Several years ago, at the beginning of 1999, I was deeply moved when, along with the Sisters of St. Charles Borromeo in Moravské Budějovice, I stood by the deathbed of Fr. Antonín Dvořák SDB. As best we could, we tried to surround the dying man with prayer, and his intense breathing created a strong impression in me that he was laboriously moving toward something great and difficult, that he was truly “working” towards the moment of death. I then prepared a lecture on the rite by which Christians once accompanied their loved ones during their dying. I drew a lot of inspiration from Cardinal Schönborn's book The Way of Transformation, published by the CDK publishing house in Brno in 1998. I occasionally revisit these thoughts and continue to engage with them.
This time I want to focus our attention on the prayer that has a central significance in the mentioned ritual of entrusting the dying to the Lord, and actually even on the single word that represents the core of this prayer.
Entrusting
At the beginning, however, it is worthwhile to first reflect on what the entire mentioned rite is called: ordo commendationis animae.1 We examined the meaning of the Latin word ordo in the last issue of our journal in an article about the third order (ordo tertius). Now, in this context, the word ordo denotes the order that is to be maintained, that is, the procedure, the sequence. When we act according to it, we can suddenly support that great role that accompanying the dying person plays, drawing on the experience of many generations of Christians before us. Furthermore, the name of the rite speaks of the soul, of the entrusting animae, which corresponds directly to the physical experience that while the body of the dying person remains among us and will be the object of our care after death (preparation for burial and the burial itself), the living person is more than just a body, and this "more" is the subject of our care through prayer at the dying person's side.
However, the heart of the naming of the prayers for the dying lies in the Latin word commendatio. Each of us can consider, according to our linguistic sensitivity, whether we prefer to translate into English: the rite of entrusting the soul or the rite of committing the soul, but it is more beneficial at this moment to recognize the biblical background of this naming of the entire rite. In general, it is essential to keep in mind when dealing with the texts of these prayers that these prayers were not composed “from a green table” but sprang from the hearts of people who knew the psalter by heart and had many other biblical texts firmly engraved in their memory. From this "substratum" of intimate knowledge of Scripture (in its Latin version used by the medieval Church of the West) arose the prayers of these rites.2 Behind this designation ordo commendationis animae undoubtedly stands the verse of the psalm
Ps 31:6: Into your hands I commend my spirit;
you have redeemed me, O Lord, God of truth.
In the Catholic liturgical translation: “Into your hands I commend my spirit, Lord, faithful God, you will deliver me.” However, as the Latin text suggests, the second part of the psalm is often understood as an action that has already occurred, a past event. (This psalm is one of the texts in which urgent pleas are directly intertwined and alternated with expressions of gratitude for deliverance already provided). This more traditional understanding of the stated verse is also maintained in the ecumenical translation:
“I place my spirit into your hands,
you have redeemed me, Lord, faithful God.”
And this verse has been prayed by the church for centuries at the end of each day in Compline. “God (I trust in you), into your hands I entrust my life.” The current Czech text, which the antiphon continues, is rather loose: “You lead and protect me, faithful God.” The literal use of the biblical verse in the Latin or “Dominican” breviary: “You have redeemed us, Lord, faithful God,” helps to realize and confess that God not only leads and protects us as His people but that we have been redeemed and that we could experience this even during this particular, just-ending day.
Entrusting oneself into God's hands is a constant part of our life with God; it occurs, in fact, with every act of faith, in prayer, in every situation where we give God our trust and do not rely on ourselves, our ingenuity, our strengths, and various “safeguards.” We thus solemnly entrust ourselves in baptism; a demonstrative expression of this in the life of the church is the religious vows. And this entrusting is something we declare every evening before going to bed in Compline and it should culminate at the evening of our life, at our last breath. This is also shown by the example of the Lord Jesus Himself:
Lk 23:46: Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” And having said this, he breathed his last.
In the Latin version: “Pater, in manus tuas commendo spiritum meum!” This is therefore a direct citation from the Old Testament psalm that we mentioned.
The Service to a Brother (Sister)
Cardinal Schönborn uses – from the Dominican ritual – a broader name for this rite: commendatio animae in transitu fratris, and he translates it: the entrusting of the soul at the brother's return home.3 The mention that it is about accompanying a brother (or sister), although it comes from the monastery environment where the terms “brother, sister” are used in everyday contact, reminds us of our deep mutual Christian solidarity through faith and baptism, as is clearly expressed in the New Testament. The rite commendatio animae presupposes that there is a bond of common faith between the dying and us who are gathered around him, most often also previous common participation in prayers and services, perhaps for years. We surround someone with our prayer who is not only “in need” but is also closely connected to us, that is, our brother, our sister.
