There is no such a thing that inspires awe within us as death. The reason behind this is that death is the foe, though there are other foes, yet death remains without a rival. Perhaps it is possible to refer the enmity between us and death to the fact that we are unable to anticipate it, since we do not know the day or the moment at which it may come to us. It happens that a terrible disease occurs to a person, yet he/she remains in life, while another who has not undergone such a disease vanishes.
Usually relatives and friends think of their loss as a punishment from God. They say that “God gives life and causes death”, since life and death cannot occur apart from the command of the one who is the cause of everything in life. Isn’t it the responsibility of the Creator to be the cause of everything, i.e. of existence and nonexistence? However this approach implies that God has two different plans: one to reduce existence to nonexistence and another plan to keep life going on. This further means, and in simple words, that God eternally has been keeping a notebook in which God has written the name of a person and the reason of God’s taking care of him/her until one reaches the hundred years or more in life, or the reason of God’s abandoning of another person, as it is commonly said. Isn’t the claim of God’s abandoning a person a claim of God’s favoritism to some over others?
In reality we do not know the divine intentions and we are somehow left to face a mystery as we encounter the reality of death, from which we cannot escape. I admit that this is frightening; however it is much more frightening to say that God is the cause of one’s departure from life. Our approach is completely altered whenever we believe that God wants us to continue living and that God does not make arbitrary decisions, God does not have our names in a notebook and God does not search for one’s name and the time of one’s departure from this life. God is not a temperamental God and on the level of human feelings death remains an obscured mystery until the mystery is disclosed at the last day.
In sūra 39 [al-zumar], v.42 it is written that “God receives the souls at the time of their death”. This verse distinguishes between death, i.e. the soul’s departure from the body, and God’s receiving of it. God withdraws what has been entrusted to the human soul. This is the work of God. However, for what reason does God withdraw the soul from the natural world, this seems to be an unanswerable question.
I don’t want to enter into the question of divine predestination, rather I prefer to hold on a free reading of the text, which allows me to see the difference between the death of the souls, or their departing the bodies, and their being received by God. What I want to say is that the souls find their way to God and God receives them through God’s mercy. This is what really matters for the believer.
There is no way to comfort a believer by trying to explain the biological reasons behind death. That will not change the believer’s grief about a relative or a friend. It must be further said that biological knowledge about death is based on presumption. Scientific presumption however is unable to comfort the person, whenever one’s beloved had departed life, since one would not want the beloved to depart.
The whole story is that we do not appreciate absence. The reality that a beloved person is no more within our sight causes pain to us, since for us the meeting of the eyes, and of the other senses, is important. Existence is in adhering and being near to the beloved ones. No one can be reconciled with absence and the shock that it causes in the person differs based on the measure of love one carries within oneself toward the departed. The whole universe is not founded on rational understanding and the shedding of the tears is nothing else than a sign for lacking understanding.
Whenever one is able to disperse the departed person from one’s sight and memory, one would be able to free oneself from an image that seizes him/her. It is not enough to move the departed person from one’s sight to one’s discernment, since this keeps one within the grip of death. One has to free oneself from the departed ones because life itself is in God’s hands. Whenever we trust the departed ones to the divine care and to the truth of divine love, we elevate them to Truth as such. We usually hear about war-disasters and we here some claim that this martyr or that is alive in their lives. If this is true and if that martyr is alive in a person it means that the person is the slave of that martyr. Rather we are called to be free from all the departed ones. We are to meet them only in prayer, through which we bring them to God, since they do not need us, but they need divine inclination toward them.
The communion of saints, as Christians call it, has nothing to do with remembering the departed ones. Rather, it is a communion in holiness solely. Those churches which believe in intercession do not claim an emotional excitement, rather they draw upon the Holy Spirit that purifies the souls and makes out of all souls the one Church.
Based on what has been said one has to make the effort to see the departed one leaning on the teacher’s chest. The Last Supper is a lasting event and in our detachment from the world we are inclined to listen to the heart of the Lord and only then we begin to understand and be elevated to the Father. In the presence of the Father we rest only on divine mercy, i.e. the range in which we can be truly in God. In the Kingdom we can have some taste of resurrection, while resurrection is not about time rather it is compassion and tenderness. At the moment in which we yearn for forgiveness, it descends upon us from above since it is not possible at the time of departure merely to encounter nothing. From the very beginning we experience resurrection as we approach the Easter event.
Our paschal reality (the Easter event) is not a delayed event. However the general resurrection is to be announced at the last resurrection and then God’s love to us and our love of God will brightly shine.
In this sense divine glory is not dispersed, rather it is abundant fullness. Whoever is able to live this reality with complete conviction never dies.
Translated by Sylvie Avakian-Maamarbashi
Original Text: “رهبة الموت” –An Nahar- 19.03.2011
