I was talking the other day with a friend who says she is afraid of dying. I am not afraid, but I don’t think I said enough to convince her that we should not fear death. What can I tell her?
In answering your question, it can be helpful to distinguish between fear of the dying process and fear of what awaits us after we die.
It is only natural to have some fear of the dying process, especially if we have accompanied someone whose last days or months involved some degree of suffering. Even with the best medical treatment there are still some people who experience considerable pain and discomfort at the end. At the same time, there are very many who do not.
In any case, we can help people see their suffering as a sharing in Christ’s suffering and death on the cross, and to accept it as a manifestation of his love. After all, he said, “Those I love, I chastise” (cf. Rev 3:19, Heb 12:6). It also helps to see suffering, borne out of love, as a purification of our soul, as a shortening or eliminating of our time in purgatory, so that we can go straight to heaven when we die. It is better to suffer here than hereafter.
Sometimes people worry about how they will die, but this is foolish, since it only causes anxiety. We cannot know how or when we will die. For all we know, we will die in our sleep, or suddenly of a heart attack or a stroke. Rather, we should abandon ourselves into the arms of our loving Father God, who will take us to him when and how he thinks best, and he will give us all the help we need when that time comes.
As regards what awaits us after we die, this should fill us not with fear but with great hope and joy. For us Christians, death and what follows it have a very positive meaning. Death is not the end of our existence, but only the gateway to eternal life with God. Even Jesus died, to redeem us, and in dying, so to speak, he redeemed death itself. He rose again on the third day and our soul will rise again to eternal life too. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it, “For those who die in Christ’s grace it is a participation in the death of the Lord, so that they can also share his Resurrection” (CCC 1006).
If we live and die well, after death we will rise up to the indescribable happiness of heaven. “Life is changed, not ended”, we read in the first Preface of funeral Masses. But not only is life changed, it is changed for the better, for the very much better. The Catechism expresses it like this: “Heaven is the ultimate end and fulfillment of the deepest human longings, the state of supreme, definitive happiness” (CCC 1024). There is no happiness greater than that of heaven. And it is forever.
In this sense we can, and should, look forward to dying and going to enjoy eternal life with God. In the same passage in which St Paul says, “to die is gain”, he goes on to say: “My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better” (Phil 1:23). So too the psalmist speaks of his desire to be with God: “As a deer longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?” (Ps 42:1-2)
This desire for God directs our attention beyond death to what lies ahead for the soul. It does not focus on death itself but on what comes after it. It takes death for granted and looks forward to the eternal life that follows. This is how we too should look upon death: not as some sad and unfortunate end, but as the gateway to eternal happiness.
St Cyprian describes death in a beautiful way: “What an honour, what happiness to depart joyfully from this world, to go forth in glory from the anguish and pain, in one moment to close the eyes that looked on the world of men and in the next to open them at once to look on God and Christ! You are suddenly withdrawn from earth to find yourself in the kingdom of heaven” (Tract. ad Fortunatum, ch. 13). Likewise, St Teresa of Avila writes: “I want to see God and, in order to see him, I must die” (Life, ch. 1). We too are blessed to be able to look on death in such a hope-filled way.
