Who First Dreamed of Death?
13th Sunday of the Year
I am not very good at making things. We had to take these art classes when I was in school years ago, and all I remember about them is that no matter what we were supposed to make, I was not very good at it. I can’t paint, can’t draw, can’t sculpt, can’t write music or even play an instrument. The closest I get to making something is with words—writing homilies or essays or my irregular attempts to write a short-story or start working on the first draft of a novel.
When it comes to using words, putting them down on paper, making something, creating something, I agonize over the details. The words used need to be perfect, carefully chosen, and pieced together in the right order. The sentences need to look a certain way; there is nothing worse than an ugly sentence. Each paragraph needs to connect to the one before it and after it, and overall, whatever gets written must somehow meet my standard of being both poetic and terse—what I mean is that a sentence should be beautiful, sound beautiful, but never waste words or time. I take putting words down on paper pretty seriously because it is just about the only way I have to make something, the closest I will ever come to an act of creation.
St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that knowledge by way of creation is the most intimate kind of knowledge you will ever discover in life. What does he mean? St. Thomas means that to create something, you need to possess in your mind an image of whatever it is you want to make, and then you go out into the world and you find whatever you need to give life to the image that you possess in your mind; creation is a matter of bringing to life something that exists only in your mind.
The wild, awesome thing about creating is that when we create something, whatever it is, we share just a little in the experience of God creating the world. The world did not exist, time did not exist, space did not exist, and then one day, because God is a divine artist, the world was created. And the world that God created is good, and beautiful, and reveals to us who God is because a work of art always tells us something about the artist who created it. Because the world existed first as an image in the mind of God, and then in reality, the world in which we live is a work of divine art that tells us about God.
I wanted to talk for a few moments about art and creation and making things because our first reading today asks a hard question: who made death? Before you start searching for an answer, just take a moment to remember that making something means first possessing in your mind an image of the thing you want to make. You need to start with the idea, the dream, the vision, and then go to work bringing your image or vision to life.
So, the question for us is: who first dreamed of death?
The scriptures tell us that God did not make death. We do not possess an exhaustive biography of God, but if we did, nowhere in the life of God would we discover that he made death—thought about death, dreamed about death, and then went to work creating death; God did not make death.
Human beings did not make death either. If making something first requires that you possess for yourself an image, a dream, a vision, of what you want to make before you make it, then we know for a fact that human beings did not make death. Eve did not know what death was when she disobeyed God; the idea could not possibly have existed in her mind. Eve discovered death, played her part in bringing death into the world, but in no way did Eve create death the way an artist creates a painting or God creates the world.
The question remains: who first dreamed of death?
The first reading gives us an answer: the devil, the evil one, the enemy of God made death, created death, dreamed of death and wanted death and set to work using whatever he could find (and here is real irony) to bring death to life.
The danger for us now is that we will imitate the work of the evil one and create a death of our own. There is only one Mona Lisa hanging at the Louvre, one Disputata painted onto a Vatican wall, but you can go to any gift shop and buy yourself a paint-by-numbers recreation of the original. Is it really making something, really creating something, to paint-by-numbers? Maybe just a little. The original idea, vision, dream, is not yours but you are sharing in the recreation of an original work of art—and when you finish your work, there is something sitting there in front of you, something made, fashioned, created.
The death that we will experience at the end of our natural lives is not something that we made, fashioned, created. Natural death is a dream of the evil one. But our second death—eternal separation from God, damnation, the reality of hell, whatever you want to call it—our second death would be a work of art made in imitation of the original. You would be going down to the devil’s gift shop, purchasing for yourself a paint-by-numbers image of death, and setting to work with the sin of each brush stroke separating you further from God. You would not be the original creator of death, but when you finished, there would be something sitting there in front of you, something made, fashioned, created.
The good news for us is that because God did not make death, Christ seems to think little of its power. He is told in the Gospel today that a child has died. He responds: The child is not dead but asleep. And then he brings the child back to life. A woman suffering from hemorrhages touches the clothing of Christ and is immediately healed—such is the power of Christ.
God did not make death. We are told today that God formed us to be imperishable, so death really has no power over us unless we choose it. Christ brings us back to life each time we come to Mass. Talitha koum, he says to us as we come near the altar to receive the Eucharist—arise! The woman suffering from hemorrhages touched his clothing and was healed; then how much more healed are we who eat his body and drink his blood?
Homily preached on Sunday, June 30th 2024 at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary