Death is a reality with the longest shadow. Ancient pagan man either resigned to his inability to escape the reach of that shadow or tried to put up a brave front to it. Hopes of a life beyond death remained very vague and unconvincing. During much of the Old Testament the problem of death remained a question not to be confronted. Only within the message delivered by Jesus was death spoken of as the beginning of a life never to be terminated. Faith in life beyond death could then inspire fearless and often joyful approaches to most cruel forms of death, as shown in accounts about the last hours of martyrs and saints. Modern post-Christian grapplings with death are so many vain flights from death, even though they show the traces of Christian faith in future life. Unfortunately, the treatments of death in the "new" theology is too often lost in convoluted phraseology, which conveys little about the plain Christian assurance that death is merely the portal beyond which great personal realities—Jesus, Mary, and Joseph—beckon to the dying.

By Fr. Stanley L. Jaki

ISBN 978-1-892548-43-6  •  viii + 75 pages  •  softcover