You Are Going to Die!

[00:00:16] Death is the one thing none of us can escape. [00:00:20] It's also the one thing that should really shape our lives more than anything. Yet we ignore it all the time. [00:00:26] Why a meditation on death is actually a good thing can help us live better lives. That's what we're going to talk about today on crisis point home. Eric Samit's your host, energy for Crisis magazine. Before we get started, want to encourage people to smash that, like, button, subscribe to the channel. Don't ignore that, like, button like you ignore death. Instead, go ahead and hit that, like, button, subscribe to the channel. Let other people know about it. Follow us on social media at Crisis mag. Also, you can get our eternity. [00:00:54] Get our emails with our articles sent right to your inbox. Just go to crisismagazine.com and put in your email address, and we'll send you an article each morning. We promise not to spam you, at least not too much. Okay, so, first of all, before I get started, today is September 17, which is the thesis of the holy stigmata of St. Francis. As you might be able to tell from the statue behind me of St. Francis embracing the crucified Christ. I have a real devotion to St. Francis, particularly the devotion to the stigmata. And I'm very excited to say that this week, actually, the next podcast, our plan is to talk to somebody about stigmata and the stigmatists like Padre Pio, Teresa Newman, St. Francis, people like that, because I think it's a fascinating, a mysterious topic, and I think it tells us something about, you know, about our lord and about how to follow him. And so I just encourage people to, you know, check that out. St. Francis, pray for us. [00:01:57] Okay, so today's podcast is not going to be like probably any podcast I've done before. I am. To say I am reserved about my personal life is probably the understatement of the year. I come from english stock, and as you probably know, people who are from England, they don't, like, talk about their personal life. I'm not going to get that detailed. Don't worry. This is nothing. Me lying on the couch, a therapy session. But it's probably more personal. I normally do because I'm talking about death, particularly how death has kind of, uh, been on my mind a lot lately due to personal circumstances. And, uh, I kind of expect this to be my lowest, uh, watched episode of the year. I don't expect a lot, a big audience for this one, because, like I said, death is ignored. We don't like to think about, we don't like to talk about it. We'd rather talk about the latest distraction, whatever that might be, whether it's in the church or in the political realm or just simply entertainment or whatever. [00:02:58] Thinking about something like death is something that we try to avoid, we try to ignore. But I haven't been able to lately. So I wanted to do a podcast about this. And it really is three different situations that have occurred recently for me that may, that's really made on my mind. The first one is, okay, so let me give a backstory to the first person I'm going to talk about here. When I first became Catholic, I graduated from college just a couple months after I became Catholic. And at one point I needed somewhere. I was going to go back to school soon, but I needed something to do for a few months. And a friend of mine, who ended up being the best man at my wedding, a friend of mine, invited me to come live with his family. [00:03:43] He was the oldest in his family, lived in his family a few months, and worked for his dad, which was a great opportunity for me, just because I needed some work, I needed something temporary, and this would work out. And this gave me also a room and board. And so it was a great situation, but it was far greater than I ever expected because I had, like I said, I had just become Catholic a few months before. This is 1993. [00:04:08] And so I didn't really know. All converts will tell you this, that you become Catholic and you don't realize till later how ignorant you were of Catholicism. Not that you don't know the basics of catechesis. You know, you know what the church teaches about purgatory or the Blessed Virgin Mary or something like that. You know about mass, you know about all that stuff. You learned that in RCI or you knew it beforehand, but you don't know how to live as a Catholic. You don't really know, like, the ins and outs. Okay, how do I spend my day as a Catholic? What do I do? Like, what do I do different? [00:04:39] Well, the beautiful thing about this was the family I stay with was a Catholic, a very, very strong, devout catholic family. [00:04:49] And so they had, I think, six kids. Is that right? If I got that wrong, that's embarrassing. And like I said, my friend was the oldest, so they had a number of younger kids in the house still. [00:05:00] And so for me, this was an opportunity to witness how a catholic family, devout catholic family, lives. I wanted this. I was, at this point, dating my soon to be fiance and then even sooner to be wife. [00:05:16] And so I really wanted to kind of know, how does a devout catholic family live? Like I grew up as a Protestant, we lived a certain way, but I wanted to know how this was. And so, sure enough, I got to see it firsthand. I got to live it out. I saw how they prayed the rosary as a family, how they pray before meals, how they conducted themselves, how. But mostly my eyes as a man who would eventually be a husband and a father. I was looking at the dad. [00:05:44] Daniel Judge was the man's name. Mister judge, I call him, of course. [00:05:49] And I watched him. I don't think I realized how much I was watching, but I watched him to see, okay, how is it that catholic men, catholic husbands, catholic fathers, how do they live? [00:06:01] And I watched him day in, day out, and it was just. And I did not realize what a grace God had given me because he basically gave me, like, the best example I could have. I mean, this wasn't some guy who was just kind of going through the motions. This wasn't some guy who was, like, angry about the church all the time like that. This was a man who lived a holy life as a husband and father and as a worker. He had his own business. He supported his family as a protector, he was a provider. He was a priest of the family, so to speak. And I gotta witness that every day. Well, he passed away. Mister judge passed away last month. And it really, you know, had an impact on me. My wife. My wife, by the way, she ended up living with them a few months later. She lived with them for a couple months as well. And actually, I guess it was a year and a half later because she lived with him right before we got married. And so she got to watch Misses judge and the family they live. So it was just such a grace that I was given. And so when I found out that Mister judge was, he's been ill for a while, and so I kind of knew. We knew it was coming soon, and so just, we were praying for him, of course, but just hearing from his family about how he died, how he was constantly focused on Christ in his last months, he wanted to talk about, you know, Jesus. He wanted to focus on that, that just the good and holy death he lived, that he died the way he lived. And that was a real lesson, a reminder to me that you die, how you live. Deathbed conversions are actually very rare. [00:07:39] Praise be God when they happen, but the way you live is going to be the way you die. The way you die is the way that you lived. And he lived a good and holy life close to our Lord. Close to the sacraments, faithfully catholic. And that's how he died. [00:07:57] And I thought to myself, that's. That's. I mean, just like, I wanted to be like him. And to be honest, I told him this. I wrote a letter to him. I wasn't able to see him, unfortunately, because he's kind of far away, and I was taking care of my mom, which I'll talk about in a second. But I wrote to him. I told him basically, to this day, I still ask myself, as a father, as a husband, you know, what would Mister Judge do? I know we're just, what would Jesus do? But this is how I looked at, like, okay, what would he do? How would he live? How would he make these decisions? And so watching, you know, hearing about how he died also was just another example for me of, okay, how do I want. I want to go out like he went out. He was surrounded by his family, who, his whole family. He's got a big catholic family, lots of grandchildren now, all faithfully catholic, all living out. I mean, this is what we want, right? Right, parents. I mean, right, dads, moms. I mean, this is what we want. And he had it. Now, he wasn't given it. He worked hard for it. I mean, he lived his whole life being a devout Catholic and just raising his kids, making that the most important thing. And so that really, though, gave me a lesson of, okay, that's how I want to die. I want to die like he did, you know, prepared and living, you know, not, not having regrets for. I'm sure he had regrets. We all have regrets. We're all sinners, but not like dwelling on those, but dwelling instead on Christ. [00:09:21] Now, the second death, that's the first death that I've been kind of associated with recently. The second death was far more tragic. A young girl, eight year old girl at our parish passed away in a tragic accident. [00:09:35] And she was part of a beautiful catholic family, very devout, very faithful. I knew the grandparents. That's who I was friends with, who were also in our parish, and also some of the aunts and uncles and others in the family. They were very connected to our parish, very involved. A number of the kids went to the parish and who were already married and things like that. But anyway, so she passed me in this tragic accident. And so, of course, the whole parish came together, praying for the family, praying for the young girl, praying for all involved. Uh, our pastor had a requiem mass a couple days after the death. Not. Not the mass of burial, you know, can connect with funeral, but just a requiem mass that people could go to. And so we went to that. A lot of people were at that. And then we went to the mass burial, which was a solemn high mass requiem mass, and it was packed. I mean, our church seats 900, something like that is probably 7800 people at least, maybe more, I don't know. [00:10:34] And it was just a, you know, it was obviously very tragic, very sad, but it was also very beautiful. It was just very beautiful. I mean, first of all, I just kind of aside, I had never been to a full, like, solemn high requiem mass connected to a funeral. Like, I've been to requiem masses, where it was a requiem mass force my, who had passed away maybe a year ago or something like that, but not one where it was actually connected to the funeral, but like, I don't think I'd ever been to a solemn high requiem mass, but it was just so beautiful. Like, the church, in her wisdom, understands the grief and the sorrow that people go through when somebody dies. Even in a situation where you are confident the person is in heaven or will be in heaven, there's just always a sorrow and a grief that we have. And the requiem mass is very much connected to us and understands it's the prayers that are said throughout it. The music. Music was beautiful. We have a wonderful choir director who's just, you know, I mean, just awesome. And everything about it was just very much in line with what you would expect, what you would hope for. The homily was