WHO WILL WAKE ME UP?

One of the great gifts of being a priest is being able to have frequent, good conversations with children in the parish. Their questions are my favorite because they come from an unpretentious--and often unrelenting--sense of curiosity. But one must be cautious. Their occasional and developmentally appropriate tendency to pepper adults with questions proves disarming until, all of the sudden, they ask something so central to the human heart and the life of faith that we can only be halted. For those who’ve been given the privilege of teaching children, our role is always to be ready for these moments. They can and do have the potential to make a life-long impact and much depends on what we are prepared to say when the opportunity arrives.

I once had one such conversation. A child in our parish told me in an aside that they were sometimes afraid of bedtime. When I asked them why this was a fearful thing for them, they said that they did not like having to go to sleep. “Ah,” I replied, “is it because you want to keep playing and you’re afraid you’ll miss out on something fun while you’re asleep?” “No,” they said,” I just don’t know if someone is going to wake me up and that’s scary.” 

Will someone wake me up? It was one of those questions. At that moment, I searched my mind for a way to answer. As someone who has had many seasons of troubled sleep, I knew a lot about how to get through difficulties falling asleep, but none of them seemed adequate. Then I remembered a somewhat haunting prayer that my grandma had taught me as a boy: Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. For if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. It’s a fitting prayer, but it also didn’t seem to answer the heart’s need behind their comment. So I sat down next to them and said: “You know, sometimes I’m afraid of going to sleep, too.” For some reason, that was enough for them. They became visibly relieved and went off to play with the other kids.

As I’ve reflected on that conversation, I realize it was not merely an attempt to empathize after coming up short for a better explanation. Sitting there, I had found in my heart that same childlike fear of falling asleep. Who will wake me up? I’ve had nights during hard seasons when I, too, was not so sure that I would wake up. Or, if I did wake up, I was pretty sure it would be to a lonely world. As I’ve written before, the night is scary and going to sleep is frightful because it is so vulnerable. We are called to sleep precisely when the world is darkest and therefore the most uncertain. Falling asleep, like all kinds of falling, is a surrender of ourselves to something beyond ourselves. When we fall, our hearts flicker between the earnest wish to be caught and the hard thought that no one will get there in time. When we fall asleep, we have to let go in the hope of waking up, challenged by the notion that we may not wake up. I pray the Lord my soul to take.

Perhaps not to our immediate relief, the Scriptures speak of death in these very terms of ‘falling asleep.’ This arises from Jesus’ own words. In a story recorded in all three Synoptic Gospels, Jesus refers to death as sleep when speaking of a girl whose parents had desperately sought His help (Matthew 9, Mark 5, Luke 8). Again, when Jesus speaks of his friend Lazarus in the Gospel of John, His own disciples are confused by his reference to death as falling asleep (John 11). In both moments, two understandings of death collide. To the families of the departed, there is only loss, pain, and separation--a life cut tragically short. To the Lord of life, though, there is one of his own who needs a wake-up call (and, in the case of the little girl, a good breakfast to follow!). 

Our Lord does not traffic in casual metaphors. He declares death to be like a sleep, and that is how it comes to be known among the Church. As St. Paul says in his discourse on the Resurrection in I Corinthians 15: “But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him.” Sleep is a picture of death, a daily letting go of our lives. But because of this, sleep is also a practice for death, of closing our eyes in the expectation that we will wake up again as a way of training for the last night--the world’s or our own--when we will relinquish ourselves one final time in the hope of rising again. We do this everyday and how we approach little endings builds up to how we approach the end.  Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

I tend to meditate on this truth during Fall. The days grow shorter, time feels like it’s slipping by more quickly. Night seems to come too soon. But there is a grace that comes to meet us in these waning days through our observance of Hallowtide. All Saints’ Eve (or Halloween for the time-pressed) prepares us for the feast of All Saints’ Day and its eight-day season. We celebrate Christ the King of Saints. We celebrate His mother Mary, the arch-saint. We celebrate the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs, doctors, virgins, and confessors, the faithful who illuminated every generation. We pray for those who have gone forth from our midst, the departed who have fallen asleep in the faith and fear of God, asking that they might rest from their labors and be swiftly received into the congregation of those in glory. Finally, we pray for ourselves, the saints who are being saved through our sojourn and Christian warfare against the world, the flesh, and the devil. Hallowtide calls us back to behold Jesus, who submitted to the sleep of death, who rose again to inaugurate an endless day, and who now promises to awaken those who fall asleep in Him. Who will wake me up? He will.

Hallowtide prepares us for Advent, a season that begins again the Christian year by preparing us for Christ’s humble birth at Christmas, but not before it ends the Christian year with the vision of Christ’s glorious return to awaken those who sleep and call all to appear before his throne as judge and king. Hallowtide is our last notice before the annual Christian observance of the end of the world. This is the unique testimony of the Church: to testify to this ending. The world is doing everything it can do to deny that it is going to end. For Christians though, we understand this inevitable ending of the world not as the depletion of natural energies or resources, but rather as an encounter with a Person who calls Himself the Omega, the true end. As we make the final turn of the Christian calendar, we remember that the end of the world is a person and His name is Jesus Christ.

The end of the world is coming for each of us, and it will always be an encounter. In popular imagery, we see often the depiction of Death in the robed form of the grim reaper, the wraith whose face is obscured. But for the Christian, the hour of death is always the arrival of a momentous Presence who has a face and who will meet us face to face. We fall asleep, and then there is the luminous face of Jesus. And with Him will appear the faces of that great cloud of those who bore Him witness, and who with Him now witness us. Who will wake me up? He will, and with Him all who are His. And that is alone the object of our hope, that great vision of the end in which all the saints live and fall asleep to awaken forever. 

The Lord Almighty grant us a quiet night and a perfect ending. Amen.