It was the question they were dying to hear answered. One evening, as Kerry Robinson’s family and friends gathered around the table for conversation, the subject turned rather suddenly to the best way to die. The conversation centered on this question: “How would you like to experience your own death?”
Over bottles of wine and candlelight Kerry and her loved ones took turns giving their own answers to this question. It wasn’t entirely morbid. One friend was certain that dying in her sleep, peacefully, at the end of a long life would be the best way to go. Kerry said that she would like to die suddenly and quickly, without warning, ideally after a spectacularly joyful celebration with everyone she knew and loved. Another suggested that he would prefer to have as much time as possible with the knowledge of a terminal illness in order to make amends, to thank his friends and family, and to be intentional about giving away everything he possessed.
And so, the conversation continued until the oldest at the table, Kerry’s Dad, turned to the youngest at the table, Kerry’s thirteen-year-old daughter. “Sophie, you have been very quiet and very attentive, but you have not yet volunteered an answer. Do you have an opinion on the way you would most like to die?” The question hung in the air. Everything became still and silent. Kerry held her breath. She was concerned her daughter might be too young for a topic so deep, existential and distressing. Kerry was worried that her daughter might be ill-equipped to answer this question as she might not have ever even seriously considered this topic of death. Now though, here she was at the center of everyone’s attention. Aware that a response was being asked of her, she replied, “Yes. I hope I die saving someone else’s life.”
This sounds like the answer Jesus gave for you and for me. Jesus died the way he wanted to, saving someone else’s life. That someone else is who we see reflected back at us when we look in the mirror. If each of us want to live fully, we too must first decide how we would like to experience our own death. Both Kerry’s daughter and Jesus knew far in advance of how they wanted to die giving life to someone else.
We can experience the gift of life Jesus gave for us here and now in a tangible way through the life-giving sacraments he instituted for us. When we celebrate the sacraments, we are celebrating the life he gave us. These sacraments are visible signs of the invisible reality of how much Jesus loves each one of us.
One of the seven Sacraments that gets particular attention in today’s Gospel reading is marriage. In marriage, the way spouses make visible their love for one another is meant to be a visible sign pointing to the invisible reality of how Jesus loves each one of us. Marriage is meant to be a sign pointing us to Jesus. When, God-willing, we arrive to be with Jesus in heaven, we no longer need a sign pointing us to him, because we will have arrived at our eternal destination with him.
If we have other loves that have substituted for God as first in our lives, we may first need to be purified of these so we don’t risk becoming separated from him. We will then experience complete union with God. And all other human relationships, as good as they are, will be summed up in heaven in this experience of complete union with God. When Jesus says there will be no marriage in heaven, he is saying that even for a married person who is extraordinarily close and loving of their spouse here on earth, this person’s love of God and their fellow saints in heaven will be even greater than the love they have for their spouse now on earth.
What this means for us, is that even people like Kerry Robinson, her Dad and Daughter, who I mentioned a few moments ago, even people like them who are complete strangers to us now, if we are to experience heaven with them in the afterlife, we will love them even more in the afterlife than we now love the person we most intimately love here on earth. The love we experience with Jesus in the heavenly afterlife will be on a whole other level compared to the love we experience now in this life.
This however doesn’t mean that we are just to postpone experiencing this kind of love until we experience the afterlife. All the life and grace we need to live as fully as possible in this life, Jesus’ church provides through the sacraments. In addition to helping us live fully in this life, these sacraments also provide all the grace we need to be able to celebrate the afterlife with Jesus and all the saints in the heavenly liturgy. In today’s Gospel reading, this afterlife is what Jesus focuses on when he speaks to the Sadducees and to each one of us who may at times also lack confidence in the afterlife or may lose sight of the afterlife. Jesus reminds each of us today about the promise of eternal life.
Jesus talks about those “deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead.” So, when we say how we want to die, we are also making a statement about how we want to live the rest of our lives on this earth and how we want to live in the afterlife. When we begin the rest of our lives with the end in mind, then we know how we want to live each of our remaining days.
When we say how we want to die, we are also saying how we want to live. The person who wants to die peacefully in their sleep is also making a statement about a desire to have peace become a greater part of their life’s work on this side of heaven so as to carry that momentum with them into the afterlife where, God-willing, they will experience this sense of peace more fully along with the Prince of Peace for all eternity.
The person who wants to celebrate life with their friends and family in their final breaths on this earth is making a statement about focusing all the more on bringing a greater sense of this joy into their daily interactions with friends and family so that they can one day be in the heavenly liturgy, where celebration is wholly communion and feast.
The person who wants to repair and restore their relationships and give everything away on their dying day is making a statement about a desire to be intentional about living daily in right relationship with those they love and to let their possessions follow this movement of their heart. It is then that they will be ready to experience the full restoration of their relationship with God and their fellow saints in heaven.
And the person who wants to die saving the life of another is also making a statement. They are making a statement about finding a way each day to set their own desires aside so they can help another experience life more fully here and now as a visible sign of the life that is sacrificially shared with them for all eternity.
It is the forward momentum we start today in the direction we want to experience the last moment on this earth that will be carried on into the afterlife. By the grace of Jesus and through the grace of Jesus, each of us are invited to experience eternal life the way Jesus wants us to experience it. Each of us who die in Jesus’ love will come to share in his happiness.
On Friday, I was reminded just how fragile our lives are when a bullet was shot at the building where I work. While no one was killed or injured, it was a reminder that you and I don’t know when our time will come, but what we do know is what we have right now. And what we have right now is an opportunity to have an intimate encounter with Jesus in sacrament of the Eucharist and to take him with us as we live our lives today.
This is same Jesus who was intentional about wanting to die saving someone else’s life. When Jesus was on the cross, he was thinking about you and me. Let us take this life he has given for us and to us and be very intentional with the way we use it. The person who is not intentional about the way they want to die, will wake up one day to discover they turned into the wrong person.
So, before you and I decide how we are going to live, we first must decide how we want to die. The question then I believe our heavenly father is asking each of us today is this “How would you most like to experience your own death and what does that say about the way you will live the rest of your days?”