As Meagan Gillmore reported for CT earlier this month, one Canadian pastor said, “I think one of the strongest reasons why MAID has a lot of traction generally in our society is that nobody wants to talk about death.”
For years, I’d wondered how we could change the conversation and equip our patients to walk toward the inevitable. Then one day, in my reading of various books on the subject, I came across a concept known as the ars moriendi, which is Latin for “art of dying.”
I discovered an entire genre of literature—500-years’ worth of ars moriendi handbooks—on how to die well. The earliest version developed in the early 1400s after the bubonic plague, or Black Death, swept through Western Europe, leaving half the population dead.
The central theme of this genre was that dying well is very much wrapped up in how we live. If we want to die well, we have to live well. That includes cultivating a life of virtue, nurturing our communities, and attending to questions of salvific and eternal importance.
On Nov. 1, mourning and celebrating All Saints Day https://t.co/ToVrRcVCtn
— Marvin Olasky (@MarvinOlasky) November 1, 2024