Practicing for Death
June 28, 2019
Woman on her Deathbed, Vincent Van Gogh
“DEATH can be robbed of its greatest fearfulness if we practice for it. Christianity recommends mortification, penance, and detachment as a rehearsal for the great event. For every death should be a great masterpiece, and, like all masterpieces, it cannot be completed in a day. A sculptor who wishes to carve a figure out of a block uses his chisel, first cutting away great chunks of marble, then smaller pieces, until he finally reaches a point where only a brush of hand is needed to reveal the figure. In the same way, the soul has to undergo tremendous mortifications at first, and then more refined detachments, until finally its Divine image is revealed. Because mortification is recognized as a practice of death, there is fitting epitaph inscribed on the tomb of Duns Scotus, Bis Mortmis; Semel Sepultus (twice died, but buried only once). When we die to something, something comes alive within us. If we die to self, charity comes alive; if we die to pride, service comes alive; if we die to lust, reverence for personality comes alive; if we die to anger, love comes alive.
The basic spiritual principle is this: Death must be conquered in every thought and word and deed by an affirmation of the eternal.
—- Fulton J. Sheen, “Fear of Death”
