One of the most challenging tasks I, as priest, have to carry out is to prepare a dying person for death that is expected at any time because of illness or old age. What makes it even more difficult is when I have to deal with a person whom I don't know well because he is just being referred to me by someone. A complete stranger, in other words.
I only bank on the fact that the family or friend requested me to talk with the person to somehow feel reassured that the person concerned is open to the truth and beauty of Christian death. But I have to do a lot of adjusting and sizing up before I could start some serious talk and prayer.
But it's the effort to convey the Christian meaning of suffering and death that I find most challenging. I'm aware of the different levels of faith that people have, and it's in how to adapt the doctrine to their level, such that they get to appreciate it, that
would leave me gasping for divine inspiration.
I just can't dish out the teaching in the raw. I need to dress it up, using the appropriate words, tone, arguments and examples. I also need a good sense of timing, feeling the pulse of those around to see if my words are entering or not. A tricky affair, but all worth it. I learn something every time I do this.
It can happen, as it has happened many times, that the family and friends who requested may have good spiritual life or religious background and formation, but the dying person may not. Still I am inclined to proceed with the duty since the dying person, even in the worst scenario, usually becomes open to spiritual talk when death is imminent.
It's a most delicate moment because the matter involved is not anymore of the temporal type, but rather of the ultimate, absolute and eternal. The things brought out are matters of faith, things spiritual and supernatural.
My experience is that even with those who are considered to be with little spiritual background, the truths of faith about death would somehow soften their hearts and they become open to them. Even if at first, there could be some resistance or indifference observed, these usually give way quite easily when the truths of faith about life and death are explained calmly and prayerfully.
The truth about death, according to our Christian faith, is actually so beautiful that, in a manner of speaking, we should be dying for it to come. No wonder, saints like St. Francis called death Sister Death, and they heartily welcomed it even if it came through martyrdom.
For a Christian believer, death is actually the final liberation, the entrance to eternal and definitive life for us. While it came as a result of sin, its sting has been removed with the redemptive passion and death of Christ. "Where, O death, is your victory?," exults St. Paul. "Where, O death, is your sting?" (1 Cor 15,55)
For a Christian believer, death comes at the most appropriate time and in the most appropriate manner. Obviously, this has to be seen from the point of view of faith, because death will always appear as untimely and unwelcome by our human standards alone.
With faith, death would not be seen, as one saint would describe it, as a hunter who would put us down in our most vulnerable moment, but rather as a gardener who has planted flowers in his garden, and when the flowers start to bloom, he would cut them to place them in his house.
Death actually is like going home, our definitive home. Although we try to prolong our life here on earth as much as we can, we should not be afraid when signs of it start to come to us.
Our reason for wanting to prolong our earthly life should not be because of a certain attachments to worldly things, but rather to want serve God and others more. In other words, it should be build up some more our life of love for God and others.
We have to learn to prepare ourselves for death everyday. We can do that by dying a little everyday. We do that everytime we offer some mortification and sacrifice for God and for others, like a grain that has to die on the ground to germinate and become a plant.
The cycle of being born again and dying should take place every single day of our life. If we have that mentality, we would have no fear of death.