One given from the hagiography is that the saints have some foreknowledge or power over the manner of their deaths. As Naomh Colm Cille said on the day he died (when he was well otherwise), "The Scriptures call this day, the Sabbath, a day of rest, and so it shall be for me." Some of the martyrs are especially powerful. Most embrace death willingly. I cannot believe that Stephen, for instance, did not know asserting the divinity of Christ to the Pharisaic mob would get him stoned.

Most Christians know Paul's remarkable doctrine of baptism, "Because we have died with Christ, we also believe we shall live with him." To some extent, I think this is not just possible in the waters of baptism but through physical death as well. To die with Christ in this latter sense is to take the sins and griefs of the world on your very body.

Last night, I saw that the Patriarch of the West (for that is what John Paul II is most deeply to me, the successor of the Western Emperor in the chair of Peter the Apostle) had a serious urinary infection, which was being successfully treated by antibiotics. The other big news of the day was that Terri Schiavo had starved to death after thirteen days. Today, I read that John Paul has experienced heart failure, nearly the very problem that sent Schiavo into her low brain function but otherwise functioning state. John Paul may be bearing her suffering. My hope is that he will not enter a low brain function state for fifteen years to make the point, but I suspect it is within his powers. From what I can tell, death is near to him and the life of the world to come beckoning in the distance.

ESA(20050401.1)