halloween and the fear of death and dying - 30th week tuesday 2013

I have seen your Facebook and your campaign against Halloween which nowadays seem to glorify evil and its minions including ghosts, zombies, vampires, Frankensteins, tamawo, mantyo, capri, mananangal, aswang, bagat and the like.  Actually every culture in the world has its share of ghost and ghost stories.  I for one thought that white ladies are residents of Iloilo or at least the Philippines until I saw in Discovery Channel that they also have a white lady in Vietnam and Thailand.  This preoccupation with aswang I believe comes from our innate struggle to understand or even to find a solution on the problem of death, to come to terms with death.  Since day one in the womb of our mothers there has always been a preoccupation to survive, to want to hold on to life, to want to live as long as it takes.  Nevertheless someway, somehow we will definitely meet the way of all mankind in our own time, in our own death.  For as long as we could not come into terms with our mortality, for as long as we could not accept the inevitability of death and dying and for as long as we are unresolved in our understanding as to what lies beyond death and dying, we will always have a Halloween, the fear of death, the fear of what lies after death.

What is death then?  We always see death as a punishment because of sin and we are correct because death is not in our nature but was introduced in us as a consequence of sin.  But we should not see it merely as punishment. 

Sang isa ka semana as pagbisita ko sa minatay ginsugata ako sang utod sang napatay nga nagasiling, father salamat kay nakapahuway na si manong.  She did not say my brother died because obviously that is what had happened.   But instead she said, he has already rested.  Rested sa ano?  Nakapahuway na sia as ulugtasan niya nga mga apo kag as mga masabad niya nga kabataan?  Posible.  Rested na sia sa iya mga balati-an, sa iya pag-antus, sa iya mga pagpangabudlay?  Posible. 

May he rest in peace is greeting we say to the dead.  We don’t say May you rest in peace instead of good night when a person goes to bed, indi bala?  Rest in peace is only for the dead.  So rest from what?

Death is a rest from all these and more, because death is a rest from all evil.  Death is the final answer to our prayer in the Our Father, hinonoo luwason mo kami sa kalaut, but deliver us from evil.  When we are alive it could mean free me from this particular temptation, from this particular desire, from this particular bad habit, free me from my anger, from my lust, free me from that which could harm my body and soul because there is evil in the world.  But this prayer receives its final and definite answer when we die, for when we die all evil cease.  When we die there is no longer any longing because all hope will be fulfilled.  When we die there is no more faith for we shall see God as he is.  When we die there will be no more imperfections for our brokenness will be made whole, our lack will be supplied, our questions will be answered, our doubts will be turned into trust.  In the end all that will remain in us is love.

That is why for St. Ambrose death is not just a consequence of sin, in fact it is a remedy to sin.  It is the way God will free us from all evil.  When we die evil can no longer touch our souls and our souls will return to God and from God it will be reunited with our bodies and our bodies will be freed from the evil of corruption and we will rise again and then finally, we will have life eternal, the 12^th and last article of the creed – we are going to live forever, freed from slavery to corruption to share in the glorious freedom of the children of God – St Paul to the Romans, our first reading today.

When you go to the cemetery – think about these things.  For those of us struggling with evil death is an ally. death is a friend and death is a gift from God.  And please clean your cemeteries these places of rest, for if we don’t want people to be scared of death it should be made beautiful, shouldn’t it?  It is scary because it is ugly, it is ugly because it is dirty.