On Death

I was reading Chapter 13, Our Eternal Destiny, in The United States Catholic Catechism for Adults. (2006). Washington, D.C. : United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. This is a more specialized cathechism, based on the CCC (Catechism of the Catholic Church), which I actually read cover to cover about 6 years ago.

Here is a quote: "We do not like to think about death." It goes on to outline the beliefs of the Catholic Church.

About twenty minutes later, I received an email from a high school friend about the death of his brother. He was fifty four, had surgery to replace a knee and died from a heart attack that was probably related to clots in his lungs. His funeral would be in two days in a city about an hour from where I lived.

We hear about death all the time; murders, suspected murders, deaths from natural disasters, illness, accident, natural causes, deaths in war , and the death of people we know. Occasionally, we hear about the death of a family member or someone whose death impacts our lives in a dramatic way, e.g. the assassination of President Kennedy or 9/11.

Pope John Paul II coined the term "the culture of death" because of the declining respect for human life, most notably in abortion and euthanasia.

I must admit, going to mass once a week and repeating the creed goes along way, for me, to light a candle in the darkness that seems to surround us. And it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.