literally the most phenomenal homily I've ever heard in my life. [00:11:57] And so it just was something that was very powerful, really put death in front of our faces, that it can happen to anybody. Like I said, mister Judge, when he passed away, he reminded me this is like an ideal death because he was ready. He had his family with him. He was prepared, he had time. [00:12:17] But when Lil Emma Grace died, this, of course, was sudden. It was an accident, tragic. And it reminded me every one of us. When you wake up in the morning, you need to remember you. Today could be the day. Today could be the day you die. If an eight year old girl, it could happen to her, it could happen to you as well. It could happen to me. And so you need to be prepared beautifully. Little Emma Grace was prepared. She wore the brown scapular. She was devoted to first Friday. She loved Jesus, so she was prepared. And that's. I mean, that's what we all need to be. And so I think that was just something about that. And I will say, I don't want to get this into a, you know, let's complain about something or whatever, but I will say it is a tragedy that the new mass does not have quite the same power in its funeral mass that I think it's called massive christian burial that the requiem mass has. There was an article written just a day or two ago. I read it. Peter Kwasniewski shared it, and I can't remember where I found it, but I read it, and it was just kind of comparing the two. [00:13:21] And it is true. The requiem massage is so powerful. If you can ask for a requiem mass for your own funeral, make sure your loved ones know that's what you want, a full, traditional requiem mass. I think it would. It not only helps you because it has more prayers for your soul, but also helps your loved ones to grieve and to, you know, experience the sorrow in union with Christ. So I think that's something we need to, um, we need to keep in mind. So that, that was the second one. Now, the third thing that's put death in mind prize, the most prominent is my own mother. Uh, she's 91. She recently turned 91, and she's, you know, she's been in great health her whole life. You don't get to 91 without being a pretty hearty person, right? And she always has been. You know, she had some health problems years ago, but then they kind of, you know, she's been fine, but recently she's had more health problems. And then in July, so two months ago, she really took a turn for the worst where we knew, okay, this is it. She's like, I don't want to go to the hospital. We respect that. We honor that. There's no need. At that point, we called in hospice. She's at home. And we were told by hospice nurses, like, okay, we're probably talking maybe two weeks, probably less like, okay. And it did look like that. [00:14:34] And so we were getting ready, made sure family members came, you know, grandchildren came and things like that, and my sister, who's the primary caregiver, and then I, you know, we spent a lot of time with her, taking care of her course, she needs 24/7 help now she's in bed, she's bedridden. [00:14:50] And then she kind of took a turn for the better. And then for a couple weeks, she was fine. Then she took a turn for the worse again. Hospice nurse, again said, okay, she's on the imminent death list. We're probably talking another week or so. [00:15:03] That was like a month ago. And so she took another turn for the better. And so now she's kind of still kind of hanging in there. And so it's been about two months when it's supposed to be less than two weeks. And during that time, I spend a few hours a day over there helping care for her. And it really, it's been a real grace, it's been a real blessing because it is just being with her, spending time with her. It's gotten a point. Now, she doesn't talk a lot. [00:15:30] She does. She's still with it. She gets confused about little things sometimes, but she's still with it. So if I'm over there for 3 hours, 5 hours, something like that, I might speak with her for maybe 15 minutes of that, just because, you know, she's mostly asleep and not able to have the energy for a full conversation. I'll tell her about my day. We'll talk about different things. But the point is that, I mean, death has been right in front of my face, upcoming death. And it has allowed me to think, like, okay, I see her lying in bed. [00:15:58] If that happens to me, probably best case scenario for me is maybe 30, 40 more years on this earth. That's probably best case. [00:16:06] And I die in bed at home like my mom is, like my dad did a few years ago. That's best case scenario. How do I want that to occur? How do, how do I want to be when I'm near death? I want, of course, be surrounded by family. I want people. I want to be prepared, though. Most importantly, I want to know. [00:16:27] I want to be like Mister Judge, clinging to Jesus. [00:16:32] And that's something, though, that it doesn't just happen. I want to repeat that again, that death is not something that just, I mean, does just happen. What I mean is how we die very much is in line with how we live. God's grace can do anything. So of course, we can have deathbed conversions. People can, and that's great. Of course, the people I'm talking to don't need a deathbed conversion. If you're listening, you're probably already a practicing Catholic. If you're a practicing Christian, I urge you to become a practicing Catholic to prepare for death. [00:17:07] But if you're practicing Catholic, that doesn't mean you're completely ready. And that's kind of what I realized was just that we really need to have death on the mind because death is a certainty. Death is something that honestly we should think about every single day. I didn't. I didn't. Most of the