all our trust in His love for us, in His blood shed for us on the Cross, and in the hope of the resurrection. The prayers are comforting and tender and are among my favorite devotions. I think I’m drawn to them because I know the darkness of my own sins and how very much I need His mercy. It’s a grace when you know that you sin. A grace I don’t deserve.  

As we prayed for him there at his bedside, I imagined the angels who knelt there, too and prayed along with us. Surely his uncle’s guardian angel was there, and others as well. Were there other spirits in the room, too? Darker energies who feast on despair and anger and loneliness? Maybe their presence was the oppression and heaviness we’d felt when we entered the room. I don’t know. Maybe it was just the nearness of death. Our voyage through this life and into the next one is a mysterious one.. The love of Christ is our hope and our light through a world that is often dark and sorrowful. And yet, even HIs infinite love for us is a mystery, as well. I know that being with anyone as they approach death is a privilege and grace. Praying for them as they journey out of this life is a gift that should never be refused, no matter the difficulty. When you have that chance, be there for them. Pray for the mercy of God and for the grace to love and forgive until each of us takes our last breath here.

We weren’t there for him when he passed from this life, but I believe our prayers were. I believe the angels were there that night, long after visiting hours were over, keeping vigil and praying for his soul. No prayer is ever unheard by our Lord. That’s another mystery of our faith. One of the great gifts we share as Christians is praying for one another. Our words rise like the smoke of incense (Revelation 8:4) and are sweet and pleasing to Him. We’re all on this journey together and we need each other every step along the way. Don’t ever miss the opportunity to pray for a brother or sister as they pass on to eternity.

“We are all just walking each other home.” —Richard Alpert

When You’re Angry at God

Most of us have been angry with God.  We can all recall circumstances in our lives when we’ve been overcome with emotion and directed our wrath to the Lord.  We lose a loved one and in our grief we lash out, demanding to know why God would do such a horrible thing to such a wonderful person.  We’re caught up in the emotion of our grief and we demand an explanation.  We have to find a logical or at least an understandable reason for why this happened.  Sometimes, when we’ve calmed down a bit, we look back at our anger with God and we’re shocked and ashamed.  We feel guilty for being angry with the Lord.  We see our anger as a sin.  But, is it really?

Anger is an emotion.  It flows out of our humanity and isn’t consciously willed.  You don’t get cut off in traffic and “decide” to get angry with that thoughtless driver—your anger is upon you without you thinking about it.  If you read some of the Psalms, you’ll soon realize that David was often angry at God.  Read Psalm 22.  David has an intimate relationship with the Lord and in intimate relationships, you don’t try to hide your feelings from the other person.  Honestly sharing your emotions is a key to the bond you share.  David couldn’t have hidden his feelings from God if he’d tried.  So David owned up to his feelings.  He cried out to God in his anger and despair.  You don’t encourage trust and intimacy by shrouding your heart.  But after David expressed his anger to God, the Psalm show that he didn’t just stay in that wrathful place.

After David genuinely rales at God, he gets it out of his system.  He moves on.  In Psalm 22, David moves through his anger, to praise.  He gets back to his right relationship with God.  And isn’t this what happens in our healthy relationships?  We get angry with our spouse, we express it, get over it, reconcile, and move on.  A friend wrongs us, we hash it out, we work through it, make up and go on with our friendship.  The relationship we enjoy with God is like this, too.  Sharing our genuine emotions with our Creator and Savior is a great gift and reveals our “family” relationship with Him.  Yes, our anger also reveals our own brokenness and it shows how little we truly understand His love for us.  But God knows our hearts and loves us anyway.

In some ways, our anger reveals how much we love God.  After all, we reserve our strongest emotions for the ones we love the most.  But we can’t allow ourselves to remain in that anger.  Emotions like anger, are involuntary.  But allowing ourselves to continue in anger is a choice we make.  And choices can be wrong.  There comes a time when our anger at God does become sinful. David reveals a way for us to move beyond anger and that way is through repentance and gratitude.  