In the Latin text of the Acts of the Apostles, we encounter such commendatio fratris, or rather in the plural fratrum. Therefore, belonging to the life of the church is also that we entrust one another to the Lord. This expression is used in two places when describing the actions of St. Paul.
Acts 14:23: And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed.
Thus, Luke summarizes Paul's establishment of church communities in Asia Minor. And when Paul bids farewell to the Christians of Ephesus, he uses these words:
Acts 20:32: And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified.
Passover
So: entrusting another is an ancient practice of the church. To whom do we entrust the dying with our prayer? Let us set this aside for a moment. It would be a pity to pass over without noticing that the Dominican ritual referred to the dying brother as his transitus – literally: passage, signifying (from something) to something, from one side of something to the other side, over something.4 Perhaps you remember a very interesting article by our Father Ivan God of the Hebrews.5
On the background of the entire Scripture, he explained to us that through faith we are all Hebrews, meaning wanderers. And our God is “the God of the Hebrews,” the God who calls to us to leave every settling, to step closer to Him, to love. To believe means to transition. And transition is transitus. We find this word in a very important place in Scripture, in the account of the preparation for the Passover and the exit of Israel from Egypt:
Ex 12:11: ... for it is the Lord's Passover (Pascha). On that night I will pass through the land of Egypt...
Elsewhere in Scripture, the term transitus simply signifies the passage through a certain territory. In 1 Cor 16:7, St. Paul writes: “I do not want to see you now just in passing (literally: in the manner of transit),” so “transit” refers to a passing without any longer stops. And yet elsewhere in Scripture, the word transitus has the meaning of instability, uncertainty of one’s life lot: “For the shadow of transition is our time...” (Wis 2:6; so literally in Latin). At another time – in Ps 144:14 (according to the Vulgate) – it denotes forced migration, which one would wish to be spared from in one’s constant tendency towards settling. “Let there not be a breaking down of walls nor exile (transitus)...” it stands in our contemporary translation, but the Latin transitus allowed the thought also of our departure from this world.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church speaks unequivocally about this: “All the sacraments (...) aim at the final Passover of God's child, which leads him through death into life in the Kingdom” (art. 1680).
The Actual Text of the Prayer of Entrusting
The rite of entrusting the dying begins with the calling together of brothers or sisters and their gathering around the bed of the dying. Then, litanies to all saints are recited. After the prayer that concludes the litanies, the text of the ritual states: “Then this prayer is to be said unconditionally,” which indicates that the following prayer is considered the most important part of the rite, that must never be omitted, although otherwise it is assumed that the sequence of prayers in the book will largely be adjusted based on how quickly the person is dying and how much time for prayer those around him have. The text of the key prayer thus reads:
Depart, Christian soul, from this world,
in the name of God, almighty Father, who created you.
In the name of Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, who suffered for you.
In the name of the Holy Spirit, who was poured into you.
In the name of angels and archangels.
In the name of thrones and dominions.
In the name of principalities and powers.
In the name of cherubim and seraphim.
In the name of holy apostles and evangelists.
In the name of holy martyrs and confessors.
In the name of holy monks and hermits.
In the name of holy virgins and all saints and holy ones of God.
May today your place be in peace and your dwelling on holy Sion.
Through the same Christ, our Lord.
Amen.
This prayer also has to a large extent the form of a litany (even though there is no audible response following each verse). The entire rite began with a litany to all saints, now there is this prayer, and we also encounter this type of prayer in other prayers at the bedside of the dying. I am convinced that there is experience and great wisdom hidden behind this. The dying person cannot formulate any prayers in his own words, and even following the spontaneous prayer of another is difficult for him, as it requires a great deal of concentration, which he lacks in his struggle. But a litany is a prayer that flows continuously in a steady, monotonous stream, and even if the dying person “loses” track of it for a moment and does not perceive it, he can easily rejoin it after his awakening.
