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He Slept with His Fathers
Marie-Madeleine Jung

Biblical viewpoint
The formula used as a title is the one most often found in the Old Testament at the dose of a man's life story. Whether kings did what was pleasing to the Lord or what was displeasing to him, they slept with their fathers when the hour carne. It is worthwