Agony, Death

See also the opposite: Life, Living.

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The death of Saint Joseph. Villeréal - Church Notre-Dame - (Stained glass of the life of Joseph)

Death and the agony that precedes it are the ultimate Trials of human life. These can turn into joy for the one who dies in the Lord:

Remember this lesson, you who are dying, to deserve to have Jesus near you to comfort you. And even if you have not deserved it, dare also to call me near you. I will come. Hands full of graces and comfort, the Heart overflowing with forgiveness and love, on the lips words of absolution and encouragement.

Death loses all harshness when it takes you into my arms. Believe it. I cannot abolish death, but I make it gentle for those who die trusting in Me."

In "The Gospel as It Was Revealed to Me"

Death

• Jesus prays with psalms for the happy death of Joseph.
• Remember this lesson, you who are dying, to deserve to have Jesus near you to comfort you. And even if you have not deserved it, dare also to call me near you. I will come. Hands full of graces and comfort, the Heart overflowing with forgiveness and love, on the lips words of absolution and encouragement.
  Death loses all harshness when it takes you into my arms. Believe it. I cannot abolish death, but I make it gentle for those who die trusting in Me."
• Why the death of the Redeemer.
• Oh! Death without Jesus! What horror! Why did I drive Him away?
• Happy death of the righteous Jonah.
• The peaceful death of the grandfather of Marziam, a righteous man: after being reassured about his Eternal Salvation and forgiven of his sins, he dies peacefully in the arms of Jesus: "One falls asleep in Peace, thanks to You... Thank you, Lord..."
  In the last moments, Jesus surrounds him with His arm, lifts him up, and prays (the psalms). Then He says: "Go in Peace, just Soul!"
• Reward and punishment.
• Death in itself is expiation.
• God does Good in all He does. When He frees a Soul - which is not obvious to men whose intelligence is relative - when He frees a Soul, He always does it for a greater Good, of the Soul itself and of those united to it.
• In truth, I tell you that death will be the supreme goodness for many who in this way will learn to what extent man becomes demonic, to reach a point where Peace will console them from this knowledge and turn it into hosanna because it will be united to the unspeakable joy of release from Limbo."
• In the name of the Truth that I am, I promise you that I will lean on the pillow of your agony.
• (Jesus prays for the Judas's soul to be saved): Heaven is closed and silent! ... Is this the horror that I will have with Me until Death?
• Life is preparation for death, just as death is preparation for the greater Life. How gentle it is then to die! To rest your weary head on the breast of the Father, to gather in His embrace, saying through the clouds of fading life: "I love You, I hope in You".
• Truly I tell you death is a gift when it serves to prevent new sins and takes the man while he is reconciled with his Lord.
• The more a man is wrapped in the Darkness of a false Religion, or in unbelief, the more he fears death.
• The one who expires in her Mary hears only the voices of the angelic choirs swirling around Mary. He does not see the Darkness, but the gentle radiance of the Morning Star.
• To accept from God the hour of death without asking that it be advanced or delayed by a minute.
• You see how what seems trivial when we are full of life becomes a great, dreadfully great thing when death brushes past us. But why want these fears, create them only to find them facing you at the moment of dying, whereas with a holy life, one can ignore the terror of the approaching judgment of God? Doesn’t it seem worthwhile to live as righteous to have a peaceful death?
• The Creator, when creating the first parents, did not intend them for death, […] but only wanted for them the passage from earthly Paradise to the heavenly Paradise.

Comforting those who remain, in Mourning

• Jesus consoles Marziam at the death of his grandfather who says: "Alone! I remain alone!": "He is in Peace, Marziam! He no longer suffers. The 'greatest' Grace of God for him is this: death, and in the arms of the Lord! Do not weep, dear son. Look at him, how he is in Peace... In Peace… Few in Israel have had the Confession that this righteous man had of dying on the chest of the Savior. Come here, into my arms... You are not alone. And then there is God, and that is all, who loves you for the whole world."
• (About Marziam’s pain at losing his grandfather) Maria Valtorta adds: - "And here I make a personal observation. Several times I have found myself in similar circumstances and I have often noticed that those present, with a good intention, or with an intransigence that is not, silence those who mourn having lost a relative. I compare this attitude with the gentleness of Jesus who compassionates the orphan’s suffering and does not expect from him a heroism that would not be natural... How much there is to learn from Jesus’ smallest act!..."

