[CATHOLIC CAUCUS] Death is an uncomfortable fact—and a conquered foe

Catholic World Report ^ | On the Readings for Sunday, June 30, 2024 | Carl E. Olson

[GonzoII]

• Wis 1:13-15; 2:23-24 • Psa 30:2, 4, 5-6, 11, 12, 13 • 2 Cor 8:7, 9, 13-15 • Mk 5:21-43

In his satirical work, The Devil’s Dictionary, the nineteenth-century journalist and satirist Ambrose Bierce—no friend of religion—wrote these dark lines in the entry for the word, “Dead”:

Done with the work of breathing; done With all the world; the man race run Through to the end; the golden goal Attained—and found to be a hole!

Macabre, yes. But also fairly honest, coming from a man once described as an “asthmatic, superstitious, bilious atheist”. Bierce is to be commended, to some degree, for his willingness to often face squarely (and with a smirk) the many inconvenient elephants in the murky parlor of modern skepticism.

How often do people today really talk about death with anything resembling honesty? How ingeniously does our society work to avoid the reality of the grave?

Scripture, on the other hand, not only mentions death often, it actively takes on death as a fact that cannot be avoided and a foe that can, through Christ’s death and resurrection, be overcome and conquered. The author of the Book of Wisdom wrote, “God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living.” He is a God of life, and “he fashioned all things that they might have being…” This echoes the strong words of the prophet Ezekiel: “As I live, says the Lord God, I swear I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked man…” What, then, does God desire? His pleasure is “in the wicked man’s conversion, that he may live” (Ez 33:11).