Awareness of death was one of the most disturbing consequences of the emergence of conscious self-awareness in the human species. To be self-aware is to be able to question the mystery of one’s own existence. The first humans were challenged by the persistence of three fundamental questions:

• Why am I here?
• How did I get here?
• What will happen when I die?

We know that these kinds of questions troubled early humans because of the rituals they evolved to cope with the mystery of uncertainty of death. Home neanderthalis, the first European, and a human species that became extinct some thirty thousand years ago, buried their dead with great reverence. They placed flowers on burial sites and, in some cases, left behind with the buried remains hunting tools for their sojourning of the departed one in a different world.

Death is intrinsic to the dynamic of the Universe

When we look beyond the human to the wide expanse of the Universe itself, we observe that death is an intrinsic part of the dynamic of existence. Giant stars live for a relatively brief period of time before exploding in an exuberance of light called a Supernova. The phrase “relatively brief” in this instance means a time span of approximately ten million years. The bigger the star the shorter its life span.

In the death of the giant star through a supernova event, an extraordinary creative process is initiated. The dying star explodes mightily and bequeaths to the Universe all of the ingredients necessary for the making of solar systems just like ours. The birth of a new solar system is only made possible by the death of a giant star. We owe our existence to the generosity of a giant star that begot Mother Earth and made our emergence possible.

Radiolarians

Death inscribed in geological Time

When we look at the magnificent white cliffs of Dover or indeed when we ponder the awesome beauty of the Burren in county Clare, we are looking at geological phenomena that silently record the life and death of billions and billions of sea creatures who were born, lived and died in the oceans over a span of millions of years. Born in warm shallow seas, in their deaths these minute sea creatures bequeathed to the Mother Earth the wonderful gift of limestone and marble and other carboniferous deposits. The beauty of Michelangelo’s Pietá required not only the wonderful artistry of the Maestro but also the silent contribution of diatoms and radiolarians that lived and died in the sea and gave back to the Earth the tiny but immensely valuable deposit of the their wonderful body structures.

Rethinking the expiatory death of Jesus

The Pietá itself focuses our attention on the death of Jesus and what deep significance it has for us Christians. As he said himself, he came that we humans might have life, and have it to the full. The paradox is that in order to bequeath this gift of life to us it cost him his own life.

Michelangelo: The Pieta

The cosmic paradox of death being the gateway to new life was enacted in the drama of Jesus’s own earthly existence. His death was not required to appease an angry God spoiling for retribution and punishment. It was not needed to unlock heavenly gates so that aberrant humans might finally find a way it. The death of Jesus was the price he paid for the integrity of his message. It was the price he paid to convince us of the primacy of love, the centrality of truth, the necessity of forgiveness, the demands of justice, and the beauty of all of life that reflected in myriads ways the glory and splendour of Divine radiance.

Death is the necessary condition for Life

Lent is a time to reflect on the dynamic of death leading to new life operative throughout the Universe. This dynamic is at work in biological life, institutional life, spiritual life, and the life of the religious tradition to which I may be affiliated. In order for the new to be born, the old must yield place.

Accepting the logic of this dynamic can be a terrifying challenge indeed.