What is the biblical background of this prayer? The words expressing God's action toward the individual persons of the Trinity are not citations from Scripture. They briefly express a summary of the Church's faith: the mystery of the Trinity and the mystery of salvation. It is interesting that while the Carmelite rite immediately continues with the mention of angels, the rite of entrusting the soul presented in the Roman Ritual (that is, in the manual of rituals for the entire Catholic Church) places the verse: “In the name of the glorious and holy Mother of God, the Virgin Mary, in the name of Saint Joseph, the illustrious Spouse of this Virgin,” between the Trinity and angels. How curious, and the Carmelites, despite all their Marian piety and special attention for relief from purgatorial sufferings (let's recall the so-called Saturday Bull), did not explicitly mention the Virgin Mary at this moment. This is indeed interesting. It would probably not be too difficult to decipher why things have developed this way, but it would require more thorough study and a scholarly library.
The mentioned quartet: thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers is taken from Col 1:16, where St. Paul enumerates that all creation, earthly and heavenly, is subject to Christ. With the angels and archangels and with cherubim and seraphim, it is similar in both cases: we know each of the mentioned categories of heavenly spirits from Scripture, but I have not found them paired together in Scripture.
The Power of the Name
Today, we do not use the phrasing “in the name of” in ordinary life; we only know it from the beginning of services and prayers (when making the sign of the cross) or from film scenes – like an arrest: “In the name of the law...!” I will not delve into detailed explanations here, but I will mention three passages from Scripture, from which it will be clear that such phrasing is, on the contrary, close and dear to Scripture.
David says to Goliath: “You come to me with a sword, a spear, and a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied” (1 Sam 17:45).
After the psalmist has described deliverance from human hatred, flood, and snares, he ends with the confession: “Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth” (Ps 124:8).
And after Pentecost, Peter says to the lame man: “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth – rise up and walk!” (Acts 3:6).
Jerusalem and Peace
The content of the blessing or wish that is pronounced to the dying stands at the end of the litany and is a quotation from Ps 76:3. But just recalling how this psalm is known to us from the Breviary prayer does not help. The wording that we recite: “His dwelling is in Salem, his abode on Zion,” is different in the Latin Vulgate: salem was not understood as a place name (although in Gen 14:18 Melchizedek, king of Salem, goes to meet Abraham, and tradition saw in Salem an abbreviated form of the name Jerusalem and Melchizedek was considered the eternal priest, cf. Ps 110:4 and Heb 5:10), but was translated – in meaning: peace. This was also aided by the overall tone of the psalm. In our breviary, this psalm is titled: Thanksgiving for Victory; I prefer the title: Victorious Hymn after the Destruction of Enemies.6 In the Vulgate, a title was even inserted that connected this psalm to a specific victory over the Assyrians (cf. 2 Kings 19 and Is 37). Here we recognize the Lord as the one who paralyzes the enemy's entire military force with fear, who destroys enemy weapons, so that the enemy falls silent, overwhelmed. This image fits well not only with the idea that the Lord resides in Jerusalem (under siege by the Assyrians) but also with the idea that the Lord Himself is in peace; the enemy's plots cannot reach Him at all, or that He has brought peace to the place of His dwelling; the besieged city could once again breathe easier, free from the enemy. It would be good for us to state the text of the psalm in a broader context:7
Known is God in Judah,
His name is great in Israel.
And his place is peaceful,
and his dwelling on Zion.
There he broke the strength of bows,
shield, sword, and war.
Thus, placed into the prayer of entrusting the dying, it goes to a blessing or wish towards the dying, the content of which is to find rest in peace8 and to come before God's face, on Zion. Whoever knows the entire psalm realizes that in this verse, the unspoken: this peace and dwelling on Zion is achieved through God's victory. And the fact that we pray this psalm during the “daytime prayer of the Church” (in the Breviary) every second Sunday (during the prayer of the day) teaches us to connect this psalm and each of its verses with God's and Jesus' Easter victory. His death and resurrection are like a trodden path, which we want the dying person for whom we pray to also walk. And when at the beginning of this wish for the dying stands the word “Today... (may your dwelling be...)”, we cannot help but recall that “today” which the Lord Jesus promises to the repentant thief on the cross: “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Lk 23:43).
“There is an immense multitude looking down on us!” (Heb 12:1)
I promised to return once again to the question of to whom are we entrusting the dying. Of course to the Lord, God in Trinity. But it is impossible to overlook in this and in other prayers of the rite the overall scenery in which this transitus of the dying takes place. No one is an isolated individual: one of us departs, and so our community gathers around him, he departs to the Lord, but to God surrounded by a host of angels and saints who stand before God – in service and praise. And these are also invited to accompany the deceased before God's face, to bring him joyfully along. During this passage, the (final) plots of the enemy of salvation and his company are also taken into account. In one of the prayers that follow in the rite, this is thoroughly, broadly, and poetically expressed, but that is material for another article.
