Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, on death

Aître Saint-Maclou in Rouen

Death is the touchstone of our attitude to life. People who are afraid of death are afraid of life. It is impossible not to be afraid of life with all its complexity and dangers if one is afraid of death. This means that to solve the problem of death is not a luxury. If we are afraid of death we will never be prepared to take ultimate risks; we will spend our life in a cowardly, careful and timid manner. It is only if we can face death, make sense of it, determine its place and our place in regard to it that we will be able to live in a fearless way and to the fulness of our ability. Too often we wait until the end of our life to face death, whereas we would have lived quite differently if only we had faced death at the outset.

There is a patristic injunction, constantly repeated over the centuries, that we should be mindful of death throughout our life. But if such a thing is repeated to modern man, who suffers from timidity, and from the loss of faith and experience which prevails in our time, he will think he is called upon to live under the shadow of death, in a condition of gloom, haunted always by the fear that death is on its way and that then there will be no point in having lived. And death, if remembered constantly and deeply, would act as a sword of Damocles for him, suspended over his head by a hair, preventing the enjoyment of life and the fulfilment of it. Such an approach to the saying must be rejected. We need to understand mindfulness of death in its full significance: as an enhancement of life, not a diminution of it.

Read entire article at http://www.metropolit-anthony.orc.ru/eng/eng_06.htm

bonum est sui diffusivum

painting by Farid De La Ossa Arrieta

by Martin Wilson msc :

As a person trained in Scholastic philosophy, I like to get back to principles of Being. I remember very clearly one particular day in Rome back in 1958 when I was in the early stages of writing my doctorate thesis at the Gregorian University. I had prepared the first chapter, and wanted to show it to my thesis director, Father de Finance. I waited at the door of the lecture room, where he was giving an emotive and impassioned lecture on the nature and goodness of Being. He was speaking about the transcendental properties of Being, especially that Being is good and, as such, Being is essentially self-expanding. In the words of a classical dictum of Scholastic philosophy, bonum est sui diffusivum. Goodness, and Being itself, is expansive, spreads itself. This was taken to be a first principle, something an intelligent mind simply perceives. Not something you have to prove.

At the end of his impassioned talk about the generosity of Being he stepped down from the rostrum and made for the door, where I was waiting with the draft of my first chapter. I approached him and said, Here is the first chapter of my thesis for you to check, please. He threw up his arms in the air—he was a Frenchman—and cried out, ‘I am too busy!’

I was thus introduced to the further lesson that the generosity of Being is grand in theory but has its limitations in practice…

above from:  Compass a review of topical theology – summer 2006 issue

painting by Farid De La Ossa Arrieta