The moment of death - by Newman

GERONTIUS:

NOVISSIMA hora est; and I fain would sleep,
The pain has wearied me.... Into Thy hands
O Lord, into Thy hands ....

THE PRIEST:

PROFICISCERE, anima Christiana, de hoc mundo!
Go forth upon thy journey, Christian soul!
Go from this world! Go, in the name of God
The omnipotent Father, who created thee!
Go, in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord,
Son of the living God, who bled for thee!
Go, in the name of the Holy Spirit, who
Hath been poured out on thee! Go, in the name
Of Angels and Archangels; in the name
Of Thrones and Dominations; in the name
Of Princedoms and of Powers; and in the name
Of Cherubim and Seraphim, go forth!
Go, in the name of Patriarchs and Prophets;
And of Apostles and Evangelists,
Of Martyrs and Confessors; in the name
Of holy Monks and Hermits; in the name
Of holy Virgins; and all Saints of God,
Both men and women, go Go on thy course;
And may thy place to-day be found in peace,
And may thy dwelling be the Holy Mount
Of Sion :—through the Same, through Christ, our Lord.


SECOND PHASE

SOUL OF GEROINTIUS
I WENT to sleep; and now I am refreshed.
A strange refreshment: for I feel in me
An inexpressive lightness, and a sense
Of freedom, as I were at length myself
And ne’er had been before. How still it is!
I hear no more the busy beat of time,
No, nor my fluttering breath, nor struggling pulse;
Nor does one moment differ from the next.
I had a dream; yes: — someone softly said “He’s gone;”
and then a sigh went round the room.
And then I surely heard a priestly voice
Cry “Subvenite;” and they knelt in prayer.

I seem to hear him still; but thin and low,
And fainter and more faint the accents come,
As at an ever-widening interval.
Ah whence is this? What is this severance?
This silence pours a solitariness
Into the very essence of my soul;
And the deep rest, so soothing and so sweet,
Hath something too of sternness and of pain.
For it drives back my thoughts upon their spring
By a strange introversion, and perforce
I now begin to feed upon myself,
Because I have nought else to feed upon.

Am I alive or dead? I am not dead,
But in the body still; for I possess
A sort of confidence which clings to me,
That each particular organ holds its place
As heretofore, combining with the rest
Into one symmetry that wraps me round,
And makes me man; and surely I could move,
Did I but will it, every part of me.
And yet I cannot to my sense bring home,
By very trial, that I have the power.
‘Tis strange; I cannot stir a hand or foot,
I cannot make my fingers or my lips
By mutual pressure witness each to each,
Nor by the eyelid’s instantaneous stroke
Assure myself I have a body still.
Nor do I know my very attitude,
Nor if I stand, or lie, or sit, or kneel.
So much I know, not knowing how I know,
That the vast universe, where I have dwelt,
Is quitting me, or I am quitting it.
Or I or it is rushing on the wings
Of light or lightning on an onward course,
And we e'en now are million miles apart.
Yet… is this peremptory severance
Wrought out in lengthening measurements of space,
Which grow and multiply by speed and me?
Or am I traversing infinity
By endless subdivision, hurrying back
From finite towards infinitesimal,
Thus dying out of the expansed world?

Another marvel; someone has me fast
Within his ample palm; ‘tis not a grasp
such as they use on earth, but all around
Over the surface of my subtle being,
As though I were a sphere, and capable
To be accosted thus, a uniform
And gentle pressure tells me I am not
Self-moving, but borne forward on my way.
And hark! I hear a singing; yet in sooth
I cannot of that music rightly say
Whether I hear or touch or taste the tones.
Oh what a heart-subduing melody!

Clouding over?

When I opened the curtain at 6.50 the sky was blue and almost cloudless, although the forecast for Glastonbury on computer had darkish cloud. Now, well, it could go either way.

My plan this afternoon is to attend the final rehearsal of The Dream of Gerontius by Elgar in Wells Cathedral. The concert is too late, starting at 7 pm, but we'll catch a lot of superb music in the afternoon, from the Wells Choral Society.

There's a synopsis of Gerontius on the BBC website. (Don't be put off by grocers' inverted commas.)

The first time I heard the work was in Monkton Combe School chapel during Lent. We heard wonderful music during Rest Music after lunch, but too little introduction. So when we were told about the great chorus "Praise to the Holiest in the height" I expected a familiar hymn tune. Elgar's masterpiece slipped by me.

My second encounter was a close one of a different kind. I was singing it with CUMS, the Cambridge University Music Society, in King's Chapel. There's no better way of learning a work than by singing it. After the performance I found myself sitting listening to the recording next to Sir David Willcocks himself.

More when we've come bac from the cathredral. But it's a treat in store.

