As for life after death? Many believe, but no one really knows. All those who claim they know equate belief and knowledge for psychiatric, not spiritual reasons. They find living with uncertainty impossible. Believers pray in gratitude, but doubts persist even with the most devout. They want to take Christ’s words as scrivened by his four stenographers and say amen. Death is the problem — the fact of death. Reactions range from fear to love. The fearful die living. Even when those most loved are taken, lovers discover that love buries death. The dead survive as presences in dreams or thoughts that mock whatever passes for resting in peace. After thirty-three years of breath and three days of death, the Messiah rose to resume living with those He loved. Compared with that, who needs theology or ritual for reassurance? What else is faith but trusting that loves once known will be known forever? What’s truer for God or each of us than unions resurrected as reunions? There is no otherwise.
Sam Hazo '49, the author of numerous books of poetry, essays and fiction, taught at Duquesne University for more than four decades and was the founder and longtime director of the International Poetry Forum.