Holiness and a Good Death

Holiness and a Good Death
Holy Week and Easter 2025
We call this week holy
and the day of his death good.
How did he live that holiness
knowing trauma and death
were closing in on him?
Though a victim of inhuman cruelty,
how did he die revealing
the goodness and love of God
and the potential of humanity?

Now in my seventies,
I look to him in this Holy Week,
hoping to learn how to live
my last days or decades
with some approach to holiness,
some sense of fulfilled purpose,
some hope of a good death.

Is holiness late in life
about connecting courageously
with the meaning and expression
of our lives and God’s love?
Is it also about connecting
with the whole creation
suffused with Spirit,
with stones that cry out
in celebration and grief,
with bread and wine consecrated
to be shared communion
in nurturing and suffering?

Reflecting on how he lived his last week,
I see affirmation accepted
in ironic humility,
lament for a blind society
failing to recognize 
either God’s visitation
or the things that make for peace.
I see courageous protest
in enacted cleansing
of rigid acquisitive religion,
challenge in debate:
corruption denounced,
warning given
and justice demanded.

I see a devoted Jew
observing Passover,
drawing his friends together
and deepening traditional meaning 
into further symbolism
of self sacrifice and liberation.
I see him underlining
with determined fervour
and hopeful compassion
his years of teaching 
about generous love and service.

I see a vulnerable human being
in a garden on a mountain
bent to the supportive ground
in desperate prayer,
trying to accept the necessity
of his suffering and dying.
I see him betrayed,
denied, abandoned
by friends, but still loving,
and forgiving even those
who bring about his death,
not knowing what they are doing.
At the end, I see him speaking
last words of trusting faith:
“Father into your hands
I commend my Spirit.”

I honour his commitment
to revealing God’s presence
in love and forgiveness
even as a victim of human atrocity.
Let Holy Week and Good Friday
inspire my attempts
to live well whatever my life span.
When death comes to me,
may I find grace to repeat 
his loving transition	
to whatever is beyond,
to commend my spirit
to a continuity of love,
so that my death is good 
both for me and those with me.
	Barbara Messner 16/04/2025