Healing

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Growing Older...

By Stephen Hand
editor TCRNews.com

The death of Terri Schiavo and our beloved Holy Father, within days of each other last week, has turned my mind toward death more than before. We all know that we, too, are moving toward our Consummatum est. By today's standards I am, they tell me, "young" at 52. Of course few of us like to admit we're growing older in our artificial youth culture. And yet some things cannot be hidden. I notice I tire easily. A heart attack and diabetes have left me weaker. My dear father died at 49. I notice my hands inexplicably shake some now (my doctor thinks it is something called Familial tremor), and thus I have more and more humbling typos to deal with at TCR than a few years ago----usually noticed only after Carol O'Reilly, my friend, has brought them to my attention.

The Spirit is Willing...

I know the television advertisements tell me I should be jumping out of airplanes like George Bush Sr., but just the thought of it exhausts me. And no thank you, Bob Dole, I prefer not to ask my doctor for Viagra. Who wants to put the monkey back on one's back when it seems to fade on its own by some mercy? And something is happening when I now ache in the morning after a good (or bad) night's sleep. More than half a century in this mortal frame earns its wears and tears, I would suppose. The spirit is willing but the flesh seems to be getting weaker. Even at 52...

John Paul II

After watching our beloved Holy Father, John Paul II, advance into deep old age with such grace, I know I have something else to strive for now, whether it be near or "far". Decades seem to fly past in ten minute intervals now. We are only given one day at a time. This day. Consider: no one who died in that horrific 9/11 crash into the World Trade Towers ever thought while they were having breakfast that morning that they would be rushed into eternity before 9 AM.



Tolstoy

Have you read Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich? It is must reading. A man who never gave so much as a thought to anything but Self and Success unexpectedly discovers a lump. The news is grave. The doctor tells him to get ready to leave this world. It is preposterous, impossible, to him. Yet it is brutally true. I must leave the rest for you to discover if you have not read this profound novella. Do get it.

When my dear wife was taking chemo treatments for her MS I was so sad to behold so many young women and men in the chairs receiving their treatments, in their cases for cancer. How we prayed for them silently.

St. Alphonsus Liguori

Near my bed I have long had a copy of St. Alphonus' Preparation for Death. For some 20 years. I read portions now and then. In it the saint gives example after example of people who thought they would live long lives, only to find the Lord saying "thou fool! This very night thy soul shall be required of thee".

So---especially after John Paul II's teaching us how to age and die from painful grace to grace---I cannot and will not avert my eyes from that Consummatum est, but try to prepare for it, without gloominess, but with healthy spiritual anticipation, all the while doing my best to confess the Faith while there is breath in me, remembering that "he who has been forgiven little loves little," ( Luke 7:36-50 ). The "night comes when no man can work," Jesus said; so he admonishes us "to work while it is day".

The Shrinks

If the saints are right, the psychologists are wrong who suggest that to think of death reflects necessarily some kind of depression. Prozac cannot and should not do away with contemplation of the Four Last Things. Our days move toward their goal. One by one by one. The question is what Word our lives will speak when we are gone.

My Wife's Grace

When I woke up this morning, my wife told me she had been up all night, unable to sleep; but she was mysteriously, even if sadly, glowing, saying she had been suffering with John Paul II in a mystical sense as they replayed his life throughout the night on the television. If you knew how humble my wife is (she seldom talks of such things) you'd thank God as I did that God had given her such a wonderful grace. I thought to myself, we are both preparing, little by little, for however long it takes.... Thank you, John Paul II, for showing us again how sickness is a road toward the Terminus, the Beatific Vision, and not an end in itself (Col 1:24).

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