Befriending Death: Insight from Ecclesiastes / Qoheleth

"Our first task is to befriend death," writes Henri Nouwen. 

Two Extremes

Everyday we hear and read news of deaths. People are dying due to the pandemic. Death has become our daily staple. We are affected, consciously or unconsciously. Two extremes that we should be wary of:

• (1) that we become fatalistic and wish to join the bandwagon of death, anyway uso ang namamatay; or simply demand the right to die  (euthanasia or suicide);
• (2) or we become necrophobic. We fear death so much so that anxiety grips our being: we can't work, we can't eat, we can't sleep. Fear of death immobilizes us..

On the First Extreme: Euthanasia and Suicide

I refer you to the latest Church's teaching on the issue: “Samaritanus bonus” of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on the care of persons in the critical and terminal phases of life,

On the Second Extreme: Necrophobia

I recommend the book of the late Father Henri Nouwen, Our Greatest Gift: Meditation on Dying and Caring (1994).

And of course,  read Ecclesiastes 11:9—12:8, today's First Reading  (9/26/2020) is taken from that pericpope.

QOHELETH’S MEDITATION ON DEATH (12:1-7)

Notice the progressing description (in metaphorical terms) of old age and death:
from NEGATIVE to POSITIVE view of DEATH; from a DAY OF EVIL to a DAY of the RETURN TO GOD:

• v. 1 Qoheleth calls old age and death ―DAYS OF EVIL‖ (YEMEY HARAAH) and something that is not desirable.

• v. 2 as DARKNESS OF THE LUMINARIES OF THE SKY and as CLOUDY AND RAINY

• v. 3 as LABORERS TOO WEAK TO WORK

• v 4 as SILENCE IN THE STREETS and ONLY THE CHIRPING of BIRDS is heard v. 5a as the BLOSSOMING OF ALMOND TREE and JUMPING OF A GRASSHOPPER

• v. 5b as GOING BACK TO ONE’S ETERNAL HOME

• v. 6 as the snapping of the SILVER CORD; the breaking of the GOLDEN BASIN; the breaking of the JAR AT THE FOUNTAIN; and the breaking of the WHEEL AT THE WELL. 

Notice here the end of things used to fetch WATER, a symbol of LIFE in the BIBLE. [In the Fiipino culture, these containers during burial are broken to be buried with the dead.]

• v. 7 as the RETURN of THE DUST to the EARTH and as the RETURN of the SPIRIT (RUAH) to GOD who gave it.

DEATH, even if earlier Qoheleth had a negative view of  is (9:4), in the end, it is a welcome event, a CONSUMMATUM EST . A his book comes to close, Qoheleth passes on a piece of wisdom that spiritual writers like Henri Nouwen and psychiatrists like Elisabeth Kübler-Ross  would affirm in our modern age: To accept the fact of death—to BEFRIEND DEATH.

On Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, On Death and Dying (1969):

To befriend death, one undergoes this process:

•  Shock stage: Initial paralysis at hearing the bad news.
• Denial stage: Trying to avoid the inevitable.
• Anger stage: Frustrated outpouring of bottled-up emotion.
• Bargaining stage: Seeking in vain for a way out.
• Depression stage: Final realization of the inevitable.
• Testing stage: Seeking realistic solutions.
• Acceptance stage: Finally finding the way forward