Sacred Signs
by Romano Guardini

EVENING

Evening also has its mystery. The mystery of evening is death.

The day draws to a close and we make ready to enter the silence

of sleep. The vigour which came with the morning has by evening

run down, and what we seek then is rest. The secret note of death

is sounded; and though our imaginations may be too crowded with

the day's doings or too intent on tomorrow's plans for us to hear

it distinctly, some perception of it, however remote, does reach

us. And there are evenings when we have very much the feeling

that life is drawing on to the long night "wherein no man can

work."

What matters is to have a right understanding of what death

means. Dying is more than the end of life. Death is the last

summons that life serves on us. Dying is the final, the all-

decisive act. With individuals as with nations the events that

precede extinction in themselves conclude and settle nothing.

After the thing has happened, it remains to be determined, by

nations as by individuals, what is to be made of it, how it is to

be regarded. The past event is neither good nor evil; in itself

it i; nothing. It is the face we put upon it, our way of viewing

it, that makes it what it is. A great calamity, let us say, has

overtaken a nation. The event has happened, but it is not over

with. The nation may give way to despair. It may also think the

matter through again, rejudge it; and make a fresh start. Not

until we have decided how to take it is the event, long past

though it may be, completed. The deep significance of death is

that it is the final sentence a man passes on his whole life. It

is the definite character he stamps upon it. When he comes to die

a man must decide whether he will or will not once more take his

whole life in hand, be sorry for all he has done amiss, and

plunge and recast it in the burning heat of repentence, give God

humble thanks for what was well done, (to him be the honor!) and

cast the whole upon God in entire abandonment. Or he may give way

to despondency and weakly and ignobly let life slip from him. In

this case life comes to no conclusion; it merely, without shape

or character, ceases to be.

The high "art of dying" is to accept the life that is leaving us,

and by a single act of affirmation put it into God's hands.

Each evening we should practice this high art of giving life an

effectual conclusion by reshaping the past and impressing it with

a final validity and an eternal character. The evening hour is

the hour of completion. We stand then before God with a

premonition of the day on which we shall stand before him face to

face and give in our final reckoning. We have a sense of the past

being past, with its good and evil, its losses and waste. We

place ourselves before God to whom all time, past or future, is

the living present, before God who is able to restore to the

penitent even what is lost. We think back over the day gone by.

What was not well done contrition seizes upon and thinks anew.

For what was well done we give God humble thanks, sincerely

taking no credit to ourselves. What we are uncertain about, or

failed to accomplish, the whole sorry remnant, we sink in entire

abandonment into God's all powerful love.