Memento Mortis

On this blog, I wrote along these lines:

God did *not* "will" it. If you want to say He "allowed" this death, understand that He allowed it in the sense that He "allows" His world to function according to its natural tendencies and natural laws. He does not meddle, generally speaking, with the workings of the world. When He does, it is called a miracle, but it wouldn't be right, or just, or even good, if He were constantly sticking His fingers in to redirect the order of things. And we would cease to have miracles. We would cease to have a trustworthy world if it didn't function according to its own laws.

Death always is senseless and stupid and hard. We were not, in the original scheme of things, made for death. We were made for life, and not just life but a life lived in full, natural communion with our God.We were not made to say goodbye. 
It is sin, and sin only, which causes death and hurt and grief. I learned a long time ago that He does not ask anything of us that He has not already done, and done to an infinite degree more than we. Not that this makes the reality of the thing any easier. I know, too, that sometimes the worst thing of all is knowing that we are strong enough to take it. Strong enough to wake up every morning, to live each day, and survive. Sometimes that is the hardest thing to bear of all.
On the other hand . . . we were made to prepare for death. Our life here should not be one where we flee, constantly terrified, throwing our arms over our eyes or burying our heads in the sand in order to hide from the inevitable. And I cannot help but think that we lost that sense of victory over death so apparent in the Scriptures and early Church Fathers: that a good death is a triumph. That when a holy man or woman dies, we truly do not mourn them, for they have in point of fact run the race, and won. Oh death, where is thy sting? says the Apostle. And he means it. This was a man who lived in the shadow of death daily, for whom to be a believer was to seek a death sentence, and this was his answer. Where is thy sting?
I do grieve, for myself, for the family and friends left behind. But there is peace, peace in the knowledge that a body dead does not mean a soul, a self, dead. By death He tramples death. He has won, and through Him, so have we.
So grieve, but do not rage; weep, but know--know in your head and heart and bowels--that He weeps with you, and, like you, longs for the day when all things will be made new. And trust Him, that in His providence and might, He will, indeed turn the greatest grief to something beautiful.

Why stand ye gazing? Know you not that He has ascended to the Father?

and He became sin

last friday, 14 September, the Catholic Church celebrated the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross. i lost track of the dates and couldn't have told you that, but the boys and i try to make it to Mass on fridays, regardless, so by the grace of God, we made it.
the first reading of this feast is the story of the israelites compaining in the desert, so they are punished with a course of serpents. as they lay dying, they begin to repent, so God tells Moses to raise up a serpent on a pole, and whomever gazes on it will be saved from death.

photo courtesy of artvalue

this is viewed as one of the first images of the Crucifixion, but it always has puzzled me. a serpent is a symbol of satan and sin, not of Christ, so why is this an image of the crucifixion?
the biggest sin that the israelites commit after leaving egypt, the one that kept them in the desert for forty years and brought the serpents to them, was grumbling against God--some translate it as "murmering" against God for not leading them directly to the promised land. this whole thing has so many layers of symbolism that it is hard to stay focused: for us, egypt is our own sin, and the desert is our own life, which gives us the opportunity to become pure, to enact our salvation and live out grace so that we can stand with God, with nothing between Him and us. because any speck of sin is incompatible with God's presence (hence the strongest argument for Mary being pure from sin: if Christ was to live in her, she could not have had original sin. Christ and sin cannot cohabitate). so it makes sense that sin must die, typified by the serpent on the pole, before we enter heaven.
but Christ was sinless.
then i remembered an image that an artist i knew many years ago had been given. i do not remember the whole scene, except that it depicted Christ in profile. in iconography, saints are always shown with their whole face, which is why if one is looking off to the side, the face looks out of proportion: so it can show the whole of it. and which is why, if you look at an icon of the last supper, you can tell which is judas, because he is the only one shown in profile. so this friend remarked that this image was blasphemous, unless taken in the context of that verse that Christ was made sin . . .
the verse is 2 Corinthians 5.21, and the KJ translation reads, "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."

giotto's crucifixion

this, then, is why the image of the serpent can typify Christ: the Christ who died on the Cross took on and became our sin. and this is the only way in which we can be saved, is if we nail our sin to the Cross with Christ. our sinfulness must die, because anywhere that sin holds, is not held by Christ. every sinful habit, every vice to which we cling, is not saved. this, then, is what purification means, and what it means to be crucified with Christ so that the new nature may live, so that we may be God's righteousness.