Sixth Sunset: Death



My dear friends with this last sunset the night is upon us. The dimming of the sun from the temptations and through the betrayal, the agony, the sentence, and the solitude; we arrive to the plenitude of the night with death. If we want to synthesized all our fears like fear to pain and suffering, fear to weakness and sickness, fear to age and lose, we can see that all of them have their origin in our fear to die.

Fear of death. Where that comes from? Or better, why do we fear death? Perhaps, because it is unknown what happens after it. But a more concrete reason maybe it is because we don’t want to leave everything behind: family and friends, things and business. We don’t want to go alone to the cemetery.

In my childhood imagination, I remember asking: what section of the casket is used to store the food? Or where in the coffin is the bathroom? Questions like those came up frequently after many funerals in Ituango where my grandparents were the proud custodians of the parish cemetery key. It was fascinated. I felt like if death in the town was owned and controlled by my family.

There can be added to my boyhood questionnaire observations like the ones we used to make on the tombs: we judged them by the amount of flowers and decorations they had. A simple tomb without anything meant forgotten dead person while an elaborate mausoleum meant a very fortunate well remembered dead person. However, those observations were not so original. I found out recently visiting the catacombs and underground necropolis in Rome that the Romans also thought the same things. There we can compare the pagan tombs like in a contest for exuberance. It makes sense since the place of the death was the seen as the final resting place for eternity. By contrast, we saw the simple Christians tombs with nothing calling the attention but raw dirt. Their tombs are just temporary waiting places, like forgotten a la Ituango. It seems then that a reason to fear death is that we will be forgotten alone.

Let us move then from an ephemeral reason to fear death to a transcendental one. We learn in Christian doctrine that we may run to one of two destinies: heaven or hell; in other words, salvation or everlasting damnation.  It is a preoccupation that only happens in the level of faith. In fact, St Teresa used to pray: ‘it does not move me Lord to love you neither your promised heaven nor the hell so feared.’ It is another reason to fear death based on the main preoccupation of not knowing what happens to us after death. The difference is that here the fear to die does not come from a materialistic foundation but from a kind of inferiority complex and insecurity about faith.

After being confronted during Lent by the lives and testimonies of the martyrs visiting the stational churches, I can say that they, the martyrs, understood well their faith to the point of placing their love for God above their lives. They did it with such radicalism because it was the only way to give literally their lives for Christ, their rock, savior and Lord.  The martyrs were holy men and women that not only professed a faith but that embodied it with the sacrifices of their own bodies. They found all the encouragement on the cross and death of Jesus for whom they also died. But they died, perhaps with much pain, but definitely fearless because they all knew deep down what their final destiny was: a share in God’s glory.

But where did Jesus find his support? Who did encourage him to descend to the complete darkness of death? It certainly was a very foreign situation for God who is only life. However, he went down there to illuminate it with his presence to claim it for him.

Dear friends, why do we fear to die? There is not room for a Christian to fear death because we now know what happens after we die. We go through a state known to God. We cross the gate’s threshold of the cemetery whose key are in God’s house. The family has control over death and power over it. God himself claims death by assuming it. There is nothing to fear.  This should be a good criterion to evaluate the radicalism of our faith. Perhaps, when I stop fearing death is because I am ready and affirmed by my faith. But, when? I can be from now on!

Saturday of the Fifth Week of Lent at St John in the Latin Gate

A little ways from the gate after which it takes its name, the old foundation of St. John at the Latin Gate commemorates the attempt to execute St. John the Apostle by boiling him alive in a pot of oil.  According to tradition, he survived the attempt unscathed and was sent instead into exile on Patmos, where he received the visions that he later recorded as the book of Revelation.

As can be deduced from first sight of this church, it is very old.  Archeological evidence points to a foundation somewhat before the year 550.  A liturgical celebration of the event here, with the same title as the church, began to be held in 683.  This is traditionally commemorated on 6 May. 

A small round oratory on the main road marks the exact location of the attempted martyrdom (From: Procedamus in Pacem, PNAC).

