~uddenl~ tlt's ~aste't by Daniel A. Lord, S. J. THE QUEEN'S WORK 3115 South Grand Boulevard St. Lou is 18 , Missou ri That in Your Soul T here May Be the Springtime of Grace and Easter's Glad Alleluia is the sincere good wish of Printed with permission of Ecclesiastical Authority Copyright 1949 THE QUEEN'S WORK, Inc. Printed in U. S . A. ~udde",l~ !It' s ~aste" By Daniel A. Lord, S.J. ClHIS IS A BOOKLET of happiness and hope. Yet, as happens often enough in life, it mus't start against a background dark and stormy. Light has a way of shining brightest when the room has been dark; the sunrise can be most beautiful after a moonless night. c4LMOST FROM THE DAWN of his- tory men have lived under a cloud of fear. Fear, threatening shadow of an ad- vancing enemy, has been man's con- stant companion. Indeed, as is charac- teristic of shadows, the brighter the day-or the age-the clearer has been the shape of the shadow of fear. Men and women have feared the approach of sickness. They have fran- tically clutched their possessions as the shadow of poverty's black hand reached out to deprive them. In times of peace they have dreaded the far-off thunder of war's approaching storm cloud. They have apprehensively watched the eyes of friends for the gathering film of boredom, distrust, suspicion, dislike. They have been 5 terrified by the enemies they knew and dreamed up enemies who bore no names and had no recognizable features. They have feared the known and dreaded the unknown. Summer days have been blackened by fear 's pursuing shadow. The opaque darkness of the night has been made more terrible by fear's silent footfall. Apparently no hero however brave has totally escaped the dogging foot - steps of fear. Certainly the saints have needed to call upon their deepest faith and clearest hope to conquer that re- lentless foe of man. Yet it would seem that all fears are really one fear-the fear of death. That great, overwhelming, brooding fear spawns all other fears. For every . other fear, whether the fear of sick- ness or poverty, the fear of losing friends or winning hate, the fear of loneliness, the fear of sin, is a fore- shadowing of that ultimate and final fear, the fear of death itself. We dread to lose the other things because they are like preludes to the total loss in death. We find in poverty or sickness or friendlessness or sin a foretaste of death, perhaps a direct opportunity for the coming of death. 6 ~ 0 THE RICH MAN CLUTCHES his money in the frantic certainty that he will someday lose it all through death and in the futile fiction that as long as he possesses it he can buy off the relentless reaper. The bridegroom looks into his bride's eyes and swears that his love will be deathless . . . while in the moment of most intense love he has the frighten- ing certainty that someday death will cut them apart. The athlete dreads the first faint sigh of skipping pulse or paling cheek. The beauty searches the mirror for the first signs of approaching death in the wrinkles around her eyes. The young run breathlessly, know- ing that in the end the slow, steady stride of death will overtake them. The strong struggle to retain their strength, knowing that they will one day · meet the wrestler before whom they will fall for the last time. ~EATH REMAINS IN HISTORY and to the human race the plainest fact and the most terrible. Those tall gladioli that wither on the banquet table are just as much symbol of the ending of life's feast as was the ancient skull -that marked Egyptian feasts . 7 The fall of the House of Usher is merely external sign that the Ushers of the world must also fall. Nations that rise to vigorous strength and beauty carry within them the root causes of their ultimate collapse. Their destiny is a tomb in the pages of an encyclopedia. And men and women at the very instant of their birth begin to die . fJODAY, like every age in history, we have our special fear. We tremble in the shadow cast by the brightest light ever struck by human genius-the appalling blaze of the atomic bomb. We have seen how, a fter that blistering blaze has died away, there rises a shadow so terrible that cities wither in its deadly night- shade, and houses melt to welded rub- ble, and tens of thousands of men fall like leaves under the lava of a spout- ing volcano-and sickness utterly with- out cure rides the breezes of the next decade as death comes astride his newest charger, the radioactive waves. We fear, we who live in history's most amazingly resourceful age, the inventions we have created, the wars that only we can evoke, the next de- pression caused by the very skills that aim at labor-saving, work-destroying machines, the godless enemies who 8 grew strong out of our own loss of faith in God and our contempt for the protective laws He has given. We fear the enemies of Christ be- cause so many of us are no longer Christ's friends and followers. Yet in Christ and only in Christ is the ending of man's ugliest haunting ghost, the death of fear itself. For Christ came for that purpose, to destroy our greatest fear, the fear of death. \WHEN JESUS WAS ASKED who He was, He answered in words that were the greatest possible reassurance to His followers: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life." His explanation of His mission, His platform, His major objective, was pre- cisely what human hearts craved and what no other leader had ever been able to give: "I am come that they may have life and may have it more abundantly." The more abundant life ... How amazingly modern is that need! How wonderfully reassuring is that promise to fearful, death-surrounded mankind! 