Let’s Talk About Death Baby! Homily for the Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dies iræ, dies illa,
Solvet sæclum in favilla:
Teste David cum Sibylla.

These dear brothers and sisters, are the opening lines of the hymn Dies Iræ, the day of Wrath, which until recently used to be a part of the liturgy on All Soul’s Day and Requiem Masses. Translated into English they read:

Day of wrath and doom impending!
David's word with Sibyl's blending,
Heaven and earth in ashes ending!

You can see how these words conform to the spirit of the first part of the first reading today:

Lo, the day is coming, blazing like an oven,
 when all the proud and all evildoers will be stubble,
 and the day that is coming will set them on fire,
 leaving them neither root nor branch,
 says the LORD of hosts.

And if we have been paying attention, the readings this month – and especially the first Sunday of this month – have all shared in this focus on death and dissolution. This is because November is the month when Holy Mother Church invites us, to not only pray for the faithful departed, but to contemplate our own death.

My dear brothers and sisters, death, and preparation for it, is far too important a matter to leave for when we are old, or retired. Which is why, our Holy Mother, invites us to contemplate death especially in the final months of every year. And behold her wisdom, for nature herself – at least in the Northern hemisphere – with the shortening days and lengthening nights, with smoky evenings and misty mornings, suggests the end of time.

As ever Our Lord is at hand to offer words of wisdom to aid this contemplation:

While some people were speaking about
how the temple was adorned with costly stones and votive offerings,
Jesus said, "All that you see here--
the days will come when there will not be left
a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down."

Lo, the day is coming! Dies iræ, dies illa! In other parts of the Gospel Our Lord offers the supporting advice (Mt 6: 19-20),

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.

And how shall we store these treasures in heaven? By praying, as I recommended last week, unceasingly! Grow in love of Our Lord, His Blessed Mother and His Angels and Saints.

In the second reading today, St. Paul offers another counsel, live ordered lives. Any life which is not ordered towards the transcendental, not ordered towards Christ, is disordered. A life that is spent in contemplating Christ, and His church, and contemplating the fleeting nature of our life on earth, will be one that will ensure that when the Day of Judgement arrives, we will experience it not as the fire of a blazing oven but like

the sun of justice with its healing rays.

Let us turn our minds once again to the question of death. How must we, as Catholics, face death? I recently encountered an anecdote that illustrates beautifully how our focus in this life must be the life to come. An elderly couple consecrated themselves to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. A year later, the wife was diagnosed with cancer and was fading rapidly. Her husband did not wish that she die without the sacraments but was unable to contact their parish priest. And then, providentially, he encountered a priest in the hospital who was able to provide the sacraments after which the lady died. In retrospect, the husband recalled the promise of Our Lord via St. Margaret Mary Alacoque:

The all-powerful love of My Heart will grant to all those who shall receive Communion on the First Friday of nine consecutive months, the grace of final repentance; they shall not die … without receiving their Sacraments.

This, my dear brothers and sisters, is the way in which we prepare for death. We do not necessarily ask, Our Lord for miraculous cures – though there is nothing wrong if we do – but for the grace of a good death – a death fortified by the sacraments to avoid the fires of hell.

One last word. Many of you would be familiar with the words of the hymn Anima Christi. I would like to reflect on the penultimate lines of this prayer:

Ab hoste maligno defende me.
In hora mortis meae voca me.

From the wicked foe, defend me.
At the hour of my death, call me

My dear brothers and sisters, I cannot speak authoritatively about the hour of death, but I have it on good sources, that the hour of death is the hour of the greatest temptation – when all the pleasures of life, especially our own lives, flash before us. Faced with death, we seek to refuse its reality and cling to the ephemeral pleasures of the flesh. This can be a dangerous moment, for in that moment of the final temptation, we could reject Christ and embrace the empty promises of the Malignant one – the devil.

Which is why the hymn pleads for Our Lord to call us; which is why the Lord’s prayer ends with:

Do not bring us to the test, but deliver us from evil.

The hour of our death is the hour of our test. A soul that has spent its life in the contemplation of death, in the performance of good works, in ceaseless prayer and calling out to the angels and the saints, Our Blessed Mother and Our Lord – the Bone Iesu of the hymn – will not fail at that moment to call on Our Lord to deliver us from temptation.

Nossa Senhora da Boa Morte, rogai por nós.

(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful at the Cathedral parish of St. Catherine of Alexandria, Old Goa on 15 Nov 2025.)

(Image reference: Memento Mori: a skeleton in a niche, Master IAM of Zwolle, late 15^th cent., The Met, New York.)