The moment we turn our thoughts to all the many blessings of God, our anger turns to sorrow and from sorrow, to praise.  Gratitude takes all the air out of our wrath.  For me, I move from anger, to tears, to praise.  My tears are the sorrow I feel for being mad at the One Who has given me everything.  I offer them to Him and He accepts them, over and over again.  We’ve been through this before and, sinner that I am, we’ll probably go through it again.  That’s how true love works.  Its’a journey that is so much deeper than fleeting emotions.  I know that God understands my anger and I know as well that He wants more for me than that.  Only His grace can heal me.  Your anger with God doesn’t surprise Him.  He knows you loved your friend who died unexpectedly.  He understands the anger you feel at your broken marriage.  Don’t feel guilty over that genuine anger.  But, like David, don’t make your home in it, either.  Let it out and move on.  Thank God for all the love you still have in your life and trust Him to give you even more.

“For He has not spurned or disdained the misery of this poor wretch.  He did not turn away from me, but heard me when I cried out.  I will offer praise…”

      —Psalm 22:25-26

It’s Still Easter

He looked at me like I was crazy. After I’d paid for my groceries and the cashier had told me to “have a good day,” I smiled at him and said, “Thanks and Happy Easter!” Now this was almost 3 weeks after Easter morning, but it’s still the Easter season for Catholics. This whole “season” thing is something many protestants don’t teach. Catholics and our Orthodox cousins along with a few other churches do. It’s really pretty simple. Easter and Christmas are both so huge for our faith that our celebration of Christ’s Incarnation and Resurrection can’t (and shouldn’t) be contained in a single day. We humans need more than one day to enter into the mysteries of our redemption and immerse ourselves in them. We need time.

The Church understands that and in her wisdom leads us through each year thoughtfully and reflectively, one season at a time. Our Catholic faith is an active and not a passive one. By this I mean that the Church asks us to enter into each celebration of the Mass as informed and engaged participants. We don’t just go to church and get spoon fed. When we understand the events of Christ’s life and ministry more fully we are better disciples. The arrangement of the calendar year into liturgical seasons with feasts and observances proper to each one, we’re more able to put our own lives in step with Christ’s journey through His life.

The liturgical year begins in the late fall with the season of Advent which comprises the four weeks leading up to Christmas. Advent is a time of preparation for Christ’s coming—both at Christmas and at the end of time. We watch, we pray, we confess our sins and ask for His forgiveness. Our culture tends to leap from Thanksgiving (or even Halloween) right to Christmas. We’ve lost our ability to savor the journey to Bethlehem and what it means for us. When Christmas finally does come, our culture forgets the holiday (holy day) as soon as the wrapping paper is cleaned up. The Church reminds us to celebrate and reflect on the mystery of the Incarnation for several weeks more, until the Feast of the Baptism of The Lord in mid-January.

In a similar way, we anticipate Easter by first preparing ourselves during the season of Lent. During the forty days leading up to Jesus’ Passion, Death, and Resurrection, we again enter a time of waiting. We fast, we pray, we help the less fortunate among us. We sacrifice a little in order to share and to give thanks for His great sacrifice of love for us on the Cross. Easter is the baptism of our hearts into the love of Christ. It’s little wonder that the Church formally celebrates the season of Easter for 50 days, until Pentecost. Each Sunday is itself a “little Easter” when we celebrate our new life in Him.

Outside the seasons of Christmas and Easter, of Advent and Lent, the Church reflects and teaches, through the Scripture readings at Mass and the various feasts we celebrate, the events of Jesus’ life and ministry. We read the Gospels, the letters of St. Paul, the history of God’s people in the Old Testament and His unfolding plan for our salvation. Catholics know that the Bible isn’t merely historical but that the mystery of our redemption and salvation is an ongoing event in the present. The time of our faith journey is now, the hour of our salvation is now. Our immersion in the yearly cycles of the liturgical calendar drives this home. We are on a journey through time which will end someday. “Catholic” time is spiraling ever onto that Last Day, with each season leading us closer.

So if someone like me wishes you a “Merry Christmas” in the middle of January or hopes you have a “Happy Easter” a month after you’ve eaten your last jelly bean—just smile and nod. Maybe you’ll be reminded that we’re all on a journey through time. Some of us are on that journey as part of a Church that reminds us every day, at every Mass, that we are creatures caught up in a holy mystery. Seasons come and go, the sun sets and rises again. And through each day, each week, each month, each moment—Jesus lives His life in us. We are never alone.

