Preparing for a Good Death: Graduation, Chesterton, and the Ballad of the White Horse
A few weeks ago now, the Chesterton Academy of Notre Dame, where I serve as Headmaster, graduated its first official seniors. It was a wonderful event filled with hope and joy. Because we are a small school, I ended up delivering the commencement address. I share it with you all now as a hopeful reminder that this life, as it is now, is not the end, but that there is much we can do before the real beginning.
Dear Parents, Students, Faculty, Staff, Board Members, Benefactors, and all supporters of the Chesterton Academy of Notre Dame, thank you. Thank you for all of the love and support and prayer you have given to this school, so that we can stand here today with our first official graduates.
Class of 2022, as we have talked about many times over this past year, this life we lead is a journey, a journey ultimately to the Beatific Vision, but in the in between times, it is a journey to a good death. Together we have journeyed through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven with Dante. We have followed the story of Benedick and Beatrice from pride to love. And we have sallied forth with Don Quixote, seeing the world through a madman’s eyes. You have sought to understand virtue, the laws that govern moving bodies, the invisible particles that seem to hold the visible world together, you have sung to the glory of God, played fairies, lovers, and simple-minded actors, painted the hands of Christ, you have looked upon number and seen in it the face of God. But now, your journey with us is at an end. You will be heading out and onto new paths, new journeys.
If there is one thing I hope you do not forget from your time with us, it is this: We are fighting the long defeat. This life will not end with us on top. Tolkien writes about this in both his fiction and his letters. In one letter, Tolkien writes to a fan concerning history, "Actually, I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect 'history' to be anything but a 'long defeat' - though it contains (and in a legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples or glimpses of final victory." This is not the nihilism we encounter in modern philosophies, or which may have hid behind Old Norse religion. Rather, it is a reminder that Christ will make all things new, but only after all things first die. It may seem strange, at first, to be talking about death when you may feel like you are preparing yourselves for “real life.” But hopefully you remember your Plato and Boethius, and that the philosophical life, the examined life, is preparation for a good death.
Before the coming of Christ, death was a beast, a monster to be feared. It was the wage of sin, the Apostle Paul tells us. But when Christ came, he defeated death by dying, which led Paul also to proclaim, Where o death is thy victory, Where o death is thy sting? Now, from death comes the beginnings of new life. Christ’s dying and harrowing of Hell, the abode of the dead, has so transfigured death that St. Francis of Assisi was able to say in his “Canticle of the Sun,” “Praised be You, my Lord through Sister Death, from whom no-one living can escape. Woe to those who die in mortal sin! Blessed are they She finds doing Your Will.” All endings, even the daily ending of sleep, are little deaths. So too is this, your graduation. But just as the death of sleep leads to the new life of waking, just as the death of Autumn and Winter leads to the new life of Spring and Summer, so too this death of graduation will lead to new lives for each of you.
As you enter these new lives, do not forget the lessons you have learned here with us. Do not forget the lessons of Dante, Plato, Augustine, Don Quixote, and Aristotle. And most importantly, do not forget the one in whom all these stories and disciplines unite; do not forget Christ. He is the one in whom, for whom, and through whom, all things hold together. That is the lesson of a specifically Catholic, classical education. It is not just that the various classes you took while here are more than discreet individual subjects that have no bearing upon one another. It is to say that they are united and what’s more, they are united in the person of Jesus Christ.
I am so very proud of all you. Your intellectual curiosity in you classes here will lead you well in the rest of your lives. Never lose it. Hold on to this desire to love and know the Truth, for Christ is the Truth. And he is the Way. So all of these pilgrimages we have been on together have been leading us to the same source, Christ.
Finally, as you prepare to move on to your next steps, never forget what you owe to our Blessed Mother. She has been our patroness alongside her servant, G.K. Chesterton. Chesterton is well-known for his devotion to Our Lady. In perhaps his greatest poetic work, The Ballad of the White Horse, Chesterton has King Alfred receive a vision of Mary. In the midst of this, Alfred asks for knowledge about the future, whether or not he will win against the Danes. He does this, thinking it is more humble for him to ask about this than the great secrets of heaven. And yet, Mary responds,
The gates of heaven are lightly locked,
We do not guard our gold,
Men may uproot where worlds begin,
Or read the name of the nameless sin;
But if he fail or if he win
To no good man is told.
Mary reminds Alfred that it is not for us to know the future, but to follow Christ, to be obedient, because the ultimate end is known. Christ will win in the end, no matter how many battles we lose, Christ will win the war. Chesterton has her end her speech to Alfred by saying,
But you and all the kind of Christ
Are ignorant and brave,
And you have wars you hardly win
And souls you hardly save.I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.Night shall be thrice night over you,
And heaven an iron cope.
Do you have joy without a cause,
Yea, faith without a hope?
The hope she means is the hope of immediate victory. It is the long defeat, after all. You too, graduates, cannot have a guarantee of success. You will fail. So, can you take solace in that? Can you find the true Hope, the Hope that is a theological virtue and not just a fleeting desire? Can you, with prayers of our Lady and the grace of our Lord, can you too have joy without a cause, faith without a hope?
David Russell Mosley is a poet and theologian living in Washington State. His second book of poetry, Liturgical Entanglements, is out now. If you want to support his work, please consider donating through the button below.
