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| The team around Jacques Gaillot, who was giving a monthly text under this heading, is mourning the death of one of their member, an important one, Pierre de Locht, a moralist and theologian from Belgium who died on March the 9th, this year. He was 90 years old and was active till his last weeks. He was working on a book dealing with the eternal Life, “the Bible at sight”. From his recently published book ( Luc Pire Publisher, Brussels), a kind of a legacy book called “Christians today: a contradictory commitment” we extract this part below to pay tribute to him in recognition for all he brought to us. |
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| The high point of the existence on earth. |
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The final stage of life, characterized by a greater dependence on the others, with death coming close, looks from a certain point of view a scandal for a living being provided with a conscience. However for a believer can it have a positive aspect? |
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| After having traced more or less easily my own way, I am tempted to think that there is some sense in having an end of life marked by a dependency and submission to conditions and circumstances that we can less and less control and that leads to a leap into the unknown. This ultimate period of our life where we cannot do any thing for ourselves, in total dependence, is not it a necessary step to open oneself to the plenitude of God? How am I going to react when I will face more directly this time of dependence, in circumstances that I ignore? I cannot predict it. It seems that the sense I am giving today to my life, having conscience of my limits, will have some consequences on my reaction when the moment of losing my strengths will come. |
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| When only confidence is left. |
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What do I need to take with me in the next world, if only my most possible entire confidence? By his life and teaching, Jesus of Nazareth initiated us to this filial attitude. When, in this ultimate phase, we are left to be only a son or a daughter of God, to totally accept this filial condition, not any more like during the creative actions we had in the past but in hope and faith. A faith centred on God because he is God, a God who is with us and for us. If there is a God, I can see him face to face only if I am striped as much as possible of every thing.
In this situation it becomes difficult for me to say some thing about death and the hereafter. To know something for sure in our life time, it was to find, in ourselves and in the normal human condition, some reasons, justifications, safeguards, proofs…now at the time of death we have less and less certitudes but more pure hope brought to the extreme. This confidence is supported by these seeds of eternity that are already a part of our present existence.
The dependence so characteristic of the end of life, far to be degrading, would be the high point of an existence, however active and controlled it has been in the past. This dependency is to prepare our self to be at disposal, with confidence, and ready to welcome an other world that we do not conquer but is given to us. |
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| At this stage every thing has to give place to silence. Our own personal actions, our credit and virtues, our pretension to receive a reward and even our ideas about the other world, about an eternal beatitude, all that do not make sense. It is the silence, and perhaps a certain silence of God, which is necessary to let room to the confidence. No more provision for the journey. We have to be confident, a free confidence, without limits. A confidence brought to the extreme. |
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The silence which is essential in this ultimate phase is our own silence: silence about all our goals, for those we have fought, for what we have been creative, also the silence of our ideas about God, how we have imagined the hereafter… All we were use to cheer or to worry. This in order to leave room to a confident wait “ How difficult it will be for those having wealth to go into the Kingdom of God!” (Marc, 10, 23)
Is it also the silence of God? Who can say? Any how, our silence, made entirely of renunciation, is necessary to leave room to the tenderness of God, who is the only one that can give sense, life, joy to this passing, to this Passover, this Easter (pp. 92-94) |
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