Getting Acquainted with Death
Two Catholic priests reflect on what they’ve learned in ushering the dying out of this world.
By Sara Holston
If there’s one life experience that ties all of humanity together, it’s death. No matter who you are, or where you’re from, or what advantages you have, you will someday die. Given this unassailable fact, what many of us hope is that, in our last days, we will have the opportunity to set our affairs in order—not only logistically, but also spiritually. Whether you believe you’re “preparing to meet your Maker” or simply preparing to leave the world you know behind, it’s a blessing to have the time and the awareness to reflect on your life, to order your heart and mind, and to prepare for whatever comes next.
For many people in the Christian tradition, this process of preparation includes the Last Rites. According to Father John Devaney, a Catholic priest who spent eight years at a cancer hospital serving at as many as two to three death beds per week, the Last Rites can be seen as the process of preparing for a journey—the voyage out of this world and into the next. All three of the sacraments administered during Last Rites are usually celebrated throughout the ordinary time of life, but in this case are tailored to the needs of the dying person. First, there is the sacrament of confession, which might now include a general confession reflecting on the patient’s entire life. The second sacrament is an anointing for spiritual strength, in which the priest rubs oil on the forehead and the palms of the patient. Anointing brings spiritual strength and comfort to the dying, and this sacrament is available even to the patient who is comatose or otherwise incapacitated. As Father John says of anointing, “The prayers of the faithful save the sick person; if the person has any sins, their sins will be forgiven them.” This practice is taken from the letter of James to the early church, which says, “Are there sick among you? Let them send for the priest and the church and let the priest pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord.” Finally, the dying person receives his or her last Holy Communion, specifically named in the Last Rites the Viaticum—a Latin word meaning “food for the way.”
Because they are called to administer Last Rites, many priests have the chance to spend time with the dying in a way that most of us in contemporary society do not, giving them the opportunity to understand death more intimately. In times past, elderly and ailing family members often remained at home, and their families were usually responsible for end-of-life care—what Father Timothy Danaher, a Dominican priest who is the chaplain of Aquinas House at Dartmouth College, describes as the “art of caring for a dying person.” Today, we’re losing that art, because we’ve largely excised death from our communities and regular experiences. Instead, he says, we “export to specialists” who handle everything from end-of-life care to organizing the memorial service. It’s reached a point where, Father Timothy says, “We don’t watch a grave being filled anymore. We leave a flower, we play music, we walk away for quite literally the dirty business to be completed by others. From start to finish—diagnosis to internment in the ground—our hands are not involved. We have no hand in it.” For most of us, death is so foreign that witnessing it would be a traumatic experience, and if we were to be confronted with a dying person, we would likely not know what to say.
The approach of death is a great equalizer—no matter your degree of wealth, status, or popularity, at death’s door you are what you are: a human being.
Serving the dying wasn’t what Father John nor Father Timothy were thinking of when they decided to enter religious life. Father Timothy describes hearing the clichés about dealing with weddings and funerals in a single day, but, he says, he was especially excited to preach homilies and baptize. But then, “In the very first month of my life as a deacon, my grandmother died at 94 years old. So we went out to rural Illinois. An enormous number of family gathered, and my aunts basically turned to me and said, ‘You can do all of this, right?’ So I did the prayers at the wake. I preached the homily. I did the graveside service.” After this induction, and shortly after being ordained, he was sent to a parish in the city center of Philadelphia, and, as a brand-new priest, found himself the Catholic chaplain for the University of Pennsylvania’s hospice, offering Last Rites regularly and having conversations with dying patients four days a week.
While Father Timothy encountered work with the dying as a normal part of serving people throughout all stages of their lives, Father John views his service at the cancer hospital as a vocation—a “call within the call” to priesthood and religious life. He describes his particular call as “the fruit of being at [his] father’s deathbed” when he was still not quite a priest. A few years later, when he and the other brothers were polled for interest in working with the medical apostolate, Father John followed that calling into special studies in hospitals. Even then, he didn’t set out necessarily to become a minister to the dying, but “it became something that evolved in [his] formation,” and over the eight years he spent at the cancer hospital, he worked not only with the dying, but with those who had received difficult diagnoses, and with the families of the severely ill.
These almost daily interactions with death have changed both priests’ perspective on what it means to be human. The approach of death is a great equalizer—no matter your degree of wealth, status, or popularity, at death’s door you are what you are: a human being. Father Timothy says, “There is still that common humanity side of a dying person, no matter who they were. I’ve given last rights to very wealthy people, very poor people. I’ve anointed priests who have given me the sacraments, who have heard my confession and given me the Eucharist. And there is a commonality when somebody’s dying; it’s a human being in bed. All that’s distinguished about them gives way to what’s common and human.” Even knowing the patient on a personal level doesn’t matter when administering the Last Rites, both priests agree. Whether it’s an old friend or a perfect stranger, Father John says, “You see them both in their hour of need. You may have a closer relationship and know someone longer or deeper, but in the role of the priest—your service to God’s people—it’s the same.”
