The unusual power of silently remembering together

The collective silence of remembrance acts is unusual. Listen to its powerful lesson.

Christie Gilfeather

Christie Gilfeather writes about the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible and its relevance to culture. She has a PhD in Biblical Studies from the University of Cambridge and is a parish priest in Hertfordshire.

Princes and army officers walk away from a war memorial while others look on.

Then Prince Charles at the Cenotaph war memorial, 2017.

Number 10, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Every year on the 11th of November at 11am, people across the UK stop whatever they’re doing and keep a two minutes silence in honour of those who have died in war. This collective silence provides the opportunity to reflect on the loss of life and cost of peace. It gives us the chance to consider the conflicts raging around the world today.

Collective silence is an unusual thing in our culture. There are few, if any, other opportunities for silence which are as widespread as the tradition at the centre of Remembrance Day. Silence is, however, a powerful tool in relation to suffering and death. It acts as a reminder that in the face of some horrors, there is simply nothing to say. Presence becomes all that we have to offer, because words simply cannot capture the depth of the sadness to which we bear witness. And we must bear witness to them.

No words are said. People stand alongside each other and bear witness both to the grief and to the light of hope represented by the flickering candle.

Remembrance Sunday is one part of the wider season of remembrance in the church. This season begins with the feast of All Soul’s, when the church gathers to remember by name those who have died.

A powerful tradition lies at the heart of All Soul’s services: the priest reads out a list of names of the dead. If you are grieving a loved one, it is a great relief to hear someone else say their name. Grief can be intensely lonely and easily forgotten by others. But the church promises not to forget, honouring the beloved memories of those missing from our communities on the feast of All Souls. In many churches, after the list of names is read a silence is held in which the congregation comes forward to light a candle in memory of their loved one. No words are said. People stand alongside each other and bear witness both to the grief and to the light of hope represented by the flickering candle.

The value of silence is easily lost in this world which prompts us to rush to speak about everything that is happening. The Bible, though, offers us examples of the power of times of silence and the wisdom that can emerge from them.

They did not speak, because this was not a place for words. They remained with him to bear witness to his suffering without trying to resolve it.

At the beginning of the book of Job in the Old Testament, we find the protagonist in the midst of disaster. Job has lost everything, his home, his livestock, his family and his health. When Job’s friends hear about what has happened to him, they seek him out to be with him amid his suffering. The story tells us that

‘They sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great’.
There are no platitudes here. No hastily put together explanation of why this might have happened or what Job needs to do about it. The friends saw that Job’s suffering was ‘very great’ and they allowed their presence to be enough. They did not speak, because this was not a place for words. They remained with him to bear witness to his suffering without trying to resolve it. In the story this silence eventually gives way to unhelpful words, but it is striking, nonetheless.

We find another example of silence during grief in the New Testament. John’s gospel recounts the death of a friend of Jesus. Lazarus becomes ill and quickly dies, and upon hearing the news Jesus makes haste to join Lazarus’ sisters and bear witness to their pain. There is some dialogue in the story, but the most striking part of it comes when Jesus reaches the grave of his friend. The shortest verse in the Bible is found here. It simply says,

‘Jesus wept’.

At this point, Jesus doesn’t say anything. He simply weeps, moved as he is by the death of his friends and the grief of those around him. Jesus weeps, even though he knows that before long Lazarus will rise from the dead.

But Jesus does not rush to the surprise and joy of resurrection. Jesus’ silence and his weeping is an example of what it means to grieve well alongside others when they are hurting. In what is perhaps one of the purest expressions of the human condition, Jesus responds to the weight of loss and the fragility of life in his silent bearing witness to the loss of his friend.

When we bear witness to the suffering of others without seeking to fill it with our own explanations or opinions, we honour the loss that is before us.

Within the Christian tradition there are also many examples of protest and speech in response to injustice. Silence is vitally important, but at some point, it must give way to speech and action when questions about human dignity are at stake.

But in order to know how to engage in resistance to that which diminishes others, periods of silence are necessary. When we bear witness to the suffering of others without seeking to fill it with our own explanations or opinions, we honour the loss that is before us. That is at the heart of the national two-minute silence for Remembrance Day. In remembering those who have died in war, and considering the conflict that marks our world today, we bear witness to the fragility of the human condition. Out of silence, comes the resources to know how to speak with wisdom.

Explainer

Creed

Death & life

1 November 2023

5 min read

The lost art of dying well and what we can learn from it today

Living well in order to die well doesn’t simply happen. It takes work. It takes preparation. For All Souls Day, Lydia Dugdale asks if we are prepared for death.

Lydia Dugdale

Lydia Dugdale is the author of The Lost Art of Dying. She is Professor of Medicine at Columbia University and Director of the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics. She is a specialist in both medical ethics and the treatment of older patients.

A medieval book illustration of a person dying in bed.

A 15th Century ars moriendi, or ‘art of dying’ image.

Basel University, via WikiCommons.

