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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
Someone once said that death is a tragedy only when we know nothing about it. If this is true, then just how much do we know of death that to die would not be a tragedy? If we had some idea what it is like to die, would there be less fear in us? Would we be less scared at the prospect of it since it would not be a plunge into the unknown or a leap into the dark?
What is troubling about the moment of death, thereby causing much distress and anxiety, is that we all know that one day each of us will die; yet there is much uncertainty about death. Consequently, the thought of it grips our whole being, leaving us bewildered. Or could it be the parting with loved ones or perhaps leaving behind an unfinished task which makes death a sad and unwelcome moment? John Keat’s poem ‘Terror of Death’ certainly expresses the tragedy of being separated from loved ones or an uncompleted work. Maybe it is the fact that there is no turning back after—to use Alfred Tennyson’s words—one has ‘crossed the bar’ that terrifies. Dylan Thomas’s advice, therefore, is:
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
We are afraid that death may reveal our lives to have been a sham and it has rendered us powerless to change them.
1 ‘Do not go gentle into that good night,’ lines 18–19.
2 Cymbeline. Act IV, Scene 2.).
3 Julius Caesar, Act 11, Scene 2.
4 line 13–14.
5 In pointing out that Christ’s death gives meaning to our own since it gives us a focus and a participatory role, we are not implying that we should be obsessed with death the way that some people in the past were. Cf. Norman Pittinger, After Death: Life in God (SCM, 1980), p. 2.
6 W. Abbott (ed.), The Documents of Vatican II. ‘The Church in the Modern World,’ art. 18.
7 Schillebeeckx, E., ‘The Death of a Christian.’ Vatican II: The Struggle of Minds and Other Essays (Dublin: Gill and Son, 1963). p. 68Google Scholar.
8 Ibid., p. 74.
9 Karl Rahner, ‘Death,’ Sacrarmentum Mundi, p. 61.
10 Ibid.
11 Donal Dorr. ‘Death,’ The Furrow (March, 1968), p. 143.
12 Karl Rahner, op. cit.
13 Ibid., p. 60.
14 John Macquarrie. Principles of Christian theology (SCM Press, 1971). p. 68.
15 Ibid.
16 Ladislaus Boros. The Moment of Truth (Burns & Oates, 1969).
17 Donal Dorr. op. cit., p. 146.
18 This is poetically expressed by John Donne in ‘Good Friday, 1613, Riding Westward.’
19 John Macquarrie. op. cit., p. 324.
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