Friday of the Fifth Week of Lent at St Stephen in Caelian Hill

The peaceful churchyard provides a welcome respite from the busy streets outside as we approach the church of St. Stephen on the Caelian Hill.  As the shape of the basilica materializes through the pines, we will likely be struck by its unusual shape, for St. Stephen’s is one of the three ancient round churches remaining in Rome, although time has obscured the original ground plan.  The design of this church is thought to have been inspired by the shrine built by the Emperor Constantine over the tomb of Christ in Jerusalem, and circular plans were often used for the shrines built over the tombs of martyrs, particularly in the Eastern Roman Empire.  This church, built on the site of a Roman military camp, dates from the pontificate of Pope Simplicius I (r. 468-483), being further decorated early in the following century.  Although there was no tomb here, the design would call that connotation to mind for the people at the time, appropriate for a church placed under the patronage of St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, whose supreme witness is recorded in the seventh chapter of the Acts of the Apostles.  This original church consisted of a circular sanctuary with a concentric aisle, with four projecting chapels connected by walls forming the outermost ring (From: Procedamus in Pacem, PNAC).

Thursday of the Fifth Week of Lent at St Apollinaris

St. Apollinaris, the founding bishop of the see of Ravenna, may have been born near Antioch in Syria, though this is uncertain.  He is recorded as having been the first bishop of Ravenna and persisted in his ministry there despite being physically beaten many times, sometimes almost to the point of death.  He finally died after one such attack in Classe, a suburb of Ravenna.  While the exact date of his death is unknown, some hypothesize that it took place under Septimus Severus, at the turn of the third century.  The first record of a church on this site is during the pontificate of Pope Adrian I (r. 772-795), with general agreement that the church dates from the late seventh or early eighth century.  Previously, this was the site of the Baths of Nero and Alexander and the administration of the marble quarries during the imperial period.  The dedication to St. Apollinaris may come from the fact that Rome was under Byzantine control at the time, with the administration based in Ravenna.  It is thought that Basilian monks were the first in residence here (From: Procedamus in Pacem, PNAC). 

Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Lent atSt Marcellus

As he lay dying in the stables to which he had been condemned to labor, the aged Pope Marcellus, I would hardly have imagined that this church in his name would one day stand on this site.  Elected in 308, he was faced almost immediately with the issue of the re-admittance to communion of those who had denied the faith in the persecutions, to which issue he responded by upholding the traditional period of penance.  Arrested some months later, he was made to work in the imperial stables just off of the main road which is now the Via del Corso.  Some traditions say that this had been the location of an oratory consecrated by him, turned into stables by the Romans to humiliate him and the Church.  After suffering in the difficult labor, he would die shortly thereafter.  In the late fourth and early fifth century, the first church was built here in his honor as part of a program to replace house churches with larger structures (From: Procedamus in Pacem, PNAC). 

Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Lent at St Mary in via Lata

If we could have stood in front of this church two millennia ago looking out on the Via del Corso, a parade of history would have passed before us: not only Caesar coming into the city after crossing the Rubicon and Constantine after his victory as Milvian Bridge, but also a continuous stream of ordinary folk, among whom may well have been the great Apostle to the Gentiles, St. Paul.  Tradition holds that he stayed here for part of his time in Rome.  Archeologists have found remains dating back to the first century A.D. beneath the church, possibly being part of the actual house in which St. Paul stayed.  The original church had the opposite orientation as the current one, with the sanctuary being closer to the Via del Corso, also known as the Via Lata or “wide street” because this was one of the largest streets in the city at the time.  Around this time, this church became used for the stational Mass of today, as the assigned station, St. Cyricaus, had by then fallen into ruin (From: Procedamus in Pacem, PNAC).

Monday of the fifth Week of Lent at St Chysogonus

Although one would never suspect it approaching this basilica, which sits along the side of a busy city street, this location has a strong claim to being the site of the oldest purpose-built church in Rome.  It is connected with the name of Chrysogonus, a fourth century military officer martyred under Diocletian in 304 in northern Italy, near the city of Aquileia.  His cult soon became popular in Rome, with his name being included in the Roman Canon.  Soon after these persecutions ended, a large hall was constructed on this site, to which an apse was later added.  Many archeologists see this as a building intended from the start for Christian worship, apparently built even before the Edict of Milan.  Later in the fourth century, further provision for liturgical functions was made, a sign of the increasing level of comfort that Roman Christians felt about publicly expressing their faith. (From: Procedamus in Pacem, PNAC)