time I come up every once off, but, like, here I am because I will be honest. Before this, I haven't had a lot of major deaths in my family. Like, my father passed away a few years ago. Of course, that was a major one. But, like my, you know, most of my grandparents died when I was very young. Don't, don't really remember too much about them. I've been very fortunate. I haven't had any children or brothers or sisters. You know, I've had some aunts and uncles pass away. But the point is, is like, no matter what the situation is, we need to be prepared for death every single day. That's what the spiritual directors tell us. They tell us, you need to be ready. You need to think about death every single day. Not morbidly, not obsessively, but just like, yeah, okay, today could be the day. Am I ready? Am I prepared? Am I a state of grace? That's obviously the first thing you should ask yourself. Am I in a state of grace? And if you're not, get the confession. You know, I just heard a podcast the other day where a priest was talking to you saying one of the devil's favorite phrases is, do it tomorrow. Just wait till tomorrow. So if you're not in a state of grace right now, don't wait till tomorrow. Find a way to get confession. If you can't get to confession today, because there's just nothing available, find a way to get there tomorrow. But, like, first thing, like, schedule it today. [00:18:34] Don't, like, say, okay, I'll take care of that later. [00:18:38] And so, because the devil always will let you push it off, because by tomorrow, you might be thinking of something else, might not be as important in your mind. [00:18:45] So be prepared. [00:18:48] I think, though, another major thing that I kind of think we need to recognize as I do when it comes death is like recognizing how often we choose to think the goods of this world over the goods of the next. Because what death is, of course, it's that transition from this world to the next. Which one are we going to live in longer? [00:19:10] It's not even a comparison. It's like one single particle of sand on the seashore of all the earth compared to literally, like, all of the universe. When we. And you see more nagging when you compare our life here to our life in eternity. [00:19:31] And so are you. Are we always choosing the goods of this world? Are we. I mean, are we entertaining ourselves to death? And I mean, that spiritual death, are we so consumed with, like, oh, we have to make sure we do leisure over anything else. Like, I think leisure is important. Don't get me wrong, I think it's important for living a balanced, spiritual life. But if leisure, I was just, just yesterday I saw there some, I can't remember his name, David Portnoy or something like that. He was saying he should be allowed, as an adult, he should be allowed to smoke weed, watch football and eat pizza on Sundays because he was arguing against weed being illegal. And I was just thinking, like, if that's your idea of how you should spend your Sundays, you're not really an adult. You're an overgrown child. It's not that we can't be entertained, not saying you can't watch football or eat pizza sometimes. You shouldn't smoke weed, by the way. [00:20:20] But like, if that's kind of your idea of the good life, you're living a very bad life, because it's not going to, it's not going to be the good life after you die. If that's your life, if it's surrounded by pleasuring yourself, entertaining yourself, you're going to be in for a rude awakening when you die. I'm, and so we need to, like, really. And when I say we, I really do mean we. I'm talking to myself. Uh, we need to not be consumed with entertaining ourselves, with always choosing the, the easy way for everything, always doing what, what is best for us, so to speak. We should be thinking of others. We should be thinking of giving up things, the goods, this earth, for the goods of the next. And it's funny how often I've now seen a prayer similar to that since I've been thinking about this. It's something the church tells us in her prayers, but we don't always hear it. And so I think we need to. But ultimately, like, what we need to do is we need to be prepared for death. [00:21:20] We need to be prepared. And so what we need to do is we need, that means we stay close to the sacraments, particularly communion and confession. Going to communion, you know, going to communion at least once a week, if not more often, going to confession at least once a month. [00:21:38] I found this is my own experience. [00:21:42] My goal has always been to go to confession once a month for probably 20 some years now, I've been thinking, I've been trying that. But I found when I schedule it in my mind for once a month, I end up going once every few months. When I schedule it, for every week, when I think, okay, I'm just going to go every week. At this certain time, I end up going usually like maybe twice a month or something like that, because things just happen in life, you don't always make it when you want to. So if you schedule it for once a month, you end up going every once every three or four months. But if you kind of think your mind, I'm going to go every week or every other week, then you end up going about once a month or hopefully even more often. Nothing wrong with going once a week, by the way. [00:22:20] It really does give us graces. I also think we should prepare by telling your family how you want to die. So if you're in a situation where, particularly if you have a family that aren't practicing Catholics who might be making decisions for you, you particularly need to make known you want to requiem mass, a traditional latin mass, for example. Requiem mass. [00:22:41] You want to make sure that a priest is