As I write this, my mother is dying. I had plans for other topics for this editorial, but somehow, in the midst of what portends to be the final leg of her life’s journey, I can’t find those topics that are now buried somewhere under the mixture of stress, sorrow and utter fatigue that I’m battling. Let me share with you some musings born of this experience.

You have to be smart to deal with government health care bureaucracy, and even then, smart doesn’t always cut it. As I’ve met with a case manager every day in the last week, I’ve been fascinated and frustrated by the workings of bureaucracy, and at times, my jaw has dropped over the incredible bureaucratization of the health care system and the things for which they have assessors. I wonder what percentage of funds is spent on bureaucracy to the detriment of patient care. Then my mind wanders back to the Church, with both an upper- and lower-case C. I wonder how people who aren’t familiar with our internal workings experience us. Do they find our demands as strange as the labyrinthine workings of the health care system? When people approach us for sacraments or with other needs, do they find bureaucrats or pastors?

I wonder, over and over, about the mystery of the incarnation. After all, the things surrounding sickness and dying are not pretty or pleasant. They bring us up against our own limitations, as well as against the limitations of those we love. We sometimes treat the incarnation as all glory or all cute, forgetting the blood and guts that are equally real. I am constantly awed by the fact that our God, in Jesus, took on this reality—not just being human when it is good and fine, but in its brokenness, fragility and limitation. God took on our dying and our death.

The sense of tradition, of handing over responsibility and trust from one generation to the next, is strong. Tradition, after all, is a way of addressing the issue of death. Recognizing that our own lives are finite, we desire to pass on to the next generation what has been most precious and life-giving for us, and we seek ways to do this without betraying what we ourselves had received from others. As I reflect on what I have received from my mother—faith, stubbornness, perseverance, I also ponder the responsibility to receive the faith and bring it to life in our time. We entrust to the living the delicate task of reading the signs of the times. Only that allows us to honour what is good, to build on it, and to understand how we can better respond to the challenges of new times and new circumstances. This task confronts us constantly: with the new school year, we welcome a new generation to educate in the faith; with the new liturgical year, we gain a new opportunity to rediscover the mystery of discipleship in our lives. This sense of tradition relativizes our sense of being the lead character in our own play, helping us realize that we are but a tiny part of a process from which we have received much, a process that will continue after we have passed through death ourselves. This process enables Jaroslav Pelikan’s words to be true: “Tradition is the living faith of the dead.”

Speaking of death: The at-all-costs avoidance of the word “death” also strikes close to home. Read the obits columns and you will quickly see that people passed (a final exam?), went home, finished their life’s journey. Few people seem to die. At Eucharist this morning, the feast of the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ, we sang, “Where the paschal blood is poured, Death’s dark angel sheathes his sword.” I choked a bit, singing those words, but felt relief as well. The Christian assembly is one of the few places where we are still permitted to say the D-word. Most significant is that we say it in the context of faith. We do not grieve as those who have no hope. That itself is a source of joy and of renewed, enduring peace. If our faith in the paschal mystery is sorely tried when we face death, the words of our scriptures, catechesis and hymns keep before us the fundamental dynamic of the Christian faith: Life is changed, not ended. Though we die, we will live. Those who have been baptized into Christ are promised a share in his resurrection. We need to have these words etched deeply into our minds and hearts so that, like our marriage vows, we can recall them when we need them most: in times of great loss or trial; when we and a loved one are facing death; when everything that we have learned to count on seems to evaporate. Sometimes these formulae sound just like that: formulaic, but they are the hooks on which we hang our faith in times of trial.

Finally, facing death evokes the depths of gratitude. Gratitude, first, for the gift of life, which is, after all, so fragile and yet so vibrant. Gratitude for those people who have marked our lives irrevocably. Gratitude for the friends, neighbours, and colleagues whose loving support are such treasured blessings. And, most importantly, gratitude for our God who leads us through death to new life.

editor.celebrate@novalis.ca
Rita Gasslein died June 21, 2009.