“The life of man reaches fulfillment through a succession of many deaths.” BASILAfter all is said and done, death still remains the decisive situation of life. From it everything Christian could be derived. Fénelon used to say that the art of asceticism consists in the soul’s dying before the body. Paul’s mortui estis [“you have died”] in the end includes not only continual mortification but also the knowledge that everything that has not yet died possesses a merely preliminary character (this includes my virtue and my whole spiritual life and effort). Death is above all poverty, but also obedience and chastity.
Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Grain of Wheat: Aphorisms (1953), chapter titled Parting