Poem by a Doctor of the Church that Leo says helped his prayer

Pope Leo XIV closed the Vatican’s recent Lenten spiritual retreat by expressing appreciation for Bishop Erik Varden’s reference to a poem written by St. John Henry Newman. Called, “The Dream of Gerontius,” Bishop Varden spoke of how the poem uses death and judgment as a prism for confronting the fear of death. It’s a fitting meditation for Lent.

“The Dream,” is about a man’s death and journey through purgatory. His name, “Gerontius,” is derived from a Greek word essentially meaning “old man,” so the character is meant to represent all of us as we age and prepare for death. Newman wrote “The Dream” in 1865 during a time when he was under great stress and had become worried about his own health and possible demise. The poem, as he later said, came into its final written form almost by accident and wasn’t initially a project meant to be published. He wrote other poems during his career but this is his most ambitious, with over 900 lines.

I’ve always appreciated that Newman invites us to envision ourselves as Gerontius as we read the poem. I used to suffer an abiding fear of death. I would lie awake at night and feel it within me like a gaping hole. My heart would start pounding, I would feel clammy, and hardly knew what to do. So, when Gerontius feels anxious about failing his impending judgment, I empathize and very much see myself reflected in the poem. If I were a better poet, I could have written these exact words about my own experience;

That sense of ruin, which is worse than pain,
That masterful negation and collapse
Of all that makes me man; as though I bent
Over the dizzy brink
Of some sheer infinite descent

No matter how we feel about it, death comes for us all. There’s no escape. In the end, Gerontius experiences it as a sort of hazy transition in which he barely knows if he’s dead or alive. It isn’t one, painful and sharp moment but, rather, is like stepping through a veil. The experience is a reverie;

I had a dream; yes: some one softly said
'He's gone,' and then a sigh went round the room,
And then I surely heard a priestly voice
Cry 'Subvenite,' and they knelt in prayer.

The Catholic custom when Newman was writing was, if possible, for a priest to attend the deathbed and pray a litany over the dying person. The prayers would have been entirely in Latin and one which was instantly recognizable was the “Subvenite.”

The prayer lingers in the ears of Gerontius. He sleeps the sleep of the just. In spite of his fears, he is kept safe in the arms of the Church and awakens in the afterlife to find himself free and ready to purify his soul for heaven.

In 1900, the poem was popularized by composer Edward Elgar when he set it to music.

It has been regularly performed ever since. Sir Andrew Davis says he fell in love with “The Dream” when he first heard the music at age 14. He calls it the greatest choral piece he has ever known, simultaneously serene and strange.

Gerontius, even as he is guided by an angel and made secure from hell, experiences the mockery of demons who ridicule mankind for our aspirations. After death, our faith teaches that, by grace, we will live forever with God and that death is not a final, meaningless ending. Our intuition tells us that our souls are eternal. Divine revelation assures us that our intuition is correct, but warns us that we will live forever in either heaven or hell. We must choose wisely. Our time on earth is like a Lenten journey through the wilderness, but we must persevere because we are not made for the wilderness but for Paradise. 

At the end of the poem, Gerontius is submerged in a lake;

Sinking deep, deeper into the dim distance.
Angels, to whom the willing task is given,
Shall tend, and nurse, and lull thee, as thou liest;
And Masses on the earth, and prayers in heaven,
Shall aid thee at the Throne of the Most Highest.
Farewell, but not for ever! brother dear,
Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow;
Swiftly shall pass thy night of trial here,
And I will come and wake thee on the morrow.

He is immersed in the baptismal waters of new birth. He crosses over into the next phase of life. Through the whole process he remains joined to the communion of saints who pray for him at Holy Mass. He is on the cusp of a life unlike anything he has ever known and, soon enough, the light will dawn as he opens his eyes to the next day, the final day he will ever know, a day that will have no beginning nor end.

Sometimes, when the fear of death returns to haunt me, I keep enough of my wits about me to pray. The Office of Compline is of particular comfort because it is specifically attentive to our preparation for death. Compline begins with the prayer, “Deus, in adiutorium meum intende. / O Lord, come to my assistance.” It’s a similar prayer to the “Subvenite,” an acknowledgment that we are everywhere and always in need of God’s grace. If we are to run the race before us with perseverance and joy, our success is in his hands. 

Every single day of my life, in the Daily Office, I beg for help. I had never connected this habit with the prayer of death, but it seems that, every day I’ve already been praying for a good death. Even now, if I am stepping up to the brink, to that final litany on my final day, I know I can approach it with peace.