Mrs. Alves is dead.

I read it in the newspaper a couple of weeks ago. Mrs. Alves has finally left this life and gone to meet her Lord.

Now I realize you’re probably wondering who this woman was, and why I consider this to be such a noteworthy event of human history. Well, if you went back in time some 37 years, and asked little 7-year-old Ray Suriani, he’d be more than happy to tell you all about Mrs. Alves. He’d say, "Why, she’s the meanest, nastiest woman in the world! She hates little kids like us. She never smiles. And she’s old—real old—at least 105. And she’s always shouting at us from her flower garden! When we’re playing baseball, and one of us hits a home run into her yard, we’re afraid to go get the ball ‘cause we know we’re gonna get yelled at. In fact, all she ever does is get mad at people. Oh yeah, she’s a bad, mean old lady!"

And all my friends would surely have nodded their heads in agreement.

Then, we grew up.

Now we lived down the street from Mrs. Alves, so I never had a great deal of contact with her after my grammar school days; but when I did see her on occasion during high school and college, I began to notice some startling things about her. First of all, I noticed that she always said, "Hi" to me—and she did it in a friendly manner. She would even smile. And I noticed she wasn’t that old—at least nowhere near 105. Then I began to think, "Well, maybe she isn’t so rotten after all. In fact, maybe she was right to get after us like she did. She works really hard in that flower garden; it’s important to her; she takes pride in it. If I took care of a garden like that, I probably wouldn’t be too happy if a bunch of pint-sized baseball players were always running through it and messing it up."

So my opinion of Mrs. Alves began to change. All of a sudden, she wasn’t so bad. In fact, she was pretty nice.

And so when she passed away a couple of weeks ago, I was genuinely sad. I even said a Mass for the repose of her soul, and put her name in our prayer of the faithful.

Growth changes perception. That’s the point. As we grow, our perception of people and places and the events of life naturally changes—as my perception of Mrs. Alves changed with the passing of time. And that’s good! In fact, if our perception doesn’t change for some reason, it’s usually a sign of an emotional or spiritual disorder.

Which brings us to the important subject of death.

As I just said, a person’s physical growth should be accompanied by a change in their perception of many things—and that includes death. Their understanding of death should deepen and mature with the passing of time. But, as I’ve discovered in my 17 years of priesthood, that’s not always what happens. For whatever reason, some people seem to get trapped in what I would call "childish attitudes" toward death. Consequently, the things they might have said and done at 7 when a relative died, they still say and do at 57 when someone close to them dies.

For example, they consistently blame God for death. They say, "Why did God do this? Why did he make this happen?"—as if God were the dealer of death. Now I can understand a 7 year-old saying that; I can even understand a 57 year-old saying it for a couple of days or months in the midst of his initial, intense grief. But when a 57 year-old keeps saying it for many, many years after the fact, I get concerned and upset. Hasn’t that person read Genesis 3? Hasn’t he learned that death comes from Satan, not God? Doesn’t he believe what we say in the Creed every Sunday—that God is "the Lord and Giver of life"—not the dealer of death?!

It’s interesting—in today’s Gospel story, Martha and Mary almost blame Jesus for Lazarus’ death. Did you realize that? They say to him, "Lord, if you had been here, our brother would not have died."—the implication being, "Where were you, Jesus? This is your fault!" But notice how quickly they move beyond this attitude. As Martha puts it, "But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you."

Jesus was able to help these women, because they didn’t get locked into the perception that he was indirectly responsible for the death of their brother. We need to follow that example, if we want to be open to God’s consoling grace when we lose those whom we love.

Another childish attitude toward death is this one: We don’t talk about it—as if not talking about it will somehow make it go away! Again, I can understand that attitude in a 7 year-old, but not a 57 year-old! I’ve known families who refuse to discuss death with a terminally-ill relative—even though the relative has no problem speaking about it! Now to be sure, there are much more pleasant subjects to discuss, but when someone close to us is about to go home to the Lord, talking about the experience can help us to deal with our feelings (which we need to do), and it can even help us to reach out to God more effectively. Notice that everyone in this Gospel story was willing to talk about what they were experiencing in the face of Lazarus’ death. That includes Jesus, who spoke about the matter at length with his apostles, even before he arrived in Bethany.

Here’s yet another childish attitude about death: I’ll never die. They say that adolescents subconsciously think they’re immortal; that’s why they often take crazy risks with their health and safety. But they’re not the only ones who live as if they can avoid death. Lest we forget, it’s adults who are now trying to come up with ways to freeze people so they can be "brought back to life" in the future.

Here’s a childish attitude toward death which is embraced by some of our most intelligent people right now: I am the master of my own death—and maybe even of the deaths of some others. Martha, Mary, Lazarus and many of those who witnessed this miracle came to realize that Jesus Christ—God—was the master of Lazarus’ death. Throughout this story, Jesus is definitely in control. And that’s the way it’s supposed to be for all of us and for every human person—in death and in life. God is to be our guide through life, and he’s the one who is to determine the time and the circumstances of our death. But sadly that’s not always the way it works these days. The person, for example, who commits suicide believes that he—not God—is the master of his death. So does the person who hastens his demise through drug or alcohol abuse. Those who believe in terrorism or abortion or euthanasia or embryonic stem-cell research or cloning go one step further, and they act as if they’re also the masters of other people’s deaths.

And how about those out there who think that almost everybody will go to heaven when they die? They have separated death from judgment, which is another childish attitude toward death—as well as a big mistake. Hebrews 9 tells us definitively that we will all die once, and after death be judged.

But, on a much more positive note, there are those many good souls, like St. Francis of Assisi, who actually get to the point where they can call death "sister" and embrace it at the moment God determines. I’ve met a number of people like this during my priestly ministry—like Monsignor Struck; and, quite frankly, they always amaze me. They’ve come to the point—sometimes at a young age, but usually after a long illness—where they are ready to leave this life. They’re not anxious; they’re not angry; they’re not depressed—because they know it’s not really "the end!" As I said earlier, growth changes perception. Well their growth—their spiritual growth—has radically changed their perception of death, so much so that they no longer fear it! They see it for what it really is: a door and not a wall! If they once did have any of those childish attitudes I spoke about earlier, they’re long since gone! The words we say with our lips each week in the Creed, they now say in the depths of their hearts: "We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come." They’ve made a good confession, they’ve received the anointing of the sick, and they’re ready to go home—to the kingdom Jesus Christ died to give them. The words of St. Paul in 1^st Corinthians could easily be their personal words: "O death, where is your victory; O death, where is your sting?"

This is the grace of a happy death. It’s actually a grace we should pray for often—even if we’re young and healthy and have every reason to believe we’ll be around for a good long time!