One of the most surprising—but perhaps also encouraging—things Father Timothy has noticed in his deathbed conversations is that most of the people to whom he administers the Last Rites exhibit what he calls the “ordinary courage of the dying.” Whether they’re religious or not, he says, “Most dying people are not afraid to die. And even when they’re afraid, it’s a quiet fear. It’s a curious fear.” Death comes for us all. And when it does, he has observed, the human mind and body seem to adjust to it. Some of this Father Timothy credits to the grace of God, which can “deepen a person’s confidence and ease going towards death”—peace can be found in “knowing God to whom you go.” But Father Timothy believes the difference grace makes may be smaller than we think, that it’s built into our human nature to find reserves of peace in the face of death. In his experience, “Most people, regardless of whether they have deep faith or not, still have this ordinary courage from nature. Nature can cope with death or the fear of death when it’s up close better than when it’s far away.”
Reflecting on our own mortality helps us re-prioritize how we spend our time and where we bestow our loves.
Nowhere is this more clearly revealed than at a deathbed, where the dying might find previously untapped wells of strength, but their families are often another story—apparently, having a close family member die may make you behave as if you’re a player in some Shakespearean tragedy. The further death is from us, the scarier it seems, and for many visiting a deathbed, that confrontation with mortality is significantly more traumatic than it is for the person on the bed. After all, some wariness around death is perfectly natural—even appropriate. Thomas Aquinas wrote that one of the five principles of natural law written deeply inside of us is the desire to exist—to be. Christianity’s promise in the face of biological death is that our being will continue beyond our earthly end. Father Timothy sees the fear of death, and avoidance of death, as one of our deepest natural instincts, and affirms that it’s the right attitude. He points to the story of Jesus raising Lazarus as an example; Jesus weeps at Lazarus’s death, and his response when standing in front of Lazarus’s tomb is one of almost inhuman rage. Paul says the wages of sin are death, and the Book of Wisdom says that God did not make death. So Death was not meant to be, and fear and anger in the face of it are affirmed by the Son of God. It’s not a question of whether we ought to feel that way, Father Timothy says, “It’s just a question of what must be done” to prepare ourselves to face the inevitable.
Father John believes the answer is simple—though not always easy or comfortable: “You have to talk about your death and your end much earlier, and have a preparation for it. That’s an old, time-honored Christian tradition. A memento mori—remember your death.” None of us know exactly how much time we have, and for many of us, God willing, the end is still far in the future. Death is a distant, abstract unknown. But by reflecting on our mortality, we can bring it a little closer, where it might become less frightening. By reminding ourselves that we, too, will die, we can learn to resist the urge to turn and run from any exposure to the dying. Perhaps, in so doing, we may be privy to the kind of comforting experiences Father Timothy and Father John have found. As Father Timothy says, “The idea [of death] is terrifying, and then you get close to dying people and they’re not terrified as you are at the idea.” That ordinary courage, when we witness it again and again, can be contagious.
The practice of memento mori has other benefits for how we live day-to-day, as well—the kind that might help us lead lives that, when we look back on them at the end, lend us a little more of that same peace and strength. Remembering that we will die, Father John says, provides us a buffer from the world’s distractions, its glitter and gold. “Not that the world is bad,” he maintains. “God created it, and we have all these things that help us. But there’s a detachment that reminds you that one day it will be all over for you, and all over for everyone, and you can’t take it with you. It’s that line from Denzel Washington’s commencement speech; ‘I’ve never seen a U-Haul behind a hearse.’” Reflecting on our own mortality helps us re-prioritize how we spend our time and where we bestow our loves—we Christians are called to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves.
For Christians, this regular reminder of our death is a hopeful thing, not only for how it informs our lives on earth, but also for the way it draws our attention back to the promise of what comes after. Our answer to the question of what must be done “is the heavenly Jerusalem, and the door to it is the door of death, which has been changed by Christ.” Though we call them the Last Rites, the picture these end-of-life sacraments present is of healing and restoration in preparation for a journey that is only just beginning. “The body will eventually fail us all, whether you die quickly or slowly,” Father John reminds us. “But we can always heal or restore the soul. For the priest, and for Catholics, there is something unique about how the last encounter is with the Divine Physician, as Christ has been called, and that last encounter is for the good of the patient’s soul, the good of their eternal life, and the peace that surpasses all understanding.” In the Last Rites, death is not a failure of healing and medicine, but the beginning of the next phase in our restoration to the fullness of our humanity.
Sara Holston works on an interactive story game in San Francisco, CA.