A Death in Lent (RIP, John Wassmer)

Blessed Abbot Columba Marmion, O.S.B., wrote that “Christianity is a mystery of life and death.” By virtue of our Baptism and Eucharistic Communion with Jesus Christ, our life and death, and our new life after death, are intimately bound up with His most holy Life, Death, and Resurrection.

This Lent at Saint Benedict Center, we have had the divinely imposed penance of the passing of a dear friend, at whose death I assisted. It has been a painful Lenten blessing; painful, for obvious reasons; a blessing, because bearing patiently and gratefully with the sorrows and crosses that God’s “will of good pleasure” brings us is more meritorious than doing penances of our own devising — although these latter are necessary as well. The reason is that what God chooses in His Wisdom is greater than what we can possibly choose. Conforming our minds to the Mind of God and thereby rendering Him glory is what revealed religion is all about.

Here is part of a message that I sent out to a small group of people less than an hour after the death it informs them of:

After a struggle that was worthy of the man, John Wassmer died at 3:22 a.m., on Monday, March 9, 2026 (Monday of the Third Week of Lent, Saint Frances of Rome and Saint Dominic Savio). May God rest his generous soul. In the last three weeks, he had the last sacraments, a few sacramental absolutions from different priests, the prayers of the dying (twice), and many other prayers said with and over him during his final agony.

Please continue to pray for John. I think he was given the blessing of working off a bit of Purgatory here (there is a reason it’s called one’s “final agony”), but we don’t presume on God’s mercy. Purgatory is real and, if this is possible for a Holy Soul, John would be irate with us if his sentence there were longer because we canonized him.

If you have never read the “Prayers for the Dying” from the Roman Ritual (which are found in many good hand missals, e.g., the St. Andrew’s Missal I use), I suggest you do so. There is much there that is rich to meditate upon while we are yet living in this vale of tears. It would be a shame if the first time we encountered these noble, beautiful, and thoroughly Catholic sentiments so eloquently expressed were on our deathbed. Reading them is a sobering but also fortifying look at that “hour of death” we mention — perhaps too unthinkingly — in each Hail Mary.

John Wassmer was, for twelve years (1986-1998), known as Brother John Mary, M.I.C.M. For reasons that are personal to himself and the community (nothing scandalous), he was dispensed of his vows in 1998, but never stopped being loyal to our cause, and became a Tertiary. He remained single, and generously gave his time and talents to the Church and his neighbor. A jack of all trades, he had actually mastered two (plumbing and electric) and did pro-bono work for those in need, while he himself was a pauper. (He died with less than half the funds needed for his own funeral.)

In addition to laboring at his trades — ever the hard worker — he devoted his time to an apostolate of online evangelism. He used social media for bringing the Catholic truth to others.

I certainly do not want to violate my own directive above and canonize the man (his friends knew his shortcomings, which we hope his patient resignation to God’s Will in the face of a painful death helped to alleviate, and thus shorten his term in Purgatory), but I should mention that all who knew him — really knew him — were aware of his generosity. He would give of his material possessions, his time, and his skills. After his death, we heard about little things he had done very unceremoniously: from purchasing hats and gloves to give to street people in the Bowery in Lower Manhattan during a harsh winter to donating his services as a plumber and electrician to the indigent elderly. He especially loved children, and there are men today who gratefully remember Brother John taking them on camping trips and making all kinds of sacrifices for their spiritual and physical welfare. One of them — now the father of a large and growing family — just told me,

Brother John taught me that we can live the Faith and still have fun while doing it. My generation of males that grew up around SBC in Richmond should be forever grateful for how good we had it. I hope Jimmy understands how many lives his brother positively impacted.

The “Jimmy” mentioned there is John’s youngest and only surviving brother. He and I were with John when he died, and I was notifying this correspondent of John’s immanent death at the time he wrote me.

John came back to Saint Benedict Center two Christmases ago. He worked as a handy man as long as he could do so, helping the Brothers and Sisters with our many physical plant needs. He also joined the Brothers for our divine office, mental prayer, Rosary, and Mass attendance, becoming a familiar sight to churchgoers owing to the signature gimp he had acquired thanks to painful neuropathy in his legs — which he did not complain about (I practically had to command him to tell me whether it hurt). John also participated in various community events, including monthly Third Order meetings.

Please pray for the repose of his soul. (John’s family are raising funds to offset the funeral expenses. Any who would like to assist in burying the dead — a corporal work of mercy — may contribute.)

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Above, I mentioned that our life, death, and resurrection are united to those of Jesus by virtue of our Baptism and Eucharistic Communion with Him. But the sacraments do not work as if by magic. We must consciously unite ourselves to Him with our intellects and wills, by prayer and virtue joining our wills to His most Holy Will and our hearts to His most Sacred Heart. But how to do that?

Saint Alphonsus Maria de Liguori recommends that we prayerfully accept ahead of time the death that God has prepared for us. For instance, at the Fifth Station of the Cross, Saint Alphonsus has us pray,

My most sweet Jesus, I will not refuse the Cross, as the Cyrenian did; I accept it; I embrace it. I accept in particular the death Thou hast destined for me; with all the pains that may accompany it; I unite it to Thy death, I offer it to Thee. Thou hast died for love of me; I will die for love of Thee, and to please Thee. Help me by Thy grace.

Saint Alphonsus is not alone. In an excellent chapter entitled “Special Rules for Mortification” in his masterful The Interior Life Simplified and Reduced to Its Fundamental Principle, the Carthusian spiritual writer, Dom François de Sales Pollien (1853-1936) writes this on “the acceptance of death”:

Of all the trials of Providence, the most dreadful is the final one, that of death. This passing of my being through dissolution is so repugnant to my natural desire to live! Although the Faith teaches me that it is only a passing, and that by the merits of the death and resurrection of the Saviour I shall come with Him to the final triumph of an immortal life in my glorified body and soul, nevertheless death keeps its awfulness; it remains a penalty, and the great penalty of sin. And since this penalty must be undergone, is it not a good and necessary thing to accept it? If I can rise to the level of a calm, confident, and blind acceptance, fully embracing all God’s decrees with regard to myself, I practise one of the most wholesome and meritorious of penances. What a good thing it is to familiarize oneself with the idea of death! If I could only succeed in attaining the joy which made the saints desire to pay this last due to justice, so that they might be thereupon united with God!

One of the best ways “to familiarize oneself with the idea of death,” as the good Carthusian recommends, is to read and meditate upon those prayers for the dying I mentioned above. They are sober, profound, beautiful, and fortifying — not maudlin or sentimental. They come from the traditional Roman Ritual, but many traditional hand missals have them appended to the section on the Sacrament of Extreme Unction. We find among these prayers the Litany of the Dying and various commendations of the soul to God. If you have a dying friend or family member and there is not a priest present to lead these prayers, you may and should lead them yourself. They are “a sacramental,” not a sacrament, and the lay faithful are encouraged to pray them at the deathbed of their loved ones. And pray them out loud, always assuming that the dying person can still hear you.

Of course, we should have a priest at the deathbed to administer the sacraments, but this does not absolve the friends and family of the dying from the duty of prayer (a spiritual work of mercy), and Holy Mother Church has given us the best prayers!

Such assistance at the time of death could mean the difference in someone’s eternity.