Holy Living & Holy Dying – Part One

"It is a great art to die well, and to be learnt by men in health..."- Jeremy Taylor

I was listening to a podcast by the Yale Center for Faith & Culture on “The Art of Living and Dying During COVID-19 / Lydia Dugdale, MD”

It was a really interesting podcast and it reminded me the idea of dying well goes back to the middle ages when the bubonic plague was at its worst. There were many devotional books on the ars moriendi – the art of dying.

In our heritage as Episcopalians, there was an Anglican Bishop named Jeremy Taylor who in 1650 & 1651 wrote two books – Holy Living & Holy Dying. (They are still in print today.)

His books were devotionals that both lay and clergy could use in the face of death. His books made the point that if we are to have a holy death, then we start when we are healthy, by living a holy life.

In fact, his point goes beyond only prescriptions but thinking of our lives like an artist would. Living and dying are not two distinct temporalities of human life. Rather, they were two different points along the same continuum. Holy Dying is a matter of holy living.

At the end of our lives, the question for us is what kind of masterpiece will we be?

Over the course of the next several Sundays, I want to explore this holy living and the great art of dying well…

Let me leave you thinking about it this way. These quotes come from Rabbi Zusha of Anipoli (lived 100 years after Bishop Taylor) and get us to think about who we are as individuals in God’s creation:

• "If it were offered to me to exchange places with Abraham, I would refuse. What would God gain from this? He'd still have one Zusha and one Abraham."
• "When I appear before the heavenly court they will not ask, 'Why weren't you Moses'. They will ask, 'Why weren't you Zusha'."