Death, even a pope's, is a 'beautiful passage,' preacher tells Curia

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Death, even that of a pope, should not be seen as a tragedy but as a transition filled with Christian hope, the preacher of the papal household told members of the Roman Curia.

"In these hours, we have all prayed for the Holy Father," Capuchin Father Roberto Pasolini said during his fourth Lenten meditation offered for the Curia. "What the Holy Father is experiencing and is living through is not something bad, no matter how it ends. It is a beautiful passage."

If the pope "remains with us a little longer, we will see many more beautiful things; otherwise, he will go to meet the Lord whom he has loved and served in this world," said Father Pasolini.

The Capuchin friar was leading the Lenten retreat for cardinals and senior officials of the Roman Curia in the Vatican audience hall March 9-14. The retreat's theme, "The Hope of Eternal Life," was chosen weeks before Pope Francis' hospitalization.

The Vatican press office said Pope Francis was watching Father Pasolini's talks by video, and the friar began his March 11 talk by greeting the pope and expressing his hope that the meditations on eternal life "would be further medicine" to help the pope heal.

The evening before Father Pasolini offered his reflection on death, the pope's doctors said they had revised their prognosis in view of Pope Francis' stability and improvement.

In his morning meditation March 11, Father Pasolini reflected on death not only as a physical reality but also as a spiritual condition caused by sin.

Drawing from the Book of Ezekiel, Father Pasolini spoke about the prophet's vision of a valley of dry bones, which God commands to rise again through the power of his Spirit.

"Not everything is lost," he said. "Even though it has tragically marked us, what we have called the first death has not destroyed that deep level where, beneath masks and appearances, we are waiting for that original breath, that breath that only God can give us and that can bring our life back to life."

The biblical vision, he said, is not just about Israel's exile but speaks to the experience of all believers who are need of renewal by God but may not know it. The prophets were thus entrusted, he said, with the task of "shaking from their torpor a people, us, who are struggling to realize this situation we are in," namely spiritual death.

The challenge, Father Pasolini said, is that people -- and even the church itself -- often struggle to grasp their need for renewal.

"We spend most of our days thinking more about being mistaken than about being 'dead,''' he said. "We linger more on guilt than on the dead state our souls are in, and this is not only a problem for some of us, for individuals, it can also be a problem for us as a church."

Father Pasolini said that for centuries, and perhaps still, the church has been "a place more concerned with error than with pain, a place more like a court of law than a field hospital."

The preacher urged his listeners to embrace God's will rather than try to control the uncertainties of life and death, reflecting on the words of the Our Father: "Thy will be done."

"If we persevere, we will reach that threshold as Christ did -- with fear, with tears, but also with the hope of crossing over into eternal life," he said.