The first of November marks All Saints Day on many church calendars—a day when we Christians remember our martyrs together with all the faithful, both living and departed. On that day, we celebrate that our communion is not simply with one another on earth but is also with all saints of all time, including those who have died.

For some people, the notion of fellowship with departed saints might be quite exciting. They may have pondered questions about the saints since school assemblies or RE lessons. What was racing through Abraham’s mind when he attempted to sacrifice his son Isaac? What would Mary say a sinless Jesus was like as a toddler? Did Jonah float around inside the great fish, or did he find something on which to perch himself?

But others among us might wish to skip All Saints Day altogether. Talk of dead saints feels positively medieval, even a bit morbid. Some of us might wonder about our own saintliness—or lack thereof. Could we really experience ineffable joy in an afterlife? Moreover, the very suggestion of an afterlife implies that we ourselves must die—an uncomfortable prospect for most of us.

Such divergent reactions to the day are revealing. On the one hand, the idea of having saints to remember is to inspire us to live well. They invite us to examine their lives and to grow ourselves in response. On the other hand, they remind us that our days are numbered. And because our days are numbered, we should attend carefully to what it means to live wisely. Saints teach us that if we want to die well, we must live well.

But living well in order to die well doesn’t simply happen. It takes work. It takes preparation. Which is why this year on All Saints Day it’s worth asking the question: Am I prepared for death?

Death exists as a paradox for Christians—as something at once lurking and vanquished.

In the late Middle Ages, the ars moriendi, or ‘art of dying’ genre of literature developed in response to mass loss of life from a fourteenth-century outbreak of bubonic plague. The genre consisted of a number of handbooks on how to prepare for death. Although the earliest text was anonymous, historians believe that its authorship had a connection to the Western Church. After the Reformation, Protestant versions began to circulate, and later handbooks omitted religious particularity altogether. The handbooks grew in popularity throughout the West for more than 500 years.

This notion of living well to die well lay at the core of the various iterations of the ars moriendi. Early texts warned readers that five temptations lead to dying poorly—temptations to doubt, despair, impatience, greed, and pride. If you don’t want to die a doubting, despairing, impatient, greedy, and proud person, you must cultivate the virtues of faith, hope, patience, generosity, and humility now. But the ars moriendi texts were very clear that virtue did not happen to a person all at once at the end of life. Rather, it required habituation. Cultivating virtues was the work of a lifetime. If you want to be remembered as a person of sound character, a generous person of hope and good will toward others, you cannot delay making such attributes a regular practice. If you are willing to be martyred for your faith—as some of those early saints were—you have got to be sure it is a faith worth dying for.

I once met a man who had converted from the religion of radical self-centeredness to Christianity. When I asked him why, he told me that of all the world’s religions, Christianity had the best story. As with the martyred saints, it was for him a story worth dying for. And All Saints Day reminds us that in Christianity, death is stranger than you might think.

Death exists as a paradox for Christians—as something at once lurking and vanquished. Death is the enemy that at long last will be destroyed, and death has already been swallowed up in victory. But you might ask: if death has already been defeated, what remains to be destroyed? And if death will be destroyed, how has it then been defeated? This enigma might partially explain why many regular church attenders are neither physically nor spiritually prepared for death. Researchers at Harvard University have shown that people who describe themselves as most supported by their religious communities are also most likely to reject hospice care and instead to elect aggressive life-extending technology.

The story goes as follows. Death is an enemy because it suggests rejection of God. From the beginning, God tells our forebearer Adam that he can freely eat of any tree in the garden but one. If he eats from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he will die. Thus, from the beginning, God equates the possibility of human disobedience with the actuality of death.

Of course, Adam and Eve eat the proverbial apple. And when they do, they don’t immediately die, but they experience a sort of death. For the first time, they become filled with shame and fear. They hide themselves from God. They cast blame. God tells them that moving forward their life will be filled with great suffering. God says to Adam, ‘By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. You are dust, and to dust you shall return.’ Disobedience is what Christians call ‘sin’—and it brings death. Sin severs that once harmonious relationship between God and people—a fact that also grieves God, which is why God does not let death have the final word.

The story gets better. Since we humans cannot possibly undo the drastic results of our disobedience, God becomes fully human in Jesus Christ, so liable to death, while also retaining full, divinity which cannot die. Then, as a human on a cross, he dies as the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of humankind. But this God-Man does not stay dead. After three days in the tomb, Christ is resurrected, defeating death, on what has come to be known as Easter Sunday. Christ’s resurrection functions as a sort of guarantee that all God’s people will one day be resurrected and receive new bodies, that day on which the great enemy of death will be destroyed once and for all. If Adam and Eve brought death into the world, the resurrection hope is that death will be no more.

This year on All Saints Day we have the opportunity to consider what it means to commune with ‘all saints’ extending back to Adam and forward to future generations. We have the opportunity to study the saints and then examine ourselves. What sort of people are we becoming? Are we living well to die well, as the ars moriendi handbooks teach? And of all the stories out there, which provides the greatest hope in life and in death?

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