The Four Deaths, by Michael Pakaluk

By Michael Pakaluk, The Catholic Thing, March 30, 2022

Michael Pakaluk, an Aristotle scholar and Ordinarius of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, is a professor in the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America. …

All of us face multiple “deaths,” even before we depart this life, and we’ll do better if we willingly embrace them.

Our Lord shows the way.  Yes, famously, His human nature recoiled from the harsh tortures of the Cross, when He asked in the garden whether the cup might pass from Him. (Lk 22:42)  And yet, as St. Alphonsus Liguori points out in his Passion and the Death of Jesus Christ, Jesus went to the garden despite knowing it would begin His Passion:

So great was the desire of Jesus to suffer for us, that in the night preceding his death he not only went of his own will into the garden, where he knew that the Jews would come and take him, but, knowing that Judas the traitor was already near at hand with the company of soldiers, he said to his disciples, Arise, let us go; behold he that will betray Me is at hand. (Mk. 14:42) He would even go himself to meet them. …

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