Sep 22, 2023 |
Rector's Blog, Holy Dying
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Rector's Blog, Holy Dying
What is your prayer when you know someone is going to die? So many of my prayers for the sick and dying are centered around their return to health, for a cure, for an end to the disease, for a reversal of fortunes. Sometimes a prayer for healing is a reasonable request. Other times I pray for a miracle. To be clear whether healing seems reasonable or realistic or not, I should pray for it if it is what I hope and wish for. Sometimes it’s exactly the thing I need to pray. Sometimes “heal them” is the only thing that makes sense to me.
I remember kneeling in front of the bed and praying for my dad to be healed while paramedics were working on his body in the hallway around the corner. He was already dead, had been dead when they showed up, but there I was praying for healing. I don’t judge myself for that prayer. It’s what I wanted. I asked for what I wanted. And I don’t judge God for not making it so. There is so little I understand about life and death and how it all rests in the heart of the God who made us. God, my dad, me – we all did our part in that moment.
Death shows up. What is our prayer?
One of the great gifts of my job is the sheer number of times it puts me in close contact with death. I am invited into the room where a person will die, invited to pray over them, to thank God for their life. To witness the tears of their loved ones, to shed my own tears. There is heaviness there. It is not a joy. It takes a piece out of me. And also, I have come to see it as a gift. Death carries with it a sort of holiness. An ending that is shared by every living thing. We hold it in common. I have stumbled into the practice of praying for a holy death when I find out someone is dying. I have learned to pray this without flinching. Because I believe there is such a thing as holy dying.
I remember kneeling in front of the bed and praying for my dad to be healed while paramedics were working on his body in the hallway around the corner. He was already dead, had been dead when they showed up, but there I was praying for healing. I don’t judge myself for that prayer. It’s what I wanted. I asked for what I wanted. And I don’t judge God for not making it so. There is so little I understand about life and death and how it all rests in the heart of the God who made us. God, my dad, me – we all did our part in that moment.
Death shows up. What is our prayer?
One of the great gifts of my job is the sheer number of times it puts me in close contact with death. I am invited into the room where a person will die, invited to pray over them, to thank God for their life. To witness the tears of their loved ones, to shed my own tears. There is heaviness there. It is not a joy. It takes a piece out of me. And also, I have come to see it as a gift. Death carries with it a sort of holiness. An ending that is shared by every living thing. We hold it in common. I have stumbled into the practice of praying for a holy death when I find out someone is dying. I have learned to pray this without flinching. Because I believe there is such a thing as holy dying.
