Remember Your Death

A Reflection on the Second Reading for June 28th, 2020:
Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

---

​Romans
6.3-4, 8-11

Brothers and sisters: All of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.

So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
​

Pause. Pray.

And then read more...

I thought I wasn’t afraid of death. As an 18-year-old, I had experienced the sudden death of my dad, and I thought I had dealt with it — thought I had done really well, actually. I had confronted the mystery of death early in my life, made peace with it, and “moved on”. It was a reality I couldn’t control or explain, and I (quite understandably, really) pushed it down and pushed it away. It was just “the way it was”: an extremely unfortunate event. There was nothing I could do about it and so, I got on with things, proud of my self-sufficiency and resilience. So many of his birthdays, anniversaries of his death, and Father’s Days have gone by without me taking the time to ponder his dying, and what it has meant for me.


It hasn’t been until the last few years that I’ve realized what kind of an impact the death of my father has had on my life. He was the same age I am now, and my daughter is almost as old as I was when he died.


I’ve come to realize that fear of death is closely related to fear of love… because when we love deeply, death, at least for the living, hurts more than we can imagine. It is so interesting to me that this fear of death, and fear of love, work in direct opposition to our deep desire for connection and for relationships that matter. I can keep people at arms’ length and avoid difficult conversations because I’m afraid of rejection; afraid of the pain of disagreement; fearful of what seems insurmountable in relationships. But this only serves to separate me from the only thing that brings true fulfillment, which is love.


In the confrontation of my grief this Father’s Day, I realized that as much as it hurts to grieve, it feels so good to express my love for my dad freely, to let the tears flow, to really feel how much I love him and how devastated I am that he is no longer here on earth. My faith has allowed this grief because Jesus has shown me that it’s okay to hurt. It’s okay to acknowledge the pain and grief that life in this world brings. Not only that, but by His resurrection, He’s shown me that there is tremendous hope when death no longer has power over me — when death doesn’t make me afraid to love. He’s shown me that the bittersweetness of grief is better than the denial of life and love, even when it hurts — because that’s where healing happens.


We are meant to grieve, because it’s an indication of love. As Saint Paul relays to us: Jesus, in His life and walk toward the cross, faithful to Love, shows us in no uncertain terms that precisely because of Love, death is nothing to fear — it is where life in its fullness is waiting.

​


Lindsay Elford

---