Man’s Search for Meaning

Fr. Paul Pecchie

The thought of death can be a powerful inspiration for living a fuller life. Victor Frankl survived the Nazi concentration camps by thinking about death. He had been one of Sigmund Freud’s most promising protégés. Then World War II broke out, and he found himself rounded up with his fellow Viennese Jews and shipped off to forced labor. As a way of keeping his sanity amid extreme degradation and torture, he decided to occupy his mind with a psychological analysis of life in the concentration camp.

He was fascinated by the apparent randomness of inmate survival. Often, the most physically fit prisoners would die quickly under the horrible camp conditions, while those who were weak, old, or unaccustomed to hard labor would survive much longer. Frankl wanted to find an explanation.

His investigations and reflection convinced him that the key to survival was meaning: those prisoners who found a reason to survive survived, while those who didn’t, didn’t. For example, Frankl himself made his prison experience into a psychological research project, which put meaning into an otherwise absurd situation and motivated him to keep going. After the war, Frankl used his experience to develop a new school of psychological treatment, called logo therapy, which focuses on relieving psychological troubles through the discovery of meaning, of purpose.

One of the exercises logo therapy uses is taken right from the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius of Loyola although there is no indication that he knew of them. It consists in picturing oneself on one’s deathbed at the end of a long life, and evaluating one’s life decisions from that perspective. At that point, when all the glitter and panache have fallen away, one sees more clearly what really matters in life, what’s truly important. Today, that’s something God wants all of us to do.

The Church often reminds us of this big picture, because she doesn’t want us to give in to the natural, unchristian tendency to avoid thinking about death. The ever-present crucifix is one of these reminders. One of the most common Catholic prayers, the Hail Mary, reminds us of death every time we pray it: “…Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”

In every Mass we pray for the deceased – another reminder. God doesn’t want us to get to our deathbeds and panic – he wants us to die well. And dying well doesn’t mean giving into the evil hopelessness and emptiness of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. No, dying well means dying in Christ’s arms.

The surest way to die well is to live well. One sure way to live well is to keep in mind that we will die whop-de-do- not in an obsessive way, but in a Christian way: by visiting the cemetery, putting flowers on the graves of our relatives, and praying for them; by living closely the rhythm of the Church’s liturgy, which reminds us gently but firmly that this brief life on earth is not all there is; by ministering to the sick and being attentive to the needs and wisdom of the elderly and most importantly, having Mass, the most perfect prayer, offered for the repose of their soul. These simple, ancient Catholic traditions enrich our life-attitudes, relationships, and personal decisions with compassion and truth.

If we live them well, then when we find our own death knocking at the door, we will have no regrets, only smiles, both for the beauty we leave behind, and for the Beauty still in store.