I was scrolling on Facebook the other day. Someone had posted a video of a French Canadian Priest, a Franciscan I think, giving a homily to a large crowd. It was some kind of convention. It was on the Feast of the Sacred Heart. He seemed robust. He was praising God, and His Son. He walked back and forth as he spoke, alert, alive. And then, he wasn't. He winced for a moment. Put his hand to the center of his chest, though he continued to speak of God without abatement. And then he fell down. And died.
I had the sense, though the Facebook post did not indicate so, that this was not a very recent event. In fact, it happened just over twenty five years ago, June 26, 1992. I wanted to know more about this priest, beyond the capture of his death on live television. I could find almost nothing other than he founded an order, and of course, that he was a speaker. But I could not even locate an obituary.
It's not like I don't know that people die all the time. I have been to enough funerals. I have been in a room just as someone (both my parents) died, or just after. It is no surprise that we can go from life to death in a fraction of a moment. But I have never seen it quite like this. Fr. Hurtubise wasn't (apparently) sick. When he died, he was doing his job. He died, literally, on the job, smack in the middle of daily life.
In some ways, it doesn't feel like it has anything to do with me. And then in a flash, I know that it does. It doesn't scare me, precisely (unless I happen to be in an airplane flying across country in which all I can think about is the descent of the plane and the inevitable result), but it makes me a little mad at myself. I have lived in perpetual anxiety. Since I was retired from my job, there are fewer triggers for that anxiety, but it still rears its ugly head, cyclical thought and doubt, resolve and doubt again about the least thing. And seeing this video somehow put my life long fears into the realm of the absurd, at the same time knowing that it is unlikely (at this age) I shall ever allow life to unfold without trying to control it with my defense mechanisms. They waste life. I have always known that. I have worked hard to temper these fears, but still I have not lived as I could have for their niggling at me.
Cliche's come to mind, like that old chestnut, "Live in the moment". Well, that's all very well if you have no responsibilities. We all have some responsibility, some more than others. And yet, in observing the small distance of the fall of the priest from homilist to deceased, the phrase rumbles as an exigency in my mind.
The Benedictines have a motto, "Keep death daily before your eyes." They don't mean worry about it, as worry, I have come to know as one who did it endlessly, kills joy. But recognizing that there are things to do now, in this moment, which may not be available in the next. They, of course, are also talking about preparation for the eternal journey, which they, and I, believe in. Maybe that's why I wanted to read more about Fr. Hurtubise. I wanted to know about what had gone before in his preparation for that moment when he felt that twinge and left the world.
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