From the Library of Deacon Mike:
"If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for."Thomas Merton
Regarded as one of the world's supreme masterpieces, "THE DEATH OF IVAN ILYICH" by Leo Tolstoy is the story of a worldly careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevitability of his dying so much as a passing thought. But one day death announces itself to him, and to his shocked surprise he is brought face to face with his own mortality. How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth?
This short novel was the artistic culmination of a profound spiritual crisis in Tolstoy's life, a nine-year period following the publication of another great work of his, "Anna Karenina", during which he did not write a word of fiction. This book is a thoroughly absorbing and, at times, terrifying glimpse in the abyss of death, it is also a strong testament to the possibility of finding spiritual salvation.
"The Death of Ivan Ilyich" offers unmistakable proof that a selfish life, spent in the pursuit of material things, pleasure and power, is a wasted life whereas a life motivated by a compassionate feelings for one's fellow man is a rich and rewarding: the first a life of darkness, the second, a life of light. These generalizations are worked out in fine detail as the narrator describes the reactions of the various characters to Ilyich's terminal disease and death. The more serious his illness grows, the greater is the indifference to him and the greater his sensitivity to this indifference. Toward the end he is engulfed by a terrible loneliness and only then can he make the unqualified admission that his life of possession and power was all wrong. On the threshold of death, a happy Ivan has begun a life of light.
Certainly, many of us were given the opportunity to read this great book while in high school or college. It is well worth our time to revisit this masterpiece. If you have not read it yet then you in for a wonderful treat. It may be short in length (not much more than 100 pages) but it contains a message that will certainly last a life-time.
Peace!
Mike
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