9 To confirm His words with deeds, He performed miracles that were iike well- directed blows at our major fears . From His hands came the never-ending gift of life. Both His promises and His works were deeply, powerfully re- assuring. cJl.E TOUCHED DEAD LIMBS, and they leaped with fresh , eager life. He laid merciful hands upon eyes long dead to light, and they opened to look upon the earth and the sky' and the faces of loved ones never before beheld. He spoke divine mercy over dead souls, and they woke from the death • of sin to the life of grace. He took the limp hand of the dead son and gave him back in the vigor of young manhood to the widowed mother, who in grief was following him to the grave. He summoned from the tomb of swift decay the dead, shrouded body of His friend Lazarus, and Lazarus walked forth into life. ClHEN CAME the terrible disappoint- ment of Good Friday. Christ Himself fell before the always resistless enemy, death. 10 Over the heavens swept the terrify- ing shadows of Good Friday's storm. Over the hearts of those who stood on Calvary swept the brutal shadow of the ancient fear. Was there perhaps less of taunt and more of hope in that apparently cyni- cal challenge from beneath the cross, "He saved others; Himself he cannot save"? Was there a twisted mixture of hope at least in the secret souls of the simpler people as they shouted, " If thou be the Son of God, come down - from the cross"? Was there almost a frantic appeal from the people to the Father to save this man who had promised life to all and given life miraculously to many, this man who had said that He was the Son of God? .:::;Jl;(ORE HUNG ON THE BALANCE of the cross than just the life and death of a single man, Jesus of Nazareth called King of the Jews. Suspended between heaven and earth was the hope of all mankind balanced against the age-old oppres- sive, paralyzing fear of death. In Jesus the people had sensed the champion who would meet death in the lists and throw him from his skeletoned charger. 11 Was He too to fall beneath the blows of death's leveled lance? They had seen in Him the one man in history who had defied death. He had showered life about Him with a divine prodigality. He had called Him- self life itself and without reservation had promised life to those who ac- cepted Him and His mission. He had fed the body with miracu- lous, life-giving food, striking at the desperate fear of hunger. He had fed other thousands with truth, dispelling the parallel fear of ignorance and lies. He had mercifully forgiven sin, driving from the soul the fear of sin and the dread of the demons who through sin became the cruel masters of the soul. He had cured the sick, banishing the fear of sickness. He had promised a treasure that rust could not corrode or moth consume or thief pilfer, thus striking at the fear of want. He had lifted the dead to life, by these miracles destroying the very root of all fear. "I am the resurrection and the life," He cried, in a glad. assurance that has made the funerals of His faithful followers totally different from those of others who come to the gates of death. 12 c:;IfND NOW . . . Tesus hung upon the cross, over which hung the storm clouds that rumbled with earth-shak- ing fear. The crowd stood watching more anxiously than they themselves knew. They were literally on tiptoe at this crucial moment in their hopes. What would happen to this giver of life? Would the death He had conquered for others now conquer even Him? Over them, as happens at all execu- tions, swept the nauseating fear of death. They watched greedily. Deep within them was the hope that in the end the execution would fail com- pletely. He would suddenly leave the cross, and they would see this cham- pion do what no other man had ever done-clefy and conquer the age-old enemy, death. Or must He too die? Did He too have deep in His soul the fear of death? CHRIST THE MAN, like ourselves in all things save sin, had known that fear of death. He had willed in obedience to His Father's command to die as all men must die. But He had dreaded death, as all men dread that enemy. Had they been with Him the night before, they would have seen Him 13 pass through the very fear 'of death that has contracted human hearts since Adam-and worse than any fear that they could ever feel. For He had looked into the brutal eyes of death, had wrestled to a final fall with man's enemy until He lay gasping in a sweat of blood. Incredibly He seemed to beg His Father to spare Him the horrible or- deaL if such was His Father's will . But He knew that the will of His Father was inexorable and that He would rise from His prayer to meet the oncoming death in a traitor's kiss and the hedge of arresting lances. He lay as if dead upon the blood-soaked earth.