A review of "Hope to Die" by Scott Hahn

It’s been said that human beings are the only creatures created with the knowledge that they will die. The older we get, and the more life we live, the more the reality of death is present to us. This is true whether we are confronting our own deaths, or the death of a loved one.

In his latest book, Hope to Die, Scott Hahn confronts this reality head-on, with a beautiful, compact look at the Church’s teaching on death and the life of the world to come. The idea of our own deaths is difficult enough to accept, without the added complication of the bodily resurrection, heaven, hell, and judgement. Even the most faithful among us, myself included, have a difficult time with the idea that our life goes on after our mortal body passes away. Even though we say every Sunday in the creed: “I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come,” it remains an abstract concept. As Hahn says:

I think many of us believe we’ll get a new body once we enter into eternal life… but we don’t see how this body… could possibly be resurrected to eternal life. Surely God has better material he can work with?

In Hope to Die Hahn walks us through a basic catechesis on the Church’s teachings on death with his typical scholarly approach, including plenty of references to the early fathers as well as Old Testament figures. He speaks about the ancient Israelites’ development of understanding of life after death and connects this back to the patriarch’s desires to all be buried in the promised land, as an early understanding of the Communion of Saints. This understanding pushes back on our Western culture’s twin mistaken beliefs about death: either that we are only mortal, and there is nothing left of us at all once we die, or that our bodies are simply vehicles for our souls, to be discarded once our time is up.

To be a Christian is to live with the reality that the life of the world to come is just as real, and even more real, than the world in which we presently find ourselves. To live fully in this life is to prepare fully for the life of the world to come, by following our Lord’s teachings, and also by honoring the bodies he gave us, by taking care of ourselves physically, and not by mistreating our bodies, or the bodies of our loved ones, upon death. Hahn delves deeply into this concept, reviewing the Church’s teachings, and the reason behind those teachings:

Tobit says that God “brings up again” those who went down to Hades… Tobit believes God will raise the dead—not just spiritually, but physically. After all, if the resurrection were just going to be spiritual, what happened to bodies in death wouldn’t matter. But with a physical resurrection, bodies matter (page 50).

My mind doesn’t deal with infinity well. I can grasp the idea of being judged after death, but the idea of living forever, in the body I presently have, boggles the mind. The idea that I must honor my body, not simply because God gave it to me, or that I have to take care of it to have a good life, but that I will live in my resurrected body for eternity puts a new importance on it. In this bodily resurrection, we also are given the gift of participating in the bodily resurrection of Christ:

…for those who die in Christ’s grace, death isn’t a solitary act; it’s “a participation in the death of the Lord,” and when we die with the Lord, we also rise with the Lord; we participate in his resurrection (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1006)… When we know death is not the end, when we know that death is just the beginning of everlasting joy, everlasting life, and everlasting communion with the One we love, hope drives out fear (page 169).

I would recommend Hope to Die to anyone who is interested in a brief introduction to the Church’s teachings on death and the afterlife. It would also make a good primer for anyone who needs to have some hard conversations with a loved one, while also providing them with a reason for hope. It’s a short read at only 176 pages. In a culture that tries to deny the reality of death, it’s good to have this reminder that death isn’t the end but the beginning of our eternal life and friendship with God.