called when you're near death, that if it looks like you're going to die soon, that. That there's a priest, they know who to call. [00:22:51] I mean, that's. Your loved one should know that, obviously, the hospital, if you end up in a hospital, they should know that. So that you have access to last rites, to the sacraments at the end of your life, to spiritual direction, if you need it at the end. So you should let them know. [00:23:05] That is very important. And I think spouses especially. Don't assume your spouse knows. Hopefully they do. Or your kids, if the case may be your adult children or something like that, let them know. Don't wait until the last minute. Also, just things like, okay, it's super cliched, but sometimes cliches are true. So, like, the idea of, like, kind of letting people know how you think of them before you die. One of the things I found is, like, in my family, we don't talk a lot about our feelings, and I found that. So we never did. Like, my mom and I didn't. My dad and I didn't know very much. I found it was difficult then to talk about them, even when she was on her deathbed. And, you know, we're nearing her death here, but I realized, okay, I have to do this. But if we had done it our whole life, then probably wouldn't have been as difficult now. So don't wait for that either. Tell your kids you love them, things like that. Tell your parents you love them. All those things. I know it's cliched. That's kind of standard, but I do think that's important. [00:24:02] The last thing I kind of want to mention is just that really contemplate, meditate on death sometimes. Like I said, every day. Think about. But think about what it is. Death is not natural. We have to remember this. Death is not part of the original plan. [00:24:16] Death is something that came into the world due to sin. [00:24:19] St. Paul tells us the wages of sin is death. If we did not have sin in the world, we would not have death. And so therefore this death, this unnatural separation of body and soul. The original plan was Adam and Eve do their job. The body and soul never get separated from each other. We don't have this thing called death. We're not separated from our loved ones like happens now, but instead, because of original sin, our sins, we are, we face death and so meditate upon that, that it's your sins, it's your own fault you're dying. [00:24:53] And so like, you need to recognize that and it's a result of all. But what's beautiful about it is that God in his mercy uses everything, even things like this, even unnatural things that are caused by sin, to bring us closer to him. Because by meditating on death we draw closer to him because we don't have a God who does not understand death. We have a God who literally died. And yes, we can say that that's not heretical to say that we have a God who died because Jesus Christ, who is God, died. Just like we say Mary is the mother of God because it was the divine person that she was the mother of. Likewise, we can say God died because Jesus Christ, who is God, died on the cross. And so we have a God who understands death more than any other fake God would. I mean, obviously they don't exist, but the demons and all that, they don't understand death. God. I mean in fact the angels don't even fully understand death. That's something, a mystery. [00:25:54] But God does understand death. He has entered into it, and by his death he has destroyed death. By meditating on death, it comes eventually to the resurrection that death has been destroyed by death, by our Lord's death. And so we can use this to help us get to heaven, to be prepared for death. So like I said, I don't expect mass amounts of people to be watching this podcast, but hopefully some will. And hopefully because God has put it kind of on my heart to think about death, to meditate on death recently. [00:26:26] Maybe some people who are watching this also will be in the same situation where they kind of recognize that, realize, okay, we're all going to die, some people sooner than others, but we're all eventually going to die. Be prepared for it. [00:26:42] Make sure you're close to the sacraments, close to Jesus, and in your daily decisions, that's where it matters the most, in your daily decisions, when you're like, oh, yeah, I'm going to do this because it pleases me. Maybe say, you know, I'm going to give up this good for the goods of the next world. So I draw closer to Christ and his sufferings, like, like St. Francis did, which we see in the stigmata. And I'm going to do it for the conversion of sinners, so sinners who die won't die outside of God's grace. And so by giving up those goods of this world, we are giving even greater goods in the next. But we also help bring about the salvation of others, so they get the goods of the next world. So these are just some of my thoughts, just memento mori. Remember death. That's a classic phrase of Catholics, so always remember death, not in a morbid way, but in a joyful way in a lot of ways. Because the fact is, is that we don't have to fear death like the pagans do. [00:27:41] We don't have to fear death like the pagans do. We know death will lead us to Jesus Christ, will lead us to be directly with the one we most want to be with. So if we do things right, if we are faithful, then death will end up being a beautiful thing for us. And of course, it will be still a time of sorrow for our loved ones, but it will be a thing of joy for us. And so that's how we should think about death. [00:28:04] Okay, I'm going to wrap it up there. Until next year. Until next time, everybody. If there is a next time, we never know. [00:28:11] I may not be here next time. You may not be here next time. Remember that. But until then, God love.