Arrival on a Thursday morning

Last evening, I received this update on the condition of Fr. Richard John Neuhaus. I joined his friends, colleagues and acquaintances in prayer for God’s mercy on him.

This morning I thought about the times I interviewed him for my former radio show, especially the unique discussion we had on Good Friday, 2006. We talked about ‘why we call this day Good’, discussing his book Death on a Friday Afternoon, and it was poignant and eloquent, as Neuhaus always was. In the book, he quotes philosopher Alfred North Whitehead as saying

that the only simplicity to be trusted is the simplicity to be found on the far side of complexity. The only joy to be trusted is the joy on the far side of a broken heart; the only life to be trusted is the life on the far side of death.

I would learn a short time later that at the time I was thinking this, and silently saying another prayer, Fr. Neuhaus passed away. Now he knows that new life. He has long contemplated it.

Our lives are measured not by the lives of others, not by our own ideals, not by what we think might reasonably be expected of us, although by each of those measures we acknowledge failings enough. Our lives are measured by who we are created and called to be, and the measuring is done by the One who creates and calls.

He has been called home, an event in every life that Neuhaus also contemplated long, and helped others regard it in a wholly different way than we are accustomed to thinking about it. First Things wants readers to think about that today, as they appreciate what Neuhaus taught through his great body of thought.

We are born to die. Not that death is the purpose of our being born, but we are born toward death, and in each of our lives the work of dying is already underway. The work of dying well is, in largest part, the work of living well. Most of us are at ease in discussing what makes for a good life, but we typically become tongue-tied and nervous when the discussion turns to a good death. As children of a culture radically, even religiously, devoted to youth and health, many find it incomprehensible, indeed offensive, that the word “good” should in any way be associated with death. Death, it is thought, is an unmitigated evil, the very antithesis of all that is good.

Death is to be warded off by exercise, by healthy habits, by medical advances. What cannot be halted can be delayed, and what cannot forever be delayed can be denied. But all our progress and all our protest notwithstanding, the mortality rate holds steady at 100 percent.

Neuhaus says and writes frequently…”stay awhile, linger” at the Cross, with the event of death. And do not be afraid.

This is a lengthy and very personal article, this meditation First Things shares with readers on this day of his passing, and I urge you to find some time to linger with it, listen to what Neuhaus shares in it, his earlier bout with near-death and all that his brilliant mind and eloquent words recollect. He refers to the words and thoughts of many great writers – and one tyrant – and he ends with a quote from my favorite poet.

There is nothing that remarkable in my story, except that we are all unique in our living and dying. Early on in my illness a friend gave me John Donne’s wondrous Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions. The Devotions were written a year after Donne had almost died, and then lingered for months by death’s door. He writes, “Though I may have seniors, others may be elder than I, yet I have proceeded apace in a good university, and gone a great way in a little time, by the furtherance of a vehement fever.” So I too have been to a good university, and what I have learned, what I have learned most importantly, is that, in living and in dying, everything is ready now.

RJN….Requiescat in pace. Rest in peace.