Not Lost, but Sent Ahead

Many of our people are dying in this plague — that is, many of our people are being set free from this world. This plague is a destroyer to Jews and Gentiles and to the enemies of Christ; to the servants of God it is a departure that leads to salvation. No difference is made between one person and another: the righteous die and so do the unrighteous. That is no reason to suppose this is one common death for the good and the bad alike. The righteous are called away to their refreshment; the unrighteous are dragged off to punishment. Protection is granted the faithful all the sooner, and the penalty comes on unbelievers all the sooner. [a]

We are careless, dear brothers, and ungrateful for what God gives, and we do not recognize what is being handed to us. Look: virgins go out in peace, safe with their glory, with no fear of the threats of the Antichrist who is coming, or of his corruptions, or of his brothels. Boys get past the danger of their unsteady years and reach in happiness the reward of self-control and innocence. A woman raised in comfort has no need now to fear the torture chamber; a quick death has carried her past the terror of persecution and out of the executioner’s hands.

The dread of this plague and of these times sets the lukewarm on fire, braces the slack, prods the lazy, forces deserters to come back, drives pagans to believe. The old body of the faithful is called away to its rest, and a new and crowded army is gathered for the battle with a braver strength — an army that will fight without fear of death when the fighting comes, because it enlisted in a time of dying.

And there is more, dear brothers. What a thing it is, how fitting, how necessary, that this pestilence and disease, which looks so horrible and so deadly, should search out each person’s righteousness and put the minds of the human race to the test. Do the healthy nurse the sick? Do relatives love their own family? Do owners pity their slaves when they are wasting away? Do doctors abandon patients who beg them to stay? Do the violent hold their violence down? Can the robbers put out the endless burning of their raging greed even under the fear of death? Do the arrogant bend their necks? Do the wicked go easier on their own boldness? And when the people they love are dying, do the rich give anything away at last — do they give, when they are about to die with no heir? [d]

Even if this plague had brought us nothing else, it has done this much good to Christians and to God’s servants: we are beginning to want martyrdom gladly, because we are learning not to fear death. These are training exercises for us, not funerals. They give the mind the glory of courage; by teaching contempt for death they get it ready for the crown.

But perhaps someone will object and say: “This is exactly what makes me sad in the present plague. I was ready to confess Christ. I had given myself over, with my whole heart and with courage to spare, to endure whatever came. And now I am robbed of martyrdom, because death has got there first.” First of all, martyrdom is not in your power; it is God’s to grant. And you cannot say you have lost something when you do not know whether you would have been counted worthy to receive it. Then, besides, God searches out the innermost self and the heart; he investigates and knows what is hidden. He sees you, and praises you, and approves you; and the one who sees that the courage was ready in you will give you the reward for that courage. [g]

Had Cain already killed his brother when he brought his gift to God? And yet God, seeing ahead to the murder conceived in his mind, sentenced it before it was done. Just as in that case the evil thought and the mischievous intention were seen in advance by a God who sees in advance, so it is with the servants of God: where the confession is intended and the martyrdom conceived in the mind, the purpose dedicated to good is crowned by God the judge. Falling short of martyrdom in spirit is one thing; martyrdom falling short of a ready spirit is another. Whatever the Lord finds you to be when he calls you, that is what he judges you to be. He bears witness to it himself and says: “And all the churches will know that I am the one who searches the innermost self and the heart.” God is not asking for our blood; he is asking for our faith. Abraham was not killed, and neither was Isaac, and neither was Jacob; and yet, honored for what their faith and their righteousness earned, they deserved to stand first among the patriarchs — and at their feast everyone is gathered who is found faithful and righteous and worth praising.

