When your salvation is complete in both worldly and spiritual matters, you will leave the present world and pass on to that which has no end. --St. Hildegard of Bingen
St. Hildegard -- nun, mystic, poet, composer, force of nature -- wrote her statement during the middle of the 12th century. In today's world, it is notsomething I'd say to someone newly bereaved. At best it sounds hollow, an echo of, "It was his time" or, "God's got it all under control" -- that does little to relieve the thunderous pain of loss. At worst it seems cruel, especially with lives cut short too soon: the high school senior in an auto accident, the young mother with cancer.
Still, something in Hildegard's statement rings true to me, and I wonder whether it might prove valuable in the face of loss. How can we find out?
I think our first reaction -- to weigh the assertion's theological accuracy -- is not particularly helpful. For one thing, there is simply no way we can know. For another, determinations of theological accuracy rarely comfort the grieving.
There is, however, another approach to this statement: asking questions of it. What happens if we think of the person's "salvation as complete," of her life as one whole contribution to the good of the world, no matter how long she lived? In what sense could that be true? What in her journey -- her epiphanies, her experiences, her example -- holds meaning for those of us who are left behind? How can we incorporate her impact, the lessons she conveyed, the attitudes she modeled, into our own lives? How has she already made our lives different?
These questions help me make sense of my father's life, which was an utter mystery to me. Not once in 48 years did we have a conversation of substance. Affectionate moments were few and far between. After his passing at 94, it would have been easy to believe that I carried nothing of him forward. But then I remembered the one thing he did give me: a passion for baseball. As it turned out, that passion had kept me alive during some desperate times in my life. In the process, it has sustained me so I could make whatever contributions I have to make. Maybe, then, in sharing his passion, my father was "completing his salvation."
Asking these questions, admittedly, is easier with people who lived what we call "a long, full life." We can point to their achievements, their loved ones, and the myriad of memories they left behind. Mostly, we reminisce about what was. When we think of those we lose in the prime of life, however, it is easy to feel the loss of a future that will never be. "Imagine what he could have done if he'd lived 30 more years," we sometimes hear.
This might be where asking questions of Hildegard's claim makes an even bigger difference. Rather than regret the unrealized future, we carry the person into the future. Perhaps we see a point and a purpose to their lives that might have escaped us otherwise. As we live out our days with these questions in our hearts, perhaps we shape the world a bit closer to the way it would have been if the person had lived on.
We may even see the impact of their cause of death on our lives. How many people, when they lose someone to a disease, devote their time and energy to finding a cure? How many people vow to quit smoking -- or never start -- when a loved one dies of lung cancer? As I have watched people (both loved ones and celebrities) relapse into drug use time and again, I gain an appreciation for the sheer raw power of addiction. It provides a potent warning to steer clear.
These questions strike me as a particularly fruitful way to honor the dead. It is more than keeping their memory alive or remembering their birthdays or maintaining their burial site, as important as these practices are; it is about sustaining the ideals, values and passions that they cared about so deeply. We may carry them on differently -- adapting them, using them to form our own unique ideas -- but they still echo in our actions and contributions to the world.
Many of us already "carry our loved ones into the future" in many ways. We see it when we do something as our mother once did it, or because "she would have wanted it that way." Asking the questions allows us to be a bit more intentional about the process -- and so to honor them even more meaningfully.
Perhaps in this way, at least, their salvation is complete when they pass away from our lives--whether it was "their time" or much too soon.