Keeping Death before Our Eyes Every Day
In his Rule St. Benedict advises the monks to keep death before their eyes every day. In saying this, he summarizes what we are told in numerous stories about the monks: they lived in the awareness of their death. This makes them inwardly more vital and focused. Thinking about death liberated them from all fear. Thus a young monk asks an elder: “Why am I seized by fear when I go out at night?” The old man says: “Because the life of this world is still of value to you.” Thinking about death removes our fear because we stop clinging to the world, to our health, to our life. And thinking about death enables us to live every moment consciously, to sense what the gift of life is, and to enjoy it every day.
In some sayings we feel the monks’ deep longing for death. But this longing to die, to be with the Lord, lent the monks “a striking cheerfulness, so that one of them was asked, ‘How it is that you are never downcast?’ to which he replied, ‘Because every day I hope to die.’ Another said, ‘The person who keeps death before his eyes at all times, easily overcomes dejection and cramped- ness of soul”. Thus the practice of daily keeping death before one’s eyes expresses the longing “to be with our Lord in Paradise”.
With the monks the yearning for death is also linked to a strong expectation of the parousia. The primitive church’s belief that the end was near flared up again. Rufinus writes, “that the monks awaited the arrival of Christ as children await their father or an army its king or a true servant his lord and liberator. And in another passage: ‘They take no more care for clothing and food, but only singing hymns they turn their hopes toward the Parousia of Christ”’. The lightness and ease that we notice in many of the monastic fathers is surely connected with this expectation of the Second Coming. Hence Evagrius calls the monk a “high-flying eagle.” Because the monks are waiting for the Lord, they become free of earthly cares, free of judgment and the expectations of others. Cheerful serenity, freedom, trust, and openness to each moment mark the monks who are longing for the Lord.
~Anselm Gruen, Heaven Begins Within You: Wisdom from the Desert Fathers