We ought to remember that we are to do God’s will and not our own, just as our Lord told us to pray every day. How backwards and absurd it is that we ask for God’s will to be done, and then, when God calls us and summons us out of this world, we do not obey the order of his will at once. We struggle and hold out. We are dragged into the Lord’s presence like stubborn slaves, in sadness and grief, going out of here under the bondage of necessity instead of in the obedience of a free will — and then we expect to be honored with heavenly rewards by the one we came to unwillingly. So why do we pray and ask that the kingdom of heaven may come, if the captivity of earth is what delights us? Why do we beg over and over, in one prayer after another, for the day of his kingdom to hurry, if what we want more, and wish for more strongly, is to serve the devil here rather than to reign with Christ? [l]

And here is something more, so that the marks of God’s providence may be plainer still, and it may be proved that the Lord, who knows what is coming, looks after the real safety of his people. One of our colleagues, a fellow priest, worn out with sickness and frightened at how near his own death had come, prayed for a reprieve for himself. As he prayed, at the very point of death, a young man stood beside him: honorable and majestic to look at, tall, with a shining face, whom a human glance could hardly have looked at with the eyes of the body, except that a man about to leave the world could already see such a one. And the young man, with something like anger in his mind and in his voice, rebuked him and said: “You are afraid to suffer, and you do not want to go. What am I to do with you?” That was the word of someone rebuking and warning — someone who, when men are anxious about persecution and careless about their own summons, does not give in to what they want now, but takes thought for what is coming. [n]

Our dying brother and colleague heard what he was to say to others. He heard it while he was dying, and the whole reason he heard it was so that he could pass it on. He heard it not for himself but for us. What could a man already on the eve of his departure learn for himself? He learned it, surely, for those of us who are left — so that when we find the priest who asked for a delay rebuked, we might recognize what is good for us all.

To me too — the very least and the last of all — how often it has been revealed, how frequently and how plainly it has been laid on me by God’s gracious favor, that I should bear witness diligently and declare in public: our brothers who are set free from this world at the Lord’s summons are not to be mourned, since we know that they are not lost but sent on ahead. They leave us and go before us like travelers, like men who have taken ship ahead of us. We should long for them; we should not weep for them. We should not put black clothes on here, when over there they have already put on white ones. We should not hand the pagans a fair and reasonable occasion for finding fault with us — that we mourn people we say are alive with God as though they were snuffed out and gone, and that we do not back up with the witness of heart and breast the faith we put into speech and words. We are false to our own hope and our own faith. What we say looks pretended, put on, counterfeit. There is no advantage in setting virtue out in words and knocking the truth down by what we do. [p]

Finally, the apostle Paul reproaches and rebukes and blames anyone who is in sorrow at the departure of his friends. He says: “Brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant about those who are asleep, so that you do not grieve as the others do, who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus.” He says that the ones who have sorrow when their friends depart are the ones who have no hope. But we live in hope. We believe in God. We trust that Christ suffered for us and rose again. We remain in Christ, and through him and in him we rise again. So why are we unwilling to leave this life ourselves, and why do we weep and grieve over our friends when they leave, as if they were lost — when Christ himself, our Lord and our God, urges us on and says: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live; and everyone who lives and believes in me will not die forever.” If we believe in Christ, let us trust his words and his promises. And since we are not going to die forever, let us come to Christ with glad confidence — the Christ with whom we are both to conquer and to reign forever. [t]

As for the fact that we die in the meantime: by dying we are crossing over into immortality. Eternal life cannot follow unless it falls to us to leave this life first. This is not an ending but a crossing; once the journey through time has been traveled, there is a passage into eternity. Who would not hurry toward better things? Who would not long to be changed and made new into the likeness of Christ, and to arrive sooner at the dignity of heavenly glory, when Paul the apostle announces and says: “Our way of life is in heaven, and from there we are also waiting for the Lord Jesus Christ, who will change the body of our humiliation and make it match the body of his glory.” Christ the Lord promises that we will be like that too. So that we may be with him, and may live with him in lodgings that last forever, and may be glad in the kingdoms of heaven, he prays the Father for us and says: “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see the glory you have given me before the world was made.” A man who is going to reach the throne of Christ and the glory of the kingdoms of heaven ought not to mourn and lament. He should do what the Lord’s promise and his own faith in the truth call for: he should be glad at this departure of his, this being carried over. [v]

And this is how we find that Enoch too was carried over, the man who pleased God, as Holy Scripture bears witness in Genesis: “And Enoch pleased God, and afterward he was not found, because God carried him over.” To have been pleasing in God’s sight was to have earned being carried out of this infection of a world. And the Holy Spirit teaches through Solomon, in the same way, that the people who please God are taken away from here earlier and set free more quickly, so that they will not be defiled by the infections of the world while they linger in it too long: “He was taken away, so that wickedness would not change his understanding. For his soul was pleasing to God; that is why God hurried to take him away out of the middle of wickedness.” And so in the Psalms too, the soul that has given itself to its God in the faith of the spirit hurries to the Lord and says: “How lovely are your dwellings, God of hosts! My soul longs, and hurries, to the courts of God.” [x]

Wanting to stay a long time in the world belongs to the man the world delights, the man this flattering, deceiving life invites with the bait of earthly pleasure. But since the world hates the Christian, why do you love what hates you? Why do you not rather follow Christ, who both bought you back and loves you? John cries out in his letter and urges us not to chase after the cravings of the flesh or to love the world: “Do not love the world, or the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world is the craving of the flesh, and the craving of the eyes, and the ambition of this life, which is not from the Father but from the craving of the world. And the world will pass away, and its craving with it; but the one who does the will of God remains forever, just as God also remains forever.” Rather, dear brothers, with a sound mind, a firm faith, a sturdy courage, let us be ready for the whole will of God. Let us lay the fear of death down and think about the immortality that comes next. This is how we show ourselves to be what we believe: we do not grieve over the departure of the people we love, and when the day of our own summons arrives we come to the Lord without delay and without resistance, since he is the one calling us. [z]

And this ought to be done by God’s servants at all times, but much more now — now that the world is collapsing and is being battered by storms of destructive evils — so that we, who see that the terrible things have begun and know that worse ones are close behind, may count it the greatest advantage to get out of it as quickly as we can. [aa]

If the walls of the house you live in were shaking with age, if the roof above you were trembling, if the whole building, worn out and tired, were threatening to come down on the spot as its frame crumbled with age — would you not leave as fast as you could? If you were on a voyage, and an angry, raging storm with its waves whipped up were announcing a shipwreck on the way, would you not make for harbor quickly? Look: the world is changing and passing away, and it testifies to its own ruin — not by its age now, but by the end of all things. And do you not thank God? Do you not congratulate yourself that an earlier departure is taking you away and delivering you from the shipwrecks and the disasters that are coming?

We should consider, dearly loved brothers — we should turn it over again and again — that we have renounced the world, and that in the meantime we are living here as guests and foreigners. Let us welcome the day that assigns each of us to his own home, that snatches us out of here and sets us loose from the traps of the world and gives us back to paradise and the kingdom. Who, set down in a foreign country, would not hurry to get back to his own? Who, hurrying home to his family, would not long for a good wind, so as to embrace the people he loves the sooner? [ab]

We count paradise as our country. We are already beginning to count the patriarchs as our parents. Why do we not hurry, why do we not run, to see our country and to greet our parents? A great number of the people we love is waiting for us there. A thick crowd of parents and brothers and children is longing for us, already sure of their own safety and still anxious about ours. What gladness it will be for them and for us together, to reach their presence and their arms! What a pleasure there is in the kingdom of heaven, with no fear of death — and how high and unbroken a happiness, with living that never ends!

To these people, dear brothers, let us hurry with all our longing. Let us long to be with them soon, and to come to Christ soon. May God see this longing of ours. May the Lord Christ look on this purpose of our mind and our faith — he who will give the larger rewards of his glory to those whose desire for him was the greater.