The Healing Journey

July 3, 2024

“Death is a fact of life, but not the end of life.”
— Mother Angelica

When Rita Antoinette Rizzo was in 6th grade, Sister Prudence asked, “Children, can anyone tell me what the opposite of death is?”

The girl we all know as Mother Angelica wrote, “Anyone could have seen that this was a trick question, but I was determined to please. My hand shot up to the heavens.”

“The opposite of death is life,” she responded.

“If the opposite of death is life, then I might as well hang up my habit and join the circus,” Sister Prudence said with a frown.

Only years later did Mother Angelica understand why her answer was wrong.

As she explained in her book “Answers, Not Promises,” “The problem with my answer to Sister Prudence was that death doesn’t have an opposite. Death is a transition….As Christians, we realize that the soul is breathed into the natural body at conception, animates the body until physical death, and then continues its life journey to eternity. Death is only the death of the body, but not the soul. Death is merely a station on the way. If we could get a glimpse of the eternal nature of our lives, we would view death exactly as we view birth: a necessary tunnel through which we must pass on our journey.”

Of course, the loss of someone we love is one of the hardest challenges life offers us, Mother said.

“Does this make it easier to face our own death or to handle the loss and separation of loved ones who die? Not really. Accepting the death of our bodies is always going to be hard, but understanding it is crucial to an informed, intelligent view of existence,” she said.

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