I enjoyed this....

Last words are especially fascinating. Human beings are speaking animals. For us to be alive is to be in communication. Death is not just the cessation of bodily life. It is silence. So what we say in the face of imminent silence is revealing. It may be resigned; Ned Kelly, the Australian bank robber, managed, “Such is life” just before he was executed. Lord Palmerston, “The last thing that I shall do is to die,” is more defiant or just pragmatic. One may be gloriously mistaken, like the American Civil War general who said of the enemy sharpshooters, “They could not hit an elephant at this distance.” Few of us manage the grandeur of the Emperor Vespasian’s “Woe is me; I think that I am becoming a god.” Pitt the younger is supposed to have said, “Oh my country, how I leave my country,” but the more reliable tradition gives us, “I think that I could eat one of Bellamy’s meat pies.” In fact many dying people ask for food and drink. St Thomas Aquinas asked for fresh herrings, which were miraculously provided, and Anton Chekhov announced that it was never too late for a glass of champagne.

We live in an age of profound anxiety. We are fearful about disease and illness, about our futures, about our children, about our jobs, about failure, about death. We suffer from a deep insecurity, a collapse of trust. This is strange because we are far more protected and safe than any previous generation of human history, at least in the West. We have better medicine, safer transport; we are more protected from the climate, have better social security. And yet we are more afraid.

I spent nine years as Master of the Dominican Order travelling around the world in many dangerous places. I saw civil war and genocide in Africa, thousands of people with leprosy, the signs of endless violence. But when I came back to the West, I found people who appeared to be more afraid than anywhere else. The attacks of 11 September deepened that sense of anxiety. I was in Berkeley, California, when those few anthrax envelopes were sent and the panic was tangible. But we have no need for fear. Jesus has entrusted us into the hands of the Father.

I suspect that this pervasive anxiety derives from the fact that we have a culture of control. We can control so many things: fertility and birth, so much disease can be cured; we can control the forces of nature; we mine the earth and dam the rivers. And we Westerners control most of humanity. But control is never complete. We are increasingly aware that our planet may be careering towards disaster. We live in what Anthony Giddens has called “a runaway world”. We are afraid, above all, of death, which unmasks our ultimate lack of control.

A friend of mine had a sign in his room which said, “Don’t worry. It might not happen.” I composed another for him which said, “Don’t worry. It probably will happen. But it won’t be the end of the world.” It will not be the end of the world because the world has already ended. When Jesus dies the sun and the moon are darkened; the tombs are opened, and the dead walk. This is the end of which the prophets spoke. The worst that one can ever imagine has already happened. The world collapsed. And then there was Easter Sunday.


the Tablet
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