I can no more; for now it comes again,
That sense of ruin, which is worse than pain,
That masterful negation and collapse
Of all that makes me man; as though I bent
Over the dizzy brink
Of some sheer infinite descent;
Or worse, as though
Down, down for ever I was falling through
The solid framework of created things,
And needs must sink and sink
Into the vast abyss. And, crueler still,
A fierce and restless fright begins to fill
The mansion of my soul. And, worse and worse,
Some bodily form of ill
Floats on the wind, with many a loathsome curse
Tainting the hallowed air, and laughs, and flaps
Its hideous wings,
And makes me wild with horror and dismay.
0 Jesu, help! pray for me, Mary, pray!
Some angel, Jesu such as came to Thee
In Thine own agony....
Mary, pray for me.
Joseph, pray for me.
Mary, pray for me.

I am beginning see a pattern to how poets imagine the process of dying. It includes a letting go and a falling. For Christian believers that fall is a fall into the loving hands of God. If the love of God includes glorious music like this, then I shall find the letting go even easier.

What should I say about Bach and the St Matthew Passion, though? Does Bach make all the other composers seem shallow by comparison? I believe God has a place for us all. Verdi's Requiem helps us at one time, the St John Passion at another. And PT Forsyth asked for Gerontius to be read to him on his deathbed.

I was very privileged to be asked to sing the little parts, Pontius Pilate, St Peter and Judas, in the Cathedral St John Passion one year, As I think I wrote elsewhere I learned a great deal about solo singing during the very course of this performance, just by listening to the professional soloists who stood next to me.

Lutherans call Bach 'The fifth evangelist,' apparently, and you can tell why. So pure, so straight, so joyful, so true.

Welcome to heaven

In paradisum deducant te angeli,
in tuo adventu
suscipiant te martyres,
et perducant te
in civitatem sanctam Jerusalem.
Chorus angelorum te suscipiat,
et cum Lazaro quondam paupere
aeternam habeas requiem.

May angels lead you into Paradise,
on your arrival
may martyrs receive you,
and lead you through
into the City, holy Jerusalem.
May the chorus of angels take you up,
and with Lazarus, once poor,
may you have eternal rest.

"Archbishop Cranmer" quoted the beautiful Latin words in his piece about Jade. Jade has been rather like Lazarus in our Lord's parable in Luke 16, a poor outsider, now welcomed to Abraham's bosom.

"There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man's table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.

"The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried. In hell, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, 'Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.'

"But Abraham replied, 'Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.'

"He answered, 'Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my father's house, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.'

"Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.'

" 'No, father Abraham,' he said, 'but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.'

"He said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.' "

May I introduce Archbishop Cranmer?

I discovered this anglican clergyman's blog a couple of months ago. Before writing more about him, let me quote him on the death of Jade Goody:

There will be no more night, no pain, no sorrow or shame: the suffering is over. At the tender age of 27, Jade Tweed, mother of two, married for just 27 days, has died and passed into the holy light of paradise to sing the song of peace and glory. She is now with her Lord and Saviour, according to her faith, just as he has promised.

There were tears and sadness, but she wanted to be remembered for the laughter she brought. There will be very many who do not care, for who was she to them or they to her? There will be some who are relieved at her departure, sickened by the incessant, trivia-obsessed voyeurism of the tedious red-top notion of dumbed-down celebrity. There will be those who scoff at the paucity of her biblical understanding; who question the validity of her repentance and the efficacy of her death-bed baptism; who pour scorn upon her imperfect grasp of the soteriological and theological imperatives.....

Now, "Archbishop Cranmer" is politically right wing, and as you can see, orthodoxly Christian. Among his targets are the government's support of anti-Christian groups, and its favouring of Muslim over Christian causes.

I am not a tory, or a member of any political party, but I have to agree with many of "Cranmer's" attacks. Christians must stand up for their faith and their Lord. If you don't mind being alternately irritated and inspired, then a glance at his blog could be a tonic/stimulus.

Pascal's Wager

I don't know how helpful this will be, but I am posting an extract from Wikipedia about the 18th century French philosopher Blaise Pascal. To put the matter in a very simple way, imagine a bishop talking to an atheist. The bishop says to the atheist: "If you are right and death is nothingness, neither of us will know that you were right. If I'm right, and through death we pass to God's judgement and heaven or hell, we'll both know I was right. What's more, I shall have had a lifetime of looking forward to heaven, and you will have missed all that hope and joy."

Anyway, here's a slightly more complicated way of putting it:

Pascal begins with the premise that the existence or non-existence of God is not provable by human reason, since the essence of God is "infinitely incomprehensible". Since reason cannot decide the question, one must "wager", either by guessing or making a leap of faith. Agnosticism on this point is not possible, in Pascal's view, for we are already "embarked", effectively living out our choice.

We only have two things to stake, our "reason" and our "happiness". Pascal considers that there is "equal risk of loss and gain", a coin toss, since human reason is powerless to address the question of God's existence. That being the case, we then must decide it according to our happiness... by weighing the gain and loss in believing that God exists. He contends the wise decision is to wager that God exists, since "If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing", meaning one can gain eternal life if God exists, but if not, one will be no worse off in death than if one had not believed.