The Notebook
Fr Bernard Healy
Every year on November 1, after All Saints’ Day Mass, the community of the Pontifical Irish College heads to the Campo Verano Cemetery, just outside the walls of Rome, in order to pray midday prayer at the college burial vault. It’s a good way to begin the month of November by remembering those members of the college community who have gone before us to God.
Here are buried staff members, students and friends of the college. This year, looking at the names and dates of those interred, I noticed how until the 1930s it was not an uncommon thing for a seminarian to die in Rome during his studies. The community could expect to bury a seminarian twice a decade between the 1870s and the beginning of World War II.
The reasons are easily understood. Improvements in medical science and hygiene, vaccinations and the development of antibiotics have changed things utterly. Prior to these advances, the death of a colleague in his 20s due to natural causes would not have been an unusual event for a clerical student in Rome.
Nowadays, many of the afflictions and injuries which would have felled our ancestors have either been eliminated or are easily treated. Anyone with a familiarity with the literature or history of that time knows that people were concerned about their growing old at ages that we would now describe as ‘middle-aged’ and were keenly aware that even the mildest of illnesses could take a fatal turn.
Whilst death is one of the proverbial certainties of human existence, our perception and experience of mortality does change. Compared to previous generations, death in the prime of life is relatively rare. Now, we have all lost friends and family too soon, but we are often inclined to think of these deaths as being an aberration rather than part of the normal existence.
Circumstances
It also seems as though the death of a younger person these days is more likely to be tragic in circumstances rather than natural.
Because of this, we are less inclined to recognise our own mortality unless death or illness hits us particularly closely. Because death in early and mid-life is more often experienced as tragic, we also put more emphasis on the extraordinary mercy of God for those in difficult situations, rather than thinking of those ordinary spiritual and sacramental means by which our forebears routinely prepared themselves for death.
Our improved health is an unambiguous blessing. However, in this fallen world we cannot welcome even the greatest blessings without presumption blinding us to our true situation. Our modern life encourages us to consider ourselves immortal, and to put off the serious business of preparing for death. I don’t mean to suggest that our spirituality should have a morbid fixation on death or that we should reduce the Christian life purely to consideration of what happens in the world to come.
Rather we should understand that being prepared for death means nothing other than being right with God and neighbour here and now. As Pope Francis recently said when celebrating Mass for deceased cardinals and bishops, “the journey of life is shaped by its ultimate goal”.
The Christian tradition reminds us that we best live our life knowing that it has its fullest meaning in the context of our death and in the light of eternity.
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The way in which historical circumstances shape our perception of death and our spirituality can be seen by looking at Church history. Several of the churches here in Rome have memorial plaques recording the existence of societies and confraternities dedicated to preparing for “a good death”. Is that something we even hear mentioned nowadays? Perhaps some of the wisdom of the palliative care movement can help shape a contemporary spirituality of dying well.
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Remembering the 1918 flu victims
l In this decade of commemorations it’s worth remembering that the experience of World War I shaped the celebration of All Souls’ Day. In 1915, Pope Benedict XV gave permission for all priests to celebrate three Masses on that day.
This was because of the huge numbers of young soldiers and civilians who had already lost their lives. The war would go on to claim an estimated 16 million lives.
What is less remembered is that the so-called Spanish flu pandemic of 100 years ago would dwarf that death toll by taking between 50 and 100 million lives. They too should be remembered.