Letter 53

From: Ambrose, Bishop of Milan To: The Church at Milan Date: ~387 AD Context: A philosophical-theological reflection on death, arguing that death is not an evil but a natural boundary appointed by God, and that for the Christian it is the gateway to eternal life. Ambrose, Bishop, to the faithful. The pagans call death the supreme evil. The Epicureans [followers of the Greek philosopher Epicurus] say it is the end of everything. The Stoics say it should be faced with indifference. None of them is right. Death is not the supreme evil — sin is. Death is the consequence of sin, but in the economy of God's grace, it has been transformed from a curse into a door. Christ died, and by dying he destroyed the power of death. The thing we feared most has become the thing that sets us free. I am not asking you to welcome death with enthusiasm. The instinct to live is planted in us by God, and to suppress it entirely would be unnatural. But I am asking you to reconsider what death actually is. For the unbeliever, death is annihilation — the end of everything that matters. For the believer, death is a passage — painful, yes, and frightening, but temporary. The body sleeps; the soul goes to God; and on the last day, both will be reunited in glory. Consider the martyrs. They did not seek death, but they did not flee it when the alternative was betrayal of Christ. They calculated — soberly, rationally — that what lay on the other side of death was worth more than what lay on this side. That is not fanaticism; it is faith applied to arithmetic. The Stoics tell us to be indifferent to death. Christianity tells us something better: to be hopeful about it. Not because death is good in itself — it is not; it is the last enemy (1 Corinthians 15:26) — but because Christ has defeated it, and what we call death is simply the final step before the final victory. Live well. And when the time comes, die well — not with indifference, but with hope.

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