The dead, the departed

• "Let the dead bury their dead." Capernaum, addressed to Elias of Korazim, a young man setting out to bury his father who wants to follow Jesus (Matthew 8:21-22 - Luke 9:57-60) and
• Only the one who does not believe should feel sorrow over a death.
• The 12 works of mercy of the body and the spirit: Burying the dead. – … Praying for the living and the dead.
• One who has passed to a second life has freedom and possibility to watch over us and obtain more for us, Good more than when he loved us in the prison of the body.
• Beyond death there is an eternal life, where spirits will reunite.

Spiritual death

• But if the Most High has this pain, and it is already great, what will be His pain for those of His People who are whitewashed bones, lifeless, spiritless?
• I will only die as Man to rise again in the time of Grace, but as Word I will not die. The Word is Life and it does not die. And whoever welcomes the Word has Life in him and does not die for eternity, but rises again in God, for I will raise him.

In other works of Maria Valtorta

Notebooks

• Catechesis of June 7, 1943: First of all, the tendencies of the flesh, so stubborn despite all the cilices; then, the rises of Pride that constantly tries to swell... I instinctively feel that both die three days after us and that only the goodness of God and a great, very great will on our part, an untiring, prompt, watchful will, can render them harmless and sterilize them against each new wave of corrupting germs corruptors.

Comments on Apocalypse 11:18: "It is the time of judgment for the dead, the time of reward for your servants the prophets, the saints and those who fear your name, the small and the great, the time of destruction for those who destroy the earth".

When you read in the book of John: ‘the hour of judging the dead’, you think this refers to those who have already passed, perhaps centuries ago, to other spheres of mystery, which will be revealed only when someone is introduced there. Yes. Death means the transmigration of the Soul to different zones of the Earth. But there is in John’s word a broader meaning: the dead he speaks of can also be alive according to the flesh, but in reality be, in the eyes of the one who sees, dead.

They are the great dead, for there will be no resurrection for them. Dead to God, they will never again for eternity have the Good of possessing life, that is, God, since God is eternal life.

• Catechesis of July 22, 1943: Living close to me is a joy even in pain. Dying with me at your side is to pass into joy. He who trusts in me should fear nothing on earth and nothing in eternity, for to my true children, I open a Heart of a true Father full of understanding and forgiveness.
• Catechesis of September 8, 1943: Always look at my gentle Mother to see her clearly at the hour of death. He who dies in Mary possesses Jesus immediately.
• Catechesis of October 19, 1943: Stay united to me, stay united. The closer the hour approaches, the more you must stay united to me. Only Jesus helps (...)
  Jesus is the strength of your Soul, Mary the gentleness. Before drinking the vinegar and gall, you must drink the aromatic wine. And it is Mary’s encouraging smile that gives it to you. Balm that made me happy on earth, balm that makes me happy in Heaven and, with God, makes all Paradise happy, my Mother’s maternal smile is a star in life and a star in death. It is above all a star in the suffering of immolation.
  Live united to Mary of whom you are the children as I am. Live on Mary’s Heart, Soul I want to bring to Heaven. The hands of this Mother who does not disappoint her children are full of caresses for you. Her arms hold you Against that breast that bore me and her mouth speaks the words that comforted me.
  So you do not get lost in these last stops on earth, I enclose you in Mary’s dwelling. There, trouble does not enter, for she is the Mother of Peace. There, the Enemy does not enter for she is victorious.

• Catechesis of January 5, 1944: But as long as the last breath lasts, Ecstasy accompanies you, in addition to the pain, towards the Peace of heaven. When the evening of your life comes, the suffering is now completed and from heaven, Peace flows over you, a Peace that does not wait for you but runs to meet you to cover you with its balm after such a martyrdom. Do not be afraid, you who offer yourselves. There has never been anyone but me, the Expiator for the whole world, to know no comfort in my death.
• "Jesus gives an hour of preparation for death." July 14, 1946 (text available in booklet)

In fundamental Christian texts

In the Bible

• O death, how bitter is your mention to the man who lives quietly in the midst of his Goods, to the man who has no worries, to whom all succeeds and still vigorous enough to indulge in pleasure. O death, your sentence is welcome to the needy man, whose strength decreases, whose extreme old age is burdened with all kinds of worries, who Revolt and who has lost patience. Do not fear the sentence of death, remember those who went before you and those who will follow you. (Sirach 41:1-3)

In the catechism of the Catholic Church

• Death is inescapable: It is facing death that the enigma of the human condition reaches its peak.
• Death is a passage.
• Death and ReIncarnation: There is no ReIncarnation after death.

Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992).