10 August 2020
Feast of St. Lawrence, Deacon and Martyr
In the novel Peter Pan, there is a moment when the immortal child, confronted with the possibility of morality, says “To die will be an awfully big adventure.” This is stated by a lad who swashbuckles with pirates, flies, plays games with native warriors, and journeys across the star to earth to recruit new children for his band of Lost Boys. How is it that he can see death as an adventure? Likewise an ancient sign above the Orthodox Monastery on Mount Athos reads: “If you die before you die, then when you die, you will not die.” One phrase comes from the lips of a perpetual child; one from the wisdom of monks. One from a child with no fear of death (or anything) to the point of recklessness; one from religious men who do not fear death because of their faith in Christ. In fact the latter seeks to embrace death in a way like St. Francis who, in his Canticle of the Sun, addresses Death affectionately as “Sister”:
“All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Death,From whose embrace no mortal can escape.Woe to those who die in mortal sin!Happy those she finds doing your will! The second death can do them no harm. Praise and bless my Lord, and give him thanks. And serve him with great humility.”
In our Gospel today Jesus speaks not merely of death, but that we must die a sort of voluntary death which precedes our involuntary, natural end; this is the “die before you die” of which the monks speak. Jesus teaches us that we must die to ourselves if we wish to follow Him, to detach ourselves from the things of this world so that we are disposed to receive the riches of the next. So often we settle for what good we can wrest from the world, and seek to make ourselves comfortable here, as though it were all we have. But Jesus did no such thing; He passed through this world and clung to no part of it, save those things that could last into the next: the souls of those He loved.
We were not created to die; indeed, God says through the Prophet Isaiah “As I live…I swear I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn, turn from your evil ways! Why should you die, house of Israel?” (Ezekiel 33:11). God desires us to live; does not Jesus say “…I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly,” (John 10:10)? Yet in order to receive that gift, to inherit eternal life, we must “die” to ourselves and our life here, being as St. Paul who said “…whatever gains I had, these I have come to consider a loss because of Christ…For his sake I have accepted the loss of all things and I consider them so much rubbish, that I may gain Christ,” (Philippians 3:7-8). Hence we must die, we must let go of ourselves, of our life here, as the grain lets go of its life as a seed that it might flourish not merely into something more, but into what it was always meant to be. Remember the words of Jesus at the Last Supper: “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain…” (John 15:16). Thus if we so “die” before we reach the grave, then when comes for us, we will not truly die, but live.
And it is that life—eternal life—that is the great adventure, if we have the courage to die in this one first. Yet too many seek to be like Peter Pan: desperate to live forever in this world, curious about the next, but unwilling to undergo the necessary trial and growth essential to receive it. These souls, like Peter Pan, remain but a seed of unrealized potential and fruitfulness, choosing Neverland and in turn forfeiting the Kingdom of Heaven.