Dear friend,
Death is too common a thing to speak of it as if it were something new. Our life is nothing more than a loan, from which we must extract as much profit as possible during the time of borrowing. A good departure from this world requires only a brief mourning, for it is a harbor protecting from storms, an entrance into eternal bliss. Immense sorrow for the dead is either a product of self-love or hasty judgment.
Would it not distress you that your friend is moving from a crumbling house and the house itself is being leveled to the ground, if you knew that it would be rebuilt into a far more noble form and provide its inhabitant with joy from a better dwelling? Let then your sister's soul depart without sorrow; let her body return to dust. Turn your eyes away from the ruins of this house and fix them on the majesty of the new building, which, according to the words of Saint Paul, will be indestructible, glorious, mysterious, spiritual, and immortal. Do not consider it suffering that she has been separated from you, but recognize the grace that she was "lent" to you for such a long time. Show no reluctance to return to God what is His, for you have not yet paid any usurious interest for it. Reflect not on how long you could still have enjoyed her company, but on how much earlier you could have lost her, and accept the reality that it is the right of our Lord and Master to establish sufficient reasons for her death. Let Him – with your consent – gather the grapes from His vine and pick the fruits of His own trees; and consider how safe His wonderful creations are in the hands of their Creator, who loves them the most of all and is the most capable of protecting them. For it pleased God to call her, and she was able to depart. And you, the third of them, have these three streams to weave into a cord by saying: The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away; let it be what pleases Him; blessed be the name of the Lord.
Robert
(Robert Southwell, SJ /1561–1595/, letter to a friend, September 30, 1591)
