[From Part II, Chapter
IX: “The Work of Love in Remembering One Dead”]
“Weep less bitterly for the dead, for he is at rest.” Sirach 22:11 (NRSV)[1]
We are to love everyone, and
loving means remembering, and so we are to love the dead. But loving those who
have died is a special circumstance, and it shows us what kind of love we are
showing. If we reflect on the way we love the dead, we can see whether we are
showing truly Christian love. Kierkegaard identifies three ways that love for
the dead is unique.
First, he says that showing love
for the dead is “a work of the most unselfish love.” He writes,
“If one wants to make sure that love is completely unselfish, he eliminates every possibility of repayment. But precisely this is eliminated in the relationship with one who is dead. If love nevertheless remains, it is in truth unselfish…. If, therefore, you wish to test for yourself whether or not you love disinterestedly, note sometimes how you relate yourself to one who is dead.”[3]
The dead cannot repay us for our
love: not with favors or gifts, or even with gratitude. They cannot give us any
response to our love, and so love for the dead must be unselfish—because we
cannot gain from it. Compare how you love the living and the departed: do you
love the departed less because they can do nothing for you? If so, then you
must learn to love everyone selflessly.
Next, Kierkegaard tells us that
showing love for the dead is “a work of the freest love.” He writes,
“In order properly to test whether love is entirely free, one eliminates everything which in some way could constrain a person to an act of love. But precisely this is absent in the relationship with one who is dead. If love nevertheless remains, this is the freest love. That which can constrain an act of love from a person is extremely varied and ca hardly be catalogued. The child cries, the poor man begs, the widow importunes, considerations squeeze, wretchedness forces, and so on. But all love in action which is extracted in this way is not entirely free. … On the other hand, one dead does not cry like a child; he does not call himself to memory as the importunate do; he does not beg as does the pan-handler; he does not squeeze with consideration; he does not besiege you as the widow did the judge; one dead is silent and says not a word; he remains completely still and does not move from the spot.”[4]
We often love because we are
compelled to, or because we are reminded to by another person. Now, this does
not invalidate the love, but our goal would be to love with complete freedom,
simply because we want and choose to. The dead cannot compel us, and they
cannot remind us. Whatever love we show for them is done in freedom, of our own
will and conscience. Compare how you love the living and the departed: do you
love the living more because they are here to remind you? Do you fail to love
when the person isn’t right before your face? If so, then perhaps you must
learn to love more freely.
Finally Kierkegaard tells us that
showing love for a person is “a work of the most faithful love.” He
writes,
“infrequently there is talk about the lack of faithfulness among human beings. Then one blames the other and says, ‘it was not I who changed; it was he who changed.’ Good. And what then? Do you remain unchanged? ‘No, as a consequence I naturally changed too.’ …[But] we are speaking of the relationship to one dead, and here it cannot be said that it was the one dead who changed. If an alteration enters into this relationship, I must be the one who changes. Therefore, if you will test whether or not you love faithfully, note some time how you relate yourself to one who is dead.” [5]
In relationships with the living
we can very often blame the other person for the fact that we have stopped
loving them. “They did it first,” we might argue. “I only stopped loving them
because they changed.” Not so the dead. After all, the dead do not change. If
my love for them changes, then it is a failure on my part, not theirs. I have
no one else to blame. Compare how you love the living and the departed: do you
struggle to keep loving the dead the same way you do the living? If so, then
you may need to learn to love more faithfully.
Kierkegaard closes by turning
this exercise back around to the living. We do have a duty to love the
departed, but we also have the same duty to the living. He writes,
“Remember one who is dead, and in addition to the blessing which is inseparable from the work of love, you will also have the best guidance to rightly understanding life: that it is one’s duty to love the men we do not see, but also those we do see. Our duty to love the men we see cannot be set aside because death separates them from us, for the duty is eternal; but consequently our duty to the dead cannot separate our contemporaries from us so that they do not remain objects of our love.”[6]
So the final question is, if you
do love the departed selflessly, freely and faithfully, then do you love the
living the same way?
Dear Father,
I confess that I fail this test.
When I look at how I have loved the departed that I have known, I have been
selfish, thoughtless and faithless. Help me to love with Christian love that is
selfless, free and faithful. Bind my heart to all those brothers and sisters I
cannot see—whether we are separated by death or by space. Make me to love those
who live in heaven with you, and those who live
on the other side of the world, with Christian love. And help me to love
those I do see with the same kind of love: selfless, free and faithful.
In the name of your son, Jesus
Christ, who, by his resurrection, has made us a communion of saints,
Amen.
[1] The Wisdom of Sirach, also known as Ecclesiasticus, is a book in the Old
Testament Apocrypha—books accepted in the canons of the Catholic, Orthodox, and
Anglican churches, but rejected by Jews and most Protestants. Kierkegaard was a
Lutheran; however, the Danish Lutheran Church included Sirach in their canon until 1871, 16 years after Kierkegaard’s
death. I have included it here because it is the more pertinent of the two
passages he quotes in the chapter, with no comment on its canonicity.
[2] Before
I get into this topic, I feel that I should lend some context. Those who have
experienced loss are understandably sensitive when that loss is trivialized by
those who do not share the experience—and so the context becomes important.
When Kierkegaard wrote this, he was well-acquainted with loss. He was 34, and
he had already lost both of his parents and five of his six siblings.
Kierkegaard does not take up this topic lightly.
[3]
Ibid. 320,22.
[4]
Ibid. 322-3.
[5]
Ibid. 326.
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