Departure
We still need to focus on – as I mentioned right at the beginning – one word that I have called the core of the mentioned prayer, and that is the word: “Depart.” When we think about the exact content of this call, we are struck by the variety of shades of meaning with which we encounter in the various translations of this prayer into English. The mentioned book by Cardinal Schönborn translates: “Depart, Christian soul,...” A former prayer book of the Brno diocese, which presents the entire “Commendation of the Dying” in detail, translates, however: “Go,...”9 An old Baroque translation reads: “Go and be at peace, dear soul,...”10
In the Latin original, it reads: “Proficiscere.” Exactly in this form – in the imperative mood – we find this phrase in Scripture three times. In Gen 24:51, at the request of Abraham's servant for Rebekah to become Isaac's wife, Laban and Bethuel reply: “Take her and go, that she may become the wife of your lord.” When Jacob is to find his bride, Isaac commands him: “Go to the land of the Arameans...” (Gen 28:2). And the prophet Gad sends David: “Do not remain in the rocky stronghold. Depart to the land of Judah” (1 Sam 22:5). Other forms of this verb can be found in Scripture at many other places. Frequent is in the patriarch stories in Gen, but primarily in the book of Numbers when describing the journey of the Israelites through the desert. It permanently belongs to the vocabulary of the Latin text of Scripture, appearing throughout the Old Testament and in the New Testament books.
In relation to the situation of dying, it is significant that this verb denotes going on a distant journey – whether real (as are the journeys of St. Paul and Barnabas described in Acts), or imagined – like the landowner who leased a vineyard to wicked farmers (Mt 21:33ff.) and the man who entrusted his wealth in talents to servants during his absence (Mt 25:14ff.).
Furthermore, it is important for us that this verb does not merely denote a shift from one place to another, but also the moment when this journey begins. Thus, in this word is expressed both the effort and the difficulties that this “detachment from a place” entails. It is not some vague “going away,” but a transition from lingering in one place to movement.
In addition to these two general shades of meaning, let us mention two specific places in Scripture where this form of the verb stands. When the Lord struck down the firstborn in Egypt with the tenth plague, Pharaoh commanded the Israelites to leave. “The Israelites went out from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides children” (Ex 12:37). This is a moment of extraordinary importance in the history of God's people. Passover is primarily the moment of departure.
In the first letter of Peter, it writes about the Lord Jesus: “He went into heaven, is at God's right hand with angels, authorities, and powers being subjected to him” (1 Pet 3:22). Thus, departure here refers directly to the departure to heaven. The mention of angels, authorities, and powers is also familiar to us.
This my contemplation on the invitation: “Depart, Christian soul,” and its biblical substrate was completed by Fr. Ivan when we were discussing these thoughts together, revealing to me the Hebrew origin of the expression we have been examining. According to Fr. Ivan, the Hebrew verb standing in the original text literally means “to tear out,” the tent pegs from the ground. A similar word is also present in Akkadian. It thus means to set out on a journey, to detach oneself from the place where Israel (or the one in question) has temporarily settled.
Imperative
Let us not overlook that the prayer we are examining uses the imperative form of the verb. In fact, here those who pray are commanding the dying person. “Depart!” Thus, they are not saying, “Stay,” nor are they addressing God: “Keep him with us!...” I have already mentioned that the dying, thanks to which I have contemplated all these thoughts, made me feel like he was moving towards something great, not sinking into nothingness. And it is not just my feeling; others have also told me how, at the deathbed of a person they deeply loved, it became clear to them that now it was time to let go of him, not to hold on.
For a Free Continuation...
We can once again take the catechism into hand to perhaps compare our thoughts with it and receive prompts for further contemplation and prayer on this theme. I will point out two of its articles. About funeral rites, the catechism says:
“The Church, which sacramentally carried the Christian during his earthly journey as a mother in her womb, accompanies him at the end of his journey to entrust him 'into the hands of the Father'. She entrusts to the Father, in Christ, the child of his grace, and in hope, she buries the seed of the body, which will rise from the dead in glory” (art. 1683).
And regarding the preparation for our own dying: “The Church urges us to prepare for the hour of our death ('From sudden and unprovided death, deliver us, Lord' – litany to all saints), to ask the Mother of God to intercede for us 'at the hour of our death' (Hail Mary), and to entrust ourselves to Saint Joseph, patron of a happy death” (art. 1014).