“He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not weather. In all that he does, he prospers.”

—Psalm 1:3

Bartimaeus

I don’t know about you, but Easter always makes me feel renewed. After six weeks of Lent and then the drama of Holy Week, Easter comes along like a long deep breath of fresh air.  It’s as if the whole world inhales and drinks in the sunshine and new life of His resurrection.  Easter affirms and strengthens us like no other season.

 Easter invites us to shake off our old ways and put on the white garment of our baptism.  Every Easter Christ invites us again to follow Him.  That need for a connection with God is hard-wired into us.   As St. Augustine ways, our hearts are restless until they rest in Him.  So how do our hearts “rest” in Jesus?  There are several examples in the Gospels that show us how different people find their rest in Christ, but this is one of my favorites.

Bartimaeus is a blind beggar we see sitting on the road near Jericho (Mark 10:46-52).  We remember that Jericho is a sinful city that the Israelites had to conquer in their quest to possess the Promised Land.  The early Christians would hear this Gospel story and associateJericho with sinfulness.  Then we learn that Bartimaeus is blind.

Being blind was a terrible affliction in Biblical times because you couldn’t earn a living to support yourself and your family.  You had to beg.  Begging is an act of profound humility.  You are saying to the world: “I can’t make it on my own.  I need your help.”  And that’s what Bartimaeus did when he heard that Jesus was passing by—he begged Him for help.  “Jesus, Son of David, take pity on me”(Mark 10:47).  The people around him told Bartimaeus to be quiet, but hedidn’t listen to them.  He kept begging Jesus to help him.  So Jesus stood still and called for Bartimaeus to come closer.  Bartimaeus threw off his cloak, leapt up, and ran to Jesus.  Christ asked him, “What do you want Me to do for you? And the blind man said to Him, “Master, that I may see.”  Jesus said, “Go, your faith has made you whole;”  And immediately, Bartimaeus could see and he began to followJesus.

This encounter between the blind man and our Lord can teach us a lot about what it means to live in God’s grace.  First, we have to know we’re sinners.  Like Bartimaeus, we can’t see the good, the true and the beautiful.  We’re weighed down in the dirt by our sins.  When we can acknowledge our sinfulness, we know the only way out  of it is to beg for help.  We can’t fix ourselves.  This is a real temptation in our “self-help” culture.  But it’s not the Lord’s way.  The only way to gain our sight is to beg.  And we have to persist and never stop asking.  This can be uncomfortable because friends and family, like the crowd around Bartimaeus, don’t think we need to look to Christ for help.  It goes against our cultural self-reliance.  And it’s exactly what Jesus loves.

When we call out to Him, He stands still.  Christ is the center of creation, the still point of the turning universe.  Everything revolves around Him.  He calls to Bartimaeus—just as He calls to each one of us.  The Greek word that expresses that calling is the same root word as the word for “church.”  Christ calls us into His Church.  It’s never just a “me and Jesus” experience as some may think.  Our calling is to love and follow Him in the context of His Bride, the Church.  And when He calls us we should respond like the blind man does, by throwing off our cloak (our sins, our doubts, our old ways of doing things) and leap up to go to Jesus.  Bartimaeus doesn’t hesitate or ask advice or call a committee meeting:  he hears the call of Jesus, he throws off his old life and he runs to Him.  And then Jesus asks him the central question of his life and of our lives.

“What do you want Me to do for you?” Imagine if your Savior asked youthat right now.  What would you tell Him?  Think about that for a moment.  What can Jesus do for you right now, today, right where you are in your life?  Bartimaeus tells Jesus that he wants to see.  This is a great answer!  He wants to see like Jesus sees.  He wants to BE LIKE JESUS.  And Jesus tells him that his faith has healed him. 

When we run to Jesus and accept His calling, following Him wherever He leads us, His grace will make us whole.  Christ frees us to become all that He created us to be.  But that freedom comes with a great price–the Cross.  When we embrace Jesus, we must also embrace His Cross.  Easter is the great invitation to leap up, throw off our old ways, pick up our cross and follow the Lord.  Our faith has healed us.His Cross has redeemed us.  Alleluia!  Christ is risen!

“Look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him, everything   else thrown in.” —C.S. Lewis