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Vigils Reading – Office for the Dead
August 17, 2022
DEAD-43
08.17.2022
Fear and Hope from a book by Michael Schmaus1
To Understand God’s call as one of love does not do away with the awesomeness of death; even the faithful anticipate it with fear. Indeed, the element of fear in the believer is liable to be stronger than in the atheist or nihilist, who has resolved to his own satisfaction the problem of what comes after death and is chiefly disturbed by the knowledge that one must abandon a work which one has begun, leaving something unfinished. The believer, however, sees in death the moment of encounter with God, that moment towards which the person has been journeying, in an anticipation never free of tension, during one’s whole lifetime. As the person awaits the judgment God will pronounce, anxiety can be overcome only in a loving confidence. The death of the faithful Christian is a death in the Lord. It is a death which will not bring condemnation, since no one who lives and has faith in Christ will ever die.
Although God is an impenetrable mystery, the person of faith perceives the meaning of the divine summons in a way that prevents one from falling into despair. When the time had come for him to take leave of his disciples, Christ said: “Trust in God always; trust also in me.” In that hour Christ gave his own assurance that they would have life, and have it abundantly. He never promised them an untroubled existence within time, but only a life of joy in God. Thus anxiety is changed into tremulous expectation: the Lord comes. In the First Letter of John, Jesus’ exhortation to his disciples to have confidence in the Father and in himself is made explicit when he says: “There is no room for fear in love; perfect love banishes fear. For fear brings with it the pains of judgment, and anyone who is afraid has not attained to love in its perfection.” So, in the face of death, there remains to everyone only trust and hope with which to meet the unavoidable fear of death.
1 Dogma 6, Justification & the Last Things. Michael Schmaus, Sheed & Ward, 1977, pp.220-221