Dying, As A Franciscan: Approaching Our Transistus to Eternal Life, Accompanying Others on the Way to Theirs

Praised Be My Lord Through Sister Death: A Franciscan Spirituality of Dying

praiseD be my lOrD tHrOugH sister DeatH: a FranCisCan spirituality OF Dying mary petrOsky, F.m.m. When the topic for this year’s Symposium was first announced as “Dying , as a Franciscan,” Anthony Carrozzo, with whom I collaborate in The Franciscan Center for Spirituality and Spiritual Direction, commented to me, “I didn’t know that Franciscans died any differently than anyone else!” Anthony likes to tease, but I also took this as a challenge in my presentation. Is there a difference for Franciscans? Should there be a difference? And what would that difference be, not just in death, but more importantly in the life which preceded death. While the process of dying, physically, emotionally, and intellectually is a universal phenomenon, the experience of dying can be and is most individual. I believe that much of the individuality of the experience can be shaped, nurtured and deeply affected by one’s spirituality. Do we, or can we as Franciscans find insights into dying from Francis’s life and from his death? Francis called her Sister Death. I haven’t come to fully understand why the word death (in Italian) is feminized, but on further reflection, it became clearer to me that Francis, in calling her Sister Death, revealed his sensitivity to insights from a feminine worldview. I believe Francis saw death as giving birth to new life! Death is a passage – a passage through a “birth canal” which is sometimes difficult and painful . And most often the passage is not achieved without a great amount of pain. That birth canal is our life on earth, and especially those last moments of physical life before entering into eternal life. For that “final push” into eternal life, we pray that Jesus, or Mary, or Francis, or Clare, will be there to encourage us to Push! How many “midwives” Mary Petrosky 32 have aided us along our passage? How much more feminine in thought could that be? You may find some richness in that visualization as you reflect more on death and of those “midwives” in your own life. Picture them and name them for yourselves. We preach that death is a passing from one form of life into another form – eternal life with God (whatever that means). Nobody has come back to tell us what that is. I’m not privy to what that is either but I want to share what I have come to believe is important. It is what I have discovered in my own journey and reflections on death as I approach that moment of ecstatic encounter, which I believe in by faith alone. In my experience with our sisters in the retirement community, in casual conversations, I quickly learned that the approach to dying could be placed on a continuum beginning with: “I want everything to be done that can be done” to an accepting “Please don’t prevent me from dying.” There are endless possible stages between those two pillars. What are your thoughts on just the physical aspects of dying? Have you thought about your Living Will? Some of our sisters have almost had to be forced to fill in a form and make some decisions about their wishes in readiness for when serious illness is diagnosed. What are we afraid of? The pain, the process, of course, the great unknown of that, can be frightening. But is there something else, something related to our face-to-face encounter with the God who created us, called us to serve him in this life as a Franciscan, but firstly, and always, as a struggling human being? That along with one’s spiritual preparations will be the gristle and the grind of today’s input. My personal insight into death has been fed and enriched by a study and reflection on how Francis came to prepare for and to welcome Sister Death. We Franciscans make a big thing of Francis’s death, celebrating it yearly with the Transitus ceremony. Maybe it is a salutary thing for us to look at, recalling Paul’s words: Just as it is appointed that human beings die once, and after this the judgment (Heb 9:27). The date of death itself is rarely, if ever, known much in advance. But often there are warning signs and harbingers of impending (no, Praised Be my lord THrougH sisTer deaTH 33 not doom) but of a momentous event – one’s own death...