Is there a right age to die?
Maybe not
“Old age is not honored for length of time,
nor measured by number of years;
[A young person], being perfected in a short time, fulfilled long years;
for his soul was pleasing to the Lord”. (Wisdom 4, 8.13)
A question I have often asked myself in recent times is: "Is there such a thing as the right age to die?" One could answer that 100 years would be just about right for everyone! Yet, I don't think that mere old age guarantees readiness.
Even the passing of an elderly loved one can create an immense void for their family. And one can be advanced in years yet cling so tightly to earthly life that death remains a terror till the end.
Not to mention that there are the lives of many saints that still seem to confirm that it is not just a question of age. So many of them died young, even very young, and yet they seem to have been more than ready for this mysterious passage that is death. We all know their stories, yet no one is instinctively moved to pity them and perhaps say, 'Poor him, poor her, so young with all their lives ahead of them!'
In fact, albeit being short, we sense with our hearts that their life was a full and fulfilled one, because it was one filled with love. This means that we do not feel that they are far away and lost in nothingness. On the contrary, we often perceive them to be very close to us even though we have never met them, as if they had become our companions on this life’s journey.
Think for example of Blessed Carlo Acutis who would have been thirty-three years old on 3 May, but who died in 2006 when he was only fifteen. Carlo lived his very short life full of love for the Lord and for the needy he met. In recent years, many faithful around the world have come to love him and feel him close as a comfort and a tangible daily presence.
Very similar to Carlo Acutis is Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, a lay Dominican who will be canonised next year, also a young man from a wealthy family who died of a fulminating illness at the age of just twenty-four. His funeral in 1925 was packed with all those needy people that he helped so frequently that he was punctually penniless. At that unexpected sight, Piergiorgio's father exclaimed in amazement: 'I did not know my son”. Here again we have a life cut short in the flower of youth, but one so fragrant with love that it leaves no room for bitterness or regret.
May 4th is also the liturgical memory of a perhaps lesser-known blessed: Sandra Sabattini. This young woman died in an accident when she was only twenty-two years old. On that day, she was on her way to a meeting of the Community to which she belonged with her boyfriend and with which she was committed to helping the disabled and drug addicts. Listen to what she herself wrote in her diary two days before that fatal accident on May 2nd 1984: 'This life that is evolving is not mine, rhythmitised by a regular breath that is not mine, cheered by a serene day that is not mine. There is nothing in this world that is yours. Sandra, realise this! It is all a gift on which the 'Giver' can intervene when and how he wishes. Take care of the gift given to you, make it more beautiful and fuller for when the time comes".
The list of such young saints is really long; I am thinking of Saints Francisco and Jacinta Marto of Fatima, Saint Dominic Savio, Saint Luigi Gonzaga, Saint Teresa of Lisieux and many others. All these witnesses teach us that one can smile at death, which remains inevitable, not if one reaches one hundred years, but only by living only of love and for love!
This is what Jesus wants to teach us when in the Gospel he leaves us the commandment to love one another as he has loved us (Jn 15:12). My Dominican brother Adrien Candiard underlines the fact that the word "as" in this commandment of John's Gospel does not mean an impossible imitation for us of Jesus' love, but "actually indicates the origin: love one another with the love with which I have loved you, with the love that I, Jesus, give you, with the love with which I love you. [...] It is because you are loved that you can love" (La grazia è un incontro. Se dio ama gratis, perché comandamenti?, p. 73).
It is only the love of Jesus that frees us from the slavery of sin, which is always lack of love and offence to love. The Letter to the Hebrews teaches us that every sin, every closure to love, is closely linked to the fear of death. Jesus has freed us from the devil who keeps us enslaved all our lives through fear of death (cf. Heb 2:14-15). This fear is at the root of all our sins because it makes us believe that we can avoid death by living only for ourselves, always trying to defend ourselves from others, and giving nothing of what we are and possess.
On the contrary, Jesus teaches us that only the one who loses his life finds it, only the one who gives freely without hoping for anything in return eventually attains a way of existence that abides eternally (cf. Mt 16:25). A life offered out of love, even if it apparently ends too soon, is already a fulfilled life because it corresponds to the plan that God has inscribed in the universe: He who is Love wants everything to function according to His own logic of free gift without compromise and live His own life of deep affection without measure.
Therefore, being ready to die at any moment means letting our egoism be overcome by the love of Jesus and loving in our turn without worrying too much about ourselves. Only this can make our life joyful and fulfilled, whatever the time and age of our death. For, as the English Dominican Herbert McCabe said: 'If you love, you will be hurt and even killed. If you do not love, you are already dead'.
Image: G. Klimt, Death and Life, 1910/15 from Wikimedia Commons
