A Passionate Death

I’ve just finished reading Henri Nouwen’s, “Our Greatest Gift”. It was given to me by a friend in Kolkata. He told me that it had helped him learn how to care for the patients at Kalighat, the house for the dying, where he worked. Nouwen takes a very down to earth view of death so to speak. For him suffering isn’t some theoretical question but rather a preset reality as he tells many stories of his friends and loved ones dying around him.

Nouwen starts by suggesting that as we die and care for those who are dying we move into a second dependency and see ourselves as children of God. Probably my favorite piece of the bible is in 1 John where John says, “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” We are loved as children dependant on the father and our dying reminds us of this in a practical sense.

Nouwen also supposes that there is great joy to be found in the communion that death and dying lead to with the rest of creation. He tells a story of a friend who made a pilgrimage to some holy site in an undeveloped nation to pray for healing. Upon arriving and seeing the suffering and sickness surrounding her she no longer desired to be healed but rather prayed to continue in her sickness because of the joy that being able to share the suffering of the others around her provided. We are part of something common to the living world when we die. As we care for those dying we are to be with the dying person so that the person dying catches a taste of the great community to which they belong.

In the hospital where I work there are many, many lonely people. I do not think that it is because their loved ones don’t want to visit them, but rather that in our western world we are more concerned with ourselves than our sick friends. As the people of God it is up to us to demonstrate the communion that occurs after death to the marginalized on this side of the grave.

Lastly Nouwen contends that just as Jesus death led to great fruitfulness so too can our deaths. He recognizes that it is impossible to speculate how this might look. “Something new will come to be, something about which I cannot say or think much. It lies beyond my own chronology.” As we help others die we must refuse to equate fruitfulness with strength, success, and accomplishment and view it rather as passion. Amy Carmichael the great missionary in India was ill and suffered in bed for the vast majority of her time overseas. In terms of success this was wasted ministry but in terms of passion she was able to say to those suffering:

…give Him time to steep the soul in His eternal truth. Go into the open air, look up into the depths of the sky, or out upon the wideness of the sea, or on the strength of the hills that is His also; or, if bound in the body, go forth in the spirit; spirit is not bound. Give Him time and, as surely as dawn follows night, there will break upon the heart a sense of certainty that cannot be shaken.

-Amy Carmichael

May we learn how befriend those who are alone in their dying and help them to see that death can indeed be passionate.