Do not be afraid

Anxiety is the fruit of society?s obsession with control, says the Dominican writer. But Christ?s last words lead us to repose and to Easter Sunday?s new creation

ON THE evening of 7 December 1993, I had just arrived in Jerusalem from Rome to visit the Ecole Biblique, the Dominican centre for Biblical studies. I had not even unpacked when I received a phone call to say that my father was dying. Immediately I flew to England and I was able to have a few last days with him before he died in hospital, surrounded by his family. He had a passionate love of music and so we bought him a Walkman for use in the ward. I asked him what CDs he would like to have and he told me to bring Mozart?s Requiem and Haydn?s Seven Last Words. This was his way of preparing himself for death. I had flown from the place where, according to the Gospels, Jesus spoke these last words to be with my father as he lived his own passion with their help.

We can trace back the devotion to the Seven Last Words of Jesus on the Cross to the twelfth century. Various authors had woven one harmonious account of Jesus? life out of the four Gospels. This brought together his last words on the Cross, seven phrases, which became a topic of meditation. These last words were commented on by St Bonaventure and popularised by the Franciscans. They were immensely important in late medieval piety, and were linked with meditation on the seven wounds of Christ, and seen as remedies for the Seven Deadly Sins. According to the Hours of St Bede, whoever meditated on these words of Jesus would be saved and Our Lady would appear to him 30 days before his death. * * *

Last words are especially fascinating. Human beings are speaking animals. For us to be alive is to be in communication. Death is not just the cessation of bodily life. It is silence. So what we say in the face of imminent silence is revealing. It may be resigned; Ned Kelly, the Australian bank robber, managed, ?Such is life? just before he was executed. Lord Palmerston, ?The last thing that I shall do is to die,? is more defiant or just pragmatic. One may be gloriously mistaken, like the American Civil War general who said of the enemy sharpshooters, ?They could not hit an elephant at this distance.? Few of us manage the grandeur of the Emperor Vespasian?s ?Woe is me; I think that I am becoming a god.? Pitt the younger is supposed to have said, ?Oh my country, how I leave my country,? but the more reliable tradition gives us, ?I think that I could eat one of Bellamy?s meat pies.? In fact many dying people ask for food and drink. St Thomas Aquinas asked for fresh herrings, which were miraculously provided, and Anton Chekhov announced that it was never too late for a glass of champagne.

We are concerned not just with the last words of a man, the last things that Jesus, a first-century Jew, happened to say. We see the Word of God spoken in the face of silence. As Christians we believe that everything exists and is sustained by that Word which was from the beginning. It is the meaning of all our lives. As John wrote in the Prologue to his Gospel, ?In him was life and the life was the light of humanity? (1.4). What is at issue for us is not just the meaning of his life but of every life. When he was silenced, then were all human words entombed with him?

Our faith in the Resurrection is not just that this man who died was brought back to life. The Word was not silenced. These seven last words live. The tomb did not engulf them. This is not just because they were heard, remembered and written down, like the last words of Socrates. It means that the silence of the tomb was broken for ever, and those words were not the last. ?The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it? (John 1.5).
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It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the sun?s light failed, and the curtain of the Temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, ?Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit!?
Luke 23.46

These last words are addressed to the Father. The fourth and central word (?My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?), the turning point, is as well, but in God?s apparent absence. In the meantime, he has addressed us with increasing intimacy: as a king, as a brother, and as a beggar. Now he gives everything back to the Father. He entrusts us all, with all our fears and hopes, back into God?s hands. It is the supreme act of trust.

We live in an age of profound anxiety. We are fearful about disease and illness, about our futures, about our children, about our jobs, about failure, about death. We suffer from a deep insecurity, a collapse of trust. This is strange because we are far more protected and safe than any previous generation of human history, at least in the West. We have better medicine, safer transport; we are more protected from the climate, have better social security. And yet we are more afraid.

I spent nine years as Master of the Dominican Order travelling around the world in many dangerous places. I saw civil war and genocide in Africa, thousands of people with leprosy, the signs of endless violence. But when I came back to the West, I found people who appeared to be more afraid than anywhere else. The attacks of 11 September deepened that sense of anxiety. I was in Berkeley, California, when those few anthrax envelopes were sent and the panic was tangible. But we have no need for fear. Jesus has entrusted us into the hands of the Father.

I suspect that this pervasive anxiety derives from the fact that we have a culture of control. We can control so many things: fertility and birth, so much disease can be cured; we can control the forces of nature; we mine the earth and dam the rivers. And we Westerners control most of humanity. But control is never complete. We are increasingly aware that our planet may be careering towards disaster. We live in what Anthony Giddens has called ?a runaway world?. We are afraid, above all, of death, which unmasks our ultimate lack of control.

A friend of mine had a sign in his room which said, ?Don?t worry. It might not happen.? I composed another for him which said, ?Don?t worry. It probably will happen. But it won?t be the end of the world.? It will not be the end of the world because the world has already ended. When Jesus dies the sun and the moon are darkened; the tombs are opened, and the dead walk. This is the end of which the prophets spoke. The worst that one can ever imagine has already happened. The world collapsed. And then there was Easter Sunday.

Take a moment to think of all that you most fear. For me might it be the shame of public humiliation? Or loneliness? Or a painful death? Or seeing the early death of someone that you love? We can take every possible precaution to avoid these disasters. We can take out all the insurance policies in the world, live healthy lives, go to the gym, and never catch aircraft, have check-ups and give up smoking. But what we most fear may still happen. Jesus invites us not to be afraid. All that we dread happened to him on Good Friday, the day that the old world ended and a new world began.

?On the seventh day God finished his work which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done? (Genesis 2.2). The rabbis were puzzled by the fact that God finished working on the seventh day but it is not said what he made on that day. And it was concluded that he made rest itself. ?What was created on the seventh day? Tranquility, serenity, peace and repose.? Rest was the goal and completion of creation.

So now Jesus has spoken his seven words, which are leading to the new creation of Easter Sunday. And then he rests. God created us so that we might share that rest, and so that God may rest in us. We are made to rest in God and for God to rest in us. That rest is not the absence of activity; it is a homecoming. ?If a person loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him?.

Timothy Radcliffe is a former Master of the Dominican Order. This is an extract from his latest book, Seven Last Words, published by Continuum at ?5.99. Tab let Bookshop ?5.40.