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COMMENTARY
November 19, 2019 | The Valley Catholic
Faith and Dying
By Rev. Ron Rolheiser, OMI
Theologian, teacher, award-winning
author, and President of the Oblate
School of Theology in San Antonio, TX
We tend to nurse a certain naiveté about what faith
means in the face of death. The common notion among
us as Christians is that if someone has a genuine
faith, she should be able to face death without fear or
doubt. The implication then, of course, is that having
fear and doubt when one is dying is an indication of
a weak faith. While it’s true that many people with
a strong faith do face death calmly and without fear,
that’s not always the case, nor necessarily the norm.
We can begin with Jesus. Surely he had real faith
and yet, in the moments just before his death, he called
out in both fear and doubt. His cry of anguish, “My
God, my God, why have you forsaken me”, came from
a genuine anguish that was not, as we sometimes
piously postulate, uttered for divine effect, not re-
ally meant, but something for us to hear. Moments
before he died, Jesus suffered real fear and real doubt.
Where was his faith? Well, that depends upon how
we understand faith and the specific modality it can
take on in our dying.
In her famous study of the stages of dying, Eliza-
beth Kubler-Ross, suggests there are five stages we un-
dergo in the dying process: Denial, Anger, Bargaining,
Depression, Acceptance. Our first response to receiving
a terminal diagnosis is denial – This is not happening!
Then when we have to accept that it is happening, our
reaction is anger – Why me! Eventually anger gives
way to bargaining – How much time can I still draw out of
this? This is followed by depression, and finally, when
nothing serves us any longer, there’s acceptance – I’m
going to die. This is all very true.
But in a deeply insightful book, The Grace in Dying,
Kathleen Dowling Singh, basing her insights upon
the experience of sitting at the bedside of many dying
people, suggests there are additional stages: Doubt,
Resignation, and Ecstasy. Those stages help shed light
on how Jesus faced his death.
We can have a deep faith and
still find ourselves with doubt
and fear in the face of death.
Just look at Jesus.
The night before he died, in Gethsemane, Jesus ac-
cepted his death, clearly. But that acceptance was not
yet full resignation. That only took place the next day
on the cross in a final surrender when, as the Gospels
put it, he bowed his head and gave over his spirit. And, just
before that, he experienced an awful fear that what
he had always believed in and preached about God
was perhaps not so. Maybe the heavens were empty
and maybe what we deem as God’s promises amount
only to wishful thinking.
But, as we know, he didn’t give into that doubt,
but rather, inside of its darkness, gave himself over
in trust. Jesus died in faith – though not in what we
often naively believe faith to be. To die in faith does
not always mean that we die calmly, without fear
and doubt.
For instance, the renowned biblical scholar, Ray-
mond E. Brown, commenting on the fear of death
inside the community of the Beloved disciple, writes:
“The finality of death and the uncertainties it creates
causes trembling among those who have spent their
lives professing Christ. Indeed, among the small
community of Johannine disciples, it was not unusual
for people to confess that doubts had come into their
minds as they encountered death. …The Lazarus story
is placed at the end of Jesus’ public ministry in John to
teach us that when confronted with the visible reality
of the grave, all need to hear and embrace the bold
message that Jesus proclaimed: ‘I am the life.’ … For
John, no matter how often we renew our faith, there
is the supreme testing by death. Whether the death
of a loved one or one’s own death, it is the moment
when one realizes that it all depends on God. During
our lives we have been able to shield ourselves from
having to face this in a raw way. Confronted by death,
mortality, all defenses fall away.”
Sometimes people with a deep faith face death
in calm and peace. But sometimes they don’t and
the fear and doubt that threatens them then is not
necessarily a sign of a weak or faltering faith. It can
be the opposite, as we see in Jesus. Inside a person of
faith, fear and doubt in the face of death is what the
mystics call ‘the dark night of the spirit” … and this is
what’s going on inside that experience: The raw fear
and doubt we are experiencing at that time make it
impossible for us to mistake our own selves and our
own life-force for God. When we have to accept to die
in trust inside of what seems like absolute negation
and can only cry out in anguish to an apparent empti-
ness, then it is no longer possible to confuse God with
our own feelings and ego. In that, we experience the
ultimate purification of soul.
We can have a deep faith and still find ourselves
with doubt and fear in the face of death. Just look
at Jesus.
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