Death a Surprise?

Usually the Church does not get to celebrate the tenth Sunday of Ordinary Time. But Easter was quite early this year and we finished it in time for the tenth Sunday to happen.*

We are lucky. The readings are about wombs and widows and raising from the dead. They bring up the crucial question of death and its meaning.

The First Reading tells about a most unfortunate widow whose only son has died. Elijah was the prophet at hand so the widow promptly blamed him. “Have you come to me to call attention to my guilt and to kill my son?” Elijah wastes no time in bringing the son back to life.

Surprisingly, Jesus does a like healing, though without being blamed for the death. He was simply “moved with pity” for the widow and he told the son’s corpse abruptly to rise. “The dead man sat up and began to speak” (Gospel)!

In the Second Reading, Paul the Apostle admits his guilt in persecuting Christians, but talks about his birth into this life. He says that God, “from my mother’s womb had set me apart and called me through his grace.”

We each progress from the serene home of the womb to the stubby surface of the world, where we belong, yes, but not without pain and much adjustment.

And then there is death.

What are we to think when the fertile womb of mothers gave birth to their beloveds, only to find the reply to that life in the surcease of life, death? Surely this is something to give long thought to. Some of us have witnessed in person the death of people much treasured by us. All of us will go to that end, as did even the sons of the widows that Elijah and Jesus brought back to life. Is this a cruel joke?

I would like to give you the gift of a poem by the great Indian poet, Rabindranath Tagore, on this very subject.

I remember my childhood when the sunrise,
like my play-fellow, would burst in to my bedside
with its daily surprise of morning;
when the faith in the marvelous bloomed
like fresh flowers in my heart every day,
looking into the face of the world in simple gladness;
when insects, birds and beasts, the common weeds,
grass and the clouds had their fullest value of wonder;
when the patter of rain at night brought dreams
from the fairyland, and mother's voice in the evening
gave meaning to the stars.

And then I think of death,
and the rise of the curtain
and the new morning
and my life awakened in its fresh surprise of love.**

I had expected a complete reversal of all good when the words came, “And then I think of death.” But then in a majestic and understated revelation, Tagore gives us the real meaning of death and of life.

A fresh surprise of love.

Only if you and I come to see, within the span of our lives, the tender caress of love softly surrounding everything that is—even the disappointments—can we say with real truth that we believe in “a new morning” and in our lives to be “awakened in a fresh surprise of love.”

My goodness, isn’t it worth looking for? Do it now, because these readings will not come back for years!

John Foley, S. J. 

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* Usually Easter is late enough that the tenth Sunday gets substituted for by Easter Season, Ascension, Trinity, and the Body and Blood of Christ. But Easter was early this year, thus leaving room for our tenth Sunday of Ordinary time.

Why does Easter occur on different dates each year (when ordinary times do not)? To make a long story short, Easter’s date is still determined by moon time instead of sun time. In very old days, every date used to be governed by the phase of the moon. Liturgically the last celebrations to change to the “new” way of determining time (by the sun) are the most important ones, which we are loath to change. Thus, Easter.

If you have an interest in ways of counting time, an abiding interest I mean, read Stephen Hawking’s small book, A Brief History of Time. You will not wonder again.

** From Tagore, Crossing.