Dying and Rising Daily

While researching for an assignment on Church History the other day, I came across a startling essay on Ancient Monasticism. Scanning through the text to see whether it would be a helpful resource, I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. While professing to be Catholic, the author openly declared that what he learned of monasticism went completely against his personal beliefs. Where he places a high value on self-improvement, he concluded that Ancient Monasticism was entirely focused on the opposite, on self-denial. He concluded the essay with expressing an unsatisfied curiosity about Monastic life – hopefully his curiosity continues to lead him to more enlightening sources!

In reality there is no contradiction at all between self-improvement and self-denial, which is the trimming away of things that get in the way of our well-being. Taking health for an example, it is obvious that the denial of unhealthy inclinations is actually a source of self-improvement. True, the selfish part of ourselves does not like to be trimmed back. Establishing better habits does need to involve a certain death to self – meaning, the part of myself that desires what is not ultimately good for me. It is in fact, extricating of oneself from the center of one’s life to put God there instead. Such a death to self prepares the soul for a new and beautiful flourishing of life, in the slow growth of holiness.

Mother Mary Francis, PCC, has a lovely reflection on this continual dying and rising throughout life. She comments on nature’s example of dying gloriously, in joyful self-sacrifice for the sake of the new life to come. 

Expertise is what we are after today. Nature has it in the sensitive area of death. She performs it like a Greek drama, with all the dignity of the inevitable freely chosen. Yet she dances it like an innocent child ballerina, spilling out the story with the effortless abandon of pure dedication. Again, she does it as purposefully as Francis of Assisi who sang because he had nothing left on earth and had found a Father in Heaven. She knows all about the return of spring and what makes that return possible. 

And so … each nun and novice was asked last week to go outdoors and take a lesson in dying and resurrection from nature. It was suggested (by which we mean: Go ahead and do it!) that each one take spiritual notes on dying from what God has to say in nature. A few main points were anticipated, such as: dying ungrudgingly, gloriously, gorgeously, gaily. Because this is the way to live. …some of us seem to have forgotten how one arrives at resurrection. How Christ did. That it was and it is through suffering and death. Odd, how we can miss such an obvious fact as that we have to die before we can rise from the dead. (From the 1973 Preface to A Right to be Merry, originally published in 1956)

As a final point of reflection, allow me to call attention to the beautiful hymn O God Beyond All Praising. Its glorious tune and reflection upon God’s gifts to mankind leave a deep impression. But the often-omitted middle verse, interwoven with themes of praise and thanks, reflects that all things of this earth must die to allow for our passage to Heaven. But again, these ‘earthly splendors’ can refer to the selfishness, pride, and ego with which we do daily battle. They must give way to the Love of God and neighbor that will not end. This, so that as Christ died and ascended to Heaven, mankind can also rise through death, to ‘final victory.’