Scott Hahn

"How inordinate our fear of suffering and dying is. We’re so afraid of losing a life that is in a certain sense incapable. We’re not going to be able to keep our life on earth forever. That’s the reality. On the other hand, it confronts Catholic Christians with the sense that we are more afraid of physical suffering and physical death than we are of spiritual suffering and spiritual death through mortal sin and the divine life which is so precariously weakened through venial sins and those kinds of vices that we merely reduce to bad habits. And so to me, it’s a kind of a wake up call, not only for us as a society, but especially for us as a church to recognize the sacredness of human life, but to recognize the greater sacredness of a divine life that is obviously superior but much more vulnerable."

"Catholics are accused of being obsessed with death, but we’re not. What we’re obsessed with is resurrection. So much so that when St. Paul preached in Athens, the philosophers thought he was preaching two new gods, Jesus and Resurrection. Our acceptance of death, our preparation for it, strikes people who have a disordered fear of death as obsession. But we recognize that life is not ended with death; it’s changed for the better. Death is the gateway to that something better. So, of course we want to help people prepare for their death as best as they can and celebrate the deaths of those we believe have entered into glory. That’s not obsession. That’s right priorities."