TEODORO- HOLY SONNET 10-ENRICHMENT ACTIVITY

Can this sonnet positively influence or change your thoughts about death and dying? Write a short
essay.

Reading the poem Holy Sonnet 10, made me reflect deeper on the idea of death. I agree that one
should not fear death because life is absurd if death is empty of significance. The true meaning of life,
until expressed in the face of death, remains elusive. A significant element in our conception of life must
be the reality of death. And yet, just a few of us have crossed paths with death as a dilemma or a threat.
There is a slowness on our side, a pause, a neglect to think about it. It is not exciting, but rather strange
and shocking for the subject. Sometimes other people view death as escapism that because of losing their
purpose to live, they tend to rush their own death, which is really heartbreaking. However, I believe that if
there is more to life, there is also as well more to death, it is not simply man’s coming to an end, it is also
entering a beginning.

As I deeply understand the true value of death, through reading the bible, listening to preaching
about it, and encountering poems like this, it gets me more on the idea that death really teaches us many
things if we just open our eyes about this. Death brings humility, and gratitude to human existence. It is
the profound refutation of the power of a man and a clear reminder of the need to relate to a sense that lies
outside the human time dimension. Humanity without death would be unending arrogance. Death is I
think one avenue of God to reject deification and distort human greed. On the other hand, if life is a
mission and a purpose, I also believe that death is an arrival, a celebration. Neither craving nor resentment
should be the final word, but harmony and thanksgiving because our life is a gift from our Father in
Heaven, and soon we’ll return in His side.

“Death is not a counterpoint or contradiction to life, but a profound teacher about the meaning
of human existence.”—RABBI ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL