Musings on Death and Sainthood

I have always been fascinated with obituaries, where the dead’s personal histories are formalistically repeated. I have mentioned in these pages before about how the Greeks never wrote personal histories but asked just one question of the dead. Did the decedent have passion? I still believe in the standard formula but an obituary is not complete unless it has answered that question. In the many I have read most do and it helps to bring that person back to life for a few additional minutes. 

I would not say I am obsessed with graveyards and cemeteries but anytime I have a little time and am near one I take a walk down the corridors of tombstones. Sometimes I read the inscriptions or epitaphs to try to get a feel for those who rest beneath my feet. My fascination with graveyards is a result of my lifelong study of history because each person buried there had their own personal life story. Simple gravestones get people to contemplate their own deaths. Some people like to carve meaningful phrases on their grave markers as a way of having people remember them after death or in my case provide them with a posthumous laugh. 

I have read Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in County Church Yard several times. His classic has a wide appeal in that his sentiments apply to everyone from the town, from its political leaders, doctors, lawyers to its common people and by proxy to each one of us. I also love the setting and the mood, where the poet says, There is a serious stillness hanging in the air… and where the sad owl is complaining to the moon about anything that, wandering around her secret nest in the tower disturbs her longstanding lonely rule over the area.

The poet admonishes the rich and the proud for having mocked the joys of the simple people, who are now buried with them because in the end no matter how ambitious or rich one may be, or what family coat of arms might signify, death waits. Even the most glorious lives end in death. Urns and elaborate tombstones cannot call the dead person’s breath back into their body.

The poet also indulges in supposition as to what great things might have been done had the dead lived longer. From a religious standpoint I wonder how many went to heaven, purgatory or how many may have lost their souls. Gray’s focus on the many things that the cemetery’s inhabitants will never hear or see again evokes an innate sadness. I felt this when I read of such things as a hunter’s horn, and other sounds that will no longer wake the dead from their humble resting places…or their fireplaces that will no longer burn for these dead people.

Gray’s Elegy muses about the many kinds of lives that were snuffed out too soon. The darkness that descends over the cemetery at night is a bleak sentiment that captures this sense of a looming, inescapable mortality. Standing in the graveyard as the light fades, the poet sees death everywhere as if it suddenly envelops the world itself. It becomes immediately clear that the poem is not just a lament for everyone who is buried there but extends to all generations in the future. The blunt fact is that death comes for us all, the rich, the poor and the speaker himself.

After reading obituaries and visiting cemeteries, it would be impossible for me not to think about what happens after death. I believe in the Church teachings that to enter the kingdom of Heaven we must be saints in the full meaning of the word. There are many paths to that eternal goal, of which dying for the faith is just one of them. As I wrote in my first essay about president-elect Donald Trump and his sufferings in his fight for freedom was likened to the work of sainthood.

One might consider John15:13, Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay one’s life for his friends. Personally, I believe that friends limits this supreme sacrifice. Take the case of the Polish Catholic priest, Maximillian Kolbe who took the place of a fellow prisoner in Auschwitz. For this act of sacrifice, he was canonized in 1982. 

Kolbe’s story came to mind when I read a movie review in the Georgia Bulletin, the publication of the Archdiocese of Atlanta about the life of the theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. one of the best-known Christians of the 20th century. I think their stories have many similarities but Bonhoeffer’s sacrifice was much more indirect and had a broader application, since it was connected with an act of violence. While he was a pacificist, his involvement in the conspiracy to kill Hitler seems to contradict his sainthood, though the teachings on self-defense might apply here.

The title of the recent film, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy is very familiar to me. It is based on the book of the same name, written by Eric Metaxes in 2010. I interviewed the author shortly after the book came out. If memory serves me, I did not solicit the book as I have done with most of my interviews. The volume was over 700 pages. But its title intrigued me so I booked Metaxes for an hour interview. Let’s just say it was not my finest hour on the air.

Though Reverend Bonhoeffer was also involved in the plot to kill Hitler, the word assassin, while it appears in the film’s review is not in the title. So, for my first question I asked the author if there were not an implicit contradiction in the words Pastor, Martyr and Spy? Metaxas immediately jumped on the defensive by offering me the Biblical Joshua from the battle of Jerico fame in retort. I responded that Joshua was not a pastor or martyr but a soldier. He shot back, well if you had read the book…Busted! 

In all the 200 interviews I have conducted, this was the first and last that I failed to read the book. To this day, I believe my question is still a valid one. From that point I just let him pontificate until my hour of humble pie was over. I did invite him back for two more interviews on his subsequent books, which I did read. I chose not to challenge him in those interviews.

Bonhoeffer was not a Catholic but from his life, I trust he should have been. In the aforementioned review, OSV News’ Kurt Jensen stated that eyewitness accounts of Bonhoeffer’s holiness might have been the basis for his canonization had he been a Catholic. He definitely had the stuff of sainthood in his writings and most of his life. 

Also, in this review’ Bonhoeffer’s friend and his first biographer, Rev. Eberhard Bethage, once told reporters Americans make him a saint without seeing him as a man who had a dirty job to do. This was of course the assassination attempt on Adolph Hitler, which raises all sorts of questions about his sainthood. Bethage also states, Yes, he is a modern saint. But it has little to do with the old idea of sanctity and purity. He was a man of action, whose sharp theological insights and Christian responsibility compelled him to act decisively in the world of dirt, difficulty and danger.

The film’s writer/director Todd Komarnicki was quoted in John Kennedy’s essay for Religion & Liberty Online, entitled The Pastor who Looked Evil in the Face, as having said that Bonhoeffer was kind of on the Mount Rushmore of Christianity. Komarnicki nearly single-handedly rescued the film project that was not worthy of its subject. He infused the script with more of the pastor’s inspirational qualities, such as his heroism in the face of pure evil. 

Komarnicki then switched his focus to the dark night of the soul that plagued the pastor, especially with regard to his active role in the attempted assassination of Hitler that cost him his life. It is believed that the pastor’s peace ethic, radically changed when he saw the films of carnage from the death camps. 

Because he was from a prominent family, Bonhoeffer had used his family connections to join the Abwehr, a German counter-intelligence agency. Contradictory to its main function, the Abwehr was a hotbed of anti-Nazi activity. Bonhoeffer worked as a courier, coordinating information on the plans to kill Hitler. 

In the aftermath of the failed attempt on the Fuhrer’s life on July 20, 1944, Bonhoeffer was arrested, along with former Abwehr chief, Wilhelm Canaris and several other members of the agency who were also condemned to death. On the eve of his execution, Bonhoeffer led an ecumenical communion service for a small group of prisoners using crumbs of stale bread on which they had been subsisting. Admiral Canaris was hanged with Bonhoeffer on April 9, 1945.

Saints have always been important to Catholic religious practices. We are encouraged to pray to them to intercede with God and also serve as models of sanctity. In the old Church, parents were encouraged to name their children after saints, though most families probably chose family names, like Uncle Almond or Aunt Frieda. I was named William after my paternal grandfather. Thank goodness there are five saints who share my name. My dad, who was not a Catholic, wanted me to be named Adam, after him. This idea was pregnant with several opportunities for adolescent teasing. Thanks to my late wife, our children are Mark, Matthew, both apostles and Michelle, which is a derivative of Michael, the Archangel. 

Of my four grandchildren, the three girls are Claire, Katherine and my third one, Olivia. There is a Virgin-martyr St. Olivia of Palermo, Sicily. When Tyler was baptized, I remember the deacon said that maybe my grandson would be the first St. Tyler. I have two great-grandchildren now. There is no official Tucker or Hadley in the list of saints I consulted but I did find a St. George Tucker, an 19th century American law professor and Hadley the Angel. (She may have been an apocryphal angel from the times of Oliver Cromwell.)  

I chose Matthew for my confirmation name though I never had any real spiritual connection with him. I did have to explain to our priest why I chose him. The best thing I could think of was that he had been an Apostle. The saint whom I pray to the most is St. Anthony, the Patron Saint of lost items. He has found my reading glasses 1,000 times.

If I could do it over again, I would have chosen Thomas, in honor of St Thomas More. He served King Henry VIII as his Lord High Chancellor. More was a very close friend of the king. Their friendship has been dramatized in a Broadway Play and a feature film, A Man for All Seasons, starring Paul Scofield in both renditions. The actor skillfully captured the complex personality of the saint who was a lawyer, devout Catholic, a faithful family man, a good friend, as well as a loyal subject to his king. He had a disarming wit, as subtle as a pat on the shoulder. 

Sir Thomas was also a scholar and social philosopher, known especially for his work of satirical fiction, Utopia, published in 1516. He was also a lay theologian and noted Renaissance Man. His friend Erasmus said More was more pure than any snow…a genius as such as England never had and never will again have. Catholic convert G.K. Chesterton once wrote: the mind of More was like a diamond that a tyrant threw in a ditch because he could not break it.

Most of us go through some kind of crisis that makes us choose from among many different priorities. More’s was one of the most difficult I have ever read about. When King Henry wished to have his marriage to Catherine of Aragon annulled, ostensibly because of her inability to give Henry the son he need to continue his dynastic line, he ran afoul of the Catholic Church and Pope Clement VII.

As a result of this standoff, Henry, who had once received the high order as a Defender of the Faith, started the English Reformation and named himself, the Supreme Head of the Church of England. He dissolved the country’s convents and monasteries for their rich lands and was promptly excommunicated from the Catholic Church by the pope.

More had always opposed the Protestant Revolution, writing polemics against the theology of Martin Luther and other protestant luminaries. His conscience dictated he oppose his friend’s schism. In turn, the king demanded all of his officials, including More, take The Oath of Supremacy. More could not sign it because it included a repudiation of Papal Supremacy. He knew of the consequences of his opposition to his best friend. 

What I like most about More was that he did not just offer his life to his king. He was more like most of us in this situation. He used his legal mind to its full extent to dance around his refusal to sign the Oath. But finally, he was backed into a corner that had no escape. More was found guilty of treason and taken to the Tower of London. One of his last statements was reputed to have been, I die the King’s good servant, and God’s first.

I also remember another quote from one of my literature textbooks in high school. More had the saintly quality of responding to his many difficulties with humor and his habitual cheerfulness. He calmed his nervous executioner, moments before his death by saying Cheer up man, and don’t mind doing your job. My neck is very short so see you aim straight. You don’t want to spoil your reputation!

As if that was not enough, before the fatal blow, More cried: Stop, I must put my beard aside. It would be a shame to chop it off. After all my poor beard is not accused of treason. If I did not know better, it sounds as if More were auditioning for role in a Comedy Club in Heaven, where he could be billed with St. Lawrence of the famous gridiron and patron saint of comedians. Imagine all the good lawyer jokes St. Thomas could tell.