Catholics Talk a Lot About Death

For the past fifteen years or so I’ve been in the habit of praying the Rosary while driving to work in the morning. When you say a full Rosary, you recite the “Hail Mary” prayer 53 times. So 53 prayers, times 240 work days in a year, times 15 years equals, um … well, a whole bunch of Hail Marys.

After years of saying the Rosary, for the first time I finally gave some thought to the last line of the Hail Mary prayer, when we ask the Blessed Mother to “pray for us, now and at the hour of our death.”

It was a typical morning and I was driving to the office and praying the Rosary. Sometimes I kind of recite the words without paying attention because my mind starts to wander as I think about all the stuff I have to do that day. But on this particular morning I was concentrating pretty well on the prayers. (Of course, for me “concentrating pretty well” means my mind was wandering only 80-percent of the time. Sorry, I must have PADD, Prayer Attention Deficit Disorder).

Anyway, as I was praying and driving, another car suddenly cut in front of me and I instinctively swerved away, but into the path of an oncoming truck. The truck swerved, and there were some skidding and screeching and squealing sounds (The skidding and screeching sounds were made by the vehicles, and the squealing sounds were made by me as I did a great impersonation of a 10-year-old girl). Then there was complete silence. Thankfully, there were no collisions. It was a terrifying few seconds, but everyone was safe.

And then I finished the prayer I had been in the middle of saying: “…now and at the hour of our death, Amen.”

For the first time in 15 years, I really thought about those words. “Hour of our death?!” I exclaimed. “Wow! This was two inches away from being the hour of MY death!”

In the Catholic world, we talk about death a lot, don’t we? Besides the Hail Mary, there are other prayers, such as the traditional night prayer, which includes this line: “May God grant us a restful night and a peaceful death.” (Whenever I hear that prayer on the radio, I quickly add, “But not tonight, Lord, if you don’t mind!”).

In our modern culture, we never talk about death. Even when someone dies, we can’t bring ourselves to use the word. We say the person, “passed away,” “expired,” or “succumbed.” I once heard a guy tell of a plane trip he was on. Sadly, one of the passengers had a heart attacked and died in mid-flight, so the flight attendants immediately announced, “Free alcohol for everybody!”

Heaven forbid the passengers might contemplate the reality of death for the remainder of the flight. Instead, they were encouraged to get drunk and forget about it.

Why is it, then, that Catholicism doesn’t hesitate to talk frankly about death? Well, that’s easy: we’re all morbid.

No wait! I’m kidding! That’s not it. The reason Catholics can frankly talk about death, both in our prayers and in our everyday conversations, is because we know the solution to the problem of death; His name is Jesus.

If you’re Catholic, you believe that Jesus conquered death once and for all. And then He promised us that if we put our faith in Him, we too can conquer death.

Death is nasty, but it’s not the final word—which is something to think about, especially if you repeatedly pray each morning, “Now and at the hour of our death, Amen.” But it’s still a good idea to watch out for those swerving vehicles.