Dear Theophilus, 

In this letter I would like to conclude the discussion that we have been having concerning the understanding of death by the Church. We have seen that our society lives without any reference to God and therefore, without any reference to death and this position has led to despair and a loss of meaning which has become widespread.

For Christians, death is the sting of sin but its ability to separate us from God has been abolished with the coming of Christ. We have seen as well, that our liturgical tradition can be divided into two discernible parts. The first, we may call the Holy Saturday tradition where the entrance into death is seen as the entrance into God's rest. The second is the layer of lamentation and fear. We have also dealt with commemoration, the dealing with the dead after their death. Even within commemoration, we find two essential parts. One, the rediscovery of the whole liturgy as commemoration and two, commemoration as a private service. How are we to synthesize all these strands into one totality?

First of all, we must realize that theology is not merely history. There is a need for education in this area. I know that you have often said this and I agree with you that death is rarely preached about in Church. At a funeral we don't have teaching about death but we most often hear a form of eulogy. The liturgy is teaching but to a large extent it has ceased to do this for a variety of reasons - because of the language, because of misconceptions that have crept in, and so on. The situation has become such that now the liturgy itself has to be explained.

In theological training, death appears in pastoral counselling as methods are studied to make the meeting with death easier. This is not to say that counselling is unimportant, but it should be faith and the understanding of faith that forms our underpinning in dealing with death. If we insist on separating death from other aspects of life then we will not succeed in our education. We must rediscover death and its meaning and point out how our view of death differs from that of those around us. We must emphasize that death is not created by God and is therefore, unnatural and tragic. In fact, every time someone dies, it is an insult to God. The concept of sin has become out of fashion today but we must still point out that death is punishment for sin and therefore, death is not morally neutral.

We must also discover that death is a victory which has to be won over and over, every time that we come to face it, wherever death strikes. The bitter fruit of death is suffering and we have to remember that Christ does not abolish suffering but brings meaning to it. It is the same with biological death; it is not abolished, and the temptation arises that nothing has changed, but in faith, we see that the face of death has been utterly transformed from that of a dead end to that of a passage way.

We have to rediscover that death is not the final state but brings with it hope for something else. Looking at this hope expressed in the Holy Saturday service, we do not dwell on the "intermediate state" but see death as a transition as we sing: "O give us to partake more fully of you in the day without evening of your Kingdom." Even now, without knowing, looking into the dark mirror as through a fog, we already have a foretaste of the Kingdom. We have to rediscover the vision of faith that death is a growing light - the dawn of the mysterious day announcing the arrival of hope.

How do we reconcile the lamentation with the joy? Both of these are integral parts of the liturgy of death. The lamentation is chronologically earlier because man had experienced the tragedy of death for many more years before he received the glad tidings of rescue from death. Brokenness is not denied by Christianity in this life and therefore, it doesn't deny the response of sorrow and lamentation. But it has to be proclaimed over and over that this is not all. There is a solidarity within the Church, between Christ and the believer which nothing, including biological death can overcome. We can rejoice because death is now to be viewed as the ultimate victory of God's love for us.

It is important for us to keep in mind that there are different types of death. There is our daily dying to our selfish urges. We have to practise this type of dying in order to eventually properly confront our biological death. Our Church teaches us that God did not create death but He wills the time and mode of our death in order to achieve a greater good for us. In other words, He uses death but He doesn't cause it. If we look to Christ to understand death then we turn to psalm 119. When a righteous man dies, since he cannot die, it is not he but death which is changed. The whole point is that none of us is righteous and therefore none of us is capable of transforming death. This was accomplished by Christ. This also points out to us that the cultivation of righteousness and holiness is the only preparation possible for death. If a person is really going to confront death and change it into an act of life, then he can only do this from a position of righteousness attained for him through Christ. We must, however, be careful what we state here. Death does not become a good thing (and this is what is emphasized by the double strand in the liturgy of death) on its own. Death is still an evil but, it now has the possibility of being filled with good. Death and suffering still remain evils and there is still a need to struggle against them.

Theophilus, you have probably heard stories of death bed conversions where, at the last moment, people are converted to God. This, from my experience, is a rare phenomenon. In fact what happens more often is that evil people tend to become more evil, materialists hang onto materialism with a greater than ever hold, and holy people become holier. They are the ones who transform death. This shows that the actions of each day of our lives are important and are brought to a sort of perfection at the last moment. The moment of death is truly the moment of truth because you witness to what you have really become.

To attain this moment of truth in the proper state, we must practise dying on a daily basis. The heart of this practise is love. We are taught to love God and our neighbor - we distort love when we focus it completely on ourselves. The desert fathers say: " He who exalts himself, perishes. He who builds only to build, builds his own tomb. He who writes only to write, weaves his own shroud. He who talks only to talk, is giving his own funeral oration." When we turn everything onto ourselves, we self-destruct. We must continually remember that our preparedness for death and our salvation comes through our relationship with God and with our neighbor.

In our fallen world, love is invariably accompanied by suffering and death. Through Christ, death the curse, becomes an instrument for blessedness (note again that it is not death in itself which is the blessedness). In our world, love often involves self-emptying, agony, and pain. Love has its ultimate display through the ultimate evil, death. Therefore, you show how much you love by what you do when you are confronted by death. This is always sacrificial but, in Christ, it is not despairing. Death is the moment of giving ourselves one hundred per cent to God. Death therefore represents the most perfect means of trusting in and glorifying God. We must come to the point of loving God for Himself, irrespective of where this may lead. And then, Resurrection becomes possible for us and we are given the gift of eternal life.

In our fallen state, this is not easy to attain. We fall away but we must strive to keep on going and to keep trying to love God and our neighbor. One of the pitfalls that we fall into is to classify activities in our life into those that seem important and those that seem to be secondary. Our intentions may seem good but we miss realizing them because we await the big moment. It will help us immeasurably to realize that every moment in our lives is a "big moment", a moment of great importance. Every act that we do, even the smallest, contributes to our growth and to determining who we are. Therefore do not wait for the right moment to repent and change. The right moment is right now and the sooner we start the better off we will be. And with this, Theophilus, I end my letter.

Yours,

Bar-Abbas

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