Vigils Reading – Office for the Dead

SILENCE, POVERTY, AND DEATH

By Thomas Merton

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If, at the moment of our death, death comes to us as an unwelcome

stranger, it will be because Christ also has always been to us an unwelcome

stranger. For when death comes, Christ comes also, bringing us the everlasting

life which he has bought for us by his own death. Those who love true life,

therefore, frequently think about their death. Their life is full of a silence that is

an anticipated victory over death. Silence, indeed, makes death our servant and

even our friend. Thoughts and prayers that grow up out of the silent thought of

death are like trees growing where there is water. They are strong thoughts, that

overcome the fear of misfortune because they have overcome passion and

desire. They turn the face of our soul, in constant desire, toward the face of

Christ.

A whole lifetime of silence is ordered to a final utterance; by this I do not

mean that we must all contrive to die with pious speeches on our lips. It is not

necessary that our last words should have some special or dramatic significance

worthy of being written down. Every good death, every death that hands us over

from the uncertainties of this world to the unfailing peace and silence of the love

of Christ, is itself an utterance and a conclusion. It says, either in words or

without them, that it is good for life to come to its appointed end, for the body to

return to dust and for the spirit to ascend to the Father, through the mercy of

our Lord, Jesus Christ.

A silent death may speak with more eloquent peace than a death

punctuated by vivid expressions. A lonely death, a tragic death, may yet have

more to say of the peace and mercy of Christ than many another comfortable

death.

For the eloquence of death is the eloquence of human poverty coming face

to face with the riches of divine mercy. The more we are aware that our poverty

is supremely great, the greater will be the meaning of our death: and the greater

its poverty. For the saints are those who wanted to be poorest in life, and who,

above all else, exulted in the supreme poverty of death.