Between death and beyond

In the collective imagination, November is the month of the dead. Red candles appear in supermarkets, the areas around cemeteries become congested with traffic, and thereabouts, authorised vendors –and those who are not- improvise as florists. However, perhaps, we should not mince our words here, because albeit slowly and particularly in the big cities, the cult of the dead plays an ever smaller place in our lives. Moreover, we are told, it will be increasingly so for the next generations, for whom it already seems as if cemeteries no longer exist. In fact, for some time now, sociologists and theologians have been insisting that our modern world has progressively distanced itself from death. Yet, perhaps also because for many of us old age is advancing and because we all know many people today, death presses upon us, its impudent arrogance sometimes overwhelms us. We have “externalized” it, hospitalized it - it is true - but it is not uncommon that we are forced to look at life from the perspective of death. “Sister death”, yes, but no less challenging, sometimes unexpected, too often unjust.

In many ways, religions have tried to explain, throughout their often millennial history, the possible relationship between death and divinity. This is a very diverse relationship because, among other things, it is strongly linked to two decisive factors: on the one hand, life expectancy and on the other, even more importantly, the recognition given to the human person, often reserved even in death only for the rich and powerful. For its part, the biblical tradition allows us to glimpse that death is “scandalous”, that is, it constitutes a stumbling block, an obstacle to the idea of a single God and, above all, of a benevolent God. It is no coincidence then that the biblical creation myths, without worrying themselves too much about logic, attribute the blame for death to humans and not to God, nor can it be surprising that for Israel, souls could have no relationship with God after death and wandered in the Sheol, a place of silence and darkness. As the author of the book of Wisdom (11:26) exclaims, “Thou sparest all things, for they are thine, O Lord who lovest the living”.

It is only much later, and even then in only certain religious groups, that the idea of a resurrection, of a life after death, was to make its way in. It is from here that the faith of the Galilean prophet’s disciples arose, and who then recognise him as the Risen One, the first, the first fruits of what will happen to every man and woman of all times.

“He will swallow up death for ever”, prophesied Isaiah (25:8), and the New Testament will end with the vision of “the tent of God with men” in which He will “wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away”. (Revelation 21:3-4). Jesus had emphatically affirmed this in the face of the Sadducees’ inability to believe in the resurrection that the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, that is, the God of Israel, “is not the God of the dead, but of the living” (Matthew 22:32), including among the living those who will be resurrected on the last day.

On the other hand, the entire history of religious or non-religious human thought is a close dialogue with death, whether angry or calm, matters little. And it can only be so.

November, however, is the month of the dead, not of death. It educates us to remember, it asks us to retrace the plot of our lives and do so commencing with relationships and those with who we felt affection. Those who are no longer with us, have been there and, above all, have been there for us. Even the nostalgia that arises from their absence reminds us that they were there, they were part of our lives. Perhaps, we will no longer visit our dead in cemeteries, but we will have to make memory the place of the new cult of the dead. We will have to learn to cherish it, even socialize it. The Church has tried, in her own way, but masses “offered for the soul of a deceased person” whose name is half-voiced are very small thing. We should invent occasions, in our places of gathering, to process the memory of our dead together. Places where we celebrate life, not abstract life, but “our” life. Because the memory of our dead helps us to give thanks for what we had and to take on each other’s shoulders even if sometimes the loved one has been taken away too soon. Each of our dead has been for us, for better or for worse, a presence, an appeal, a gift.

In a small, but today dated book, a great German Jesuit theologian from the last century, Karl Rahner, offered short but incisive meditations. One was entitled God of my dead. Those whom each of us loved in life cannot be imprisoned in the land of darkness and oblivion, nor can they be denied any relationship with God. Our dead continue to speak to us and tell us stories, and when we remember them, they speak to us of the “life-loving Lord”.

by Marinella Perroni