Reflections on Eternity

by Martin K. Barrack
Originally published in The Catholic Faith, Nov-Dec ’97

I Tell You A Mystery
Johann Christoph Arnold
Plough Publishing House
204 pp., $12.00
(800) 521-8011

Free e-book

The death I hope for would come in bed, holding a crucifix to my heart, a priest at my side having just given me the Sacraments including the Apostolic Pardon, my wife Irene holding my hand and praying over me. I would receive Viaticum, say, “Father, into Thy hands I commit my spirit,” (Lk 23:46) and pass into eternity.

This little book, I Tell You a Mystery, prompts such reflections. It is not a Catholic book but it is deeply Christian, and implicitly conveys a sense that all Christians are one family in Christ, here and hereafter.

Johann Christoph Arnold is senior elder of the Bruderhof (”place of brothers”), some 2,500 members in eight communities. Its roots go back to early 16th century Europe, when thousands of Anabaptists sought a life of simplicity, brotherhood and nonviolence. Today there are three Bruderhofs in New York, one in Connecticut, two in Pennsylvania, and two in southeastern England.

The mystery, of course, is St. Paul’s “Lo! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.” (1 Cor 15:51) Jesus told us, “I am the door of the sheep.” (Jn 10:9) God sees death as it really is, a door through which we pass from this world to the next. We all pass through the door, the good and the evil, the rich and the poor, the athlete and the disabled, for the most important encounter of our lives.

I Tell You a Mystery opens with a jarring appreciation by Mumia Abu-Jamal, “a man on death row who several months ago had a date with death.” There are some excellent Christian men in prison for violent crimes, men like my good friend Russell Ford who committed a violent crime but in prison became Catholic and then the world’s foremost Catholic prison evangelist. The text gives no indication that Mr. Abu-Jamal is contrite, let alone converted, only that he is articulate. Jesus loves even the most hardened killer and we are called to do the same, but I could not help preferring in this context that Mr. Abu-Jamal focus on the person whose death he hastened.

Once past that, this book goes about its business well. Most of the book is what C. S. Lewis called “mere Christianity,” the basic Gospel message. No priests give Sacraments to the dying. Everyone assumes that the departed go straight to heaven; no purgatory here. There is a quotation from Mother Teresa, on life in a nursing home. “They are expecting, they are hoping, that a son or daughter will come to visit them. They are hurt because they are forgotten.”

There is a certain quiet about I Tell You a Mystery. It sets things in perspective. In the Bruderhofs, life is communal; all property is owned in common. The emphasis is on brotherly love and love of enemies, mutual service, nonviolence and the refusal to bear arms, sexual purity, and faithfulness in marriage. Glancing through the pages at the photographs one sees many different faces, the light of faith in their eyes. These are people who live, as best they can, for Christ and one another. They go into eternity with faith, in peace.

Readers who like to become involved with the lives of others will particularly enjoy I Tell You a Mystery, because it deftly goes to the heart of how each of these people lived and died. We meet Mr. Arnold’s parents, Mama, who expressed her deepest thoughts in poems and essays, and Papa, a zestful and compassionate man who could lift a 100 lb. sack as if it were nothing. We meet Dorie, outwardly happy and joyful but inwardly nervous and anxious, whose outward struggle against cancer masked an inward struggle for her soul. We meet Evelyn who, at 13, with two younger girls was being carried down river by a strong current. The boy who went in after them, overwhelmed by trying to rescue three struggling girls, yelled, “I can’t make it. Someone has to let go!” Evelyn, who could not swim, let go. We meet James who, at 16, sled-racing his classmate Sam down a steep hill, hit a gatepost at the bottom. His last words were, “Tell Sam it wasn’t his fault.”

Readers who prefer general insights that they can apply in particular cases will also find food for thought. “If you have ever lost a baby, then you always have a baby. Your other children grow up and leave you, but the baby you have lost is always your baby.” “We may be living on the edge of eternity, but that should not make us dismal. … Are we so unready to face God?” “Grief is a completely natural and healthy response to a death, and it should not be repressed. It is the soul’s expression of continuing love for that person and the way to its healing.”

”We shall all be changed.” Many of us imagine that, sinners though we are, on our deathbeds we will turn to Christ and at the last moment be saved. Many people, as the hours become minutes and the minutes become seconds, struggle to retain the waning control they have over their lives. At exactly the moment when they should relax and proclaim, “Father, into Thy hands I commit my spirit,” they go through the door focused only on themselves. This is a book to sip a little at a time, savoring the flavor of each chapter, reflecting on our own life and the lives of those we love, as we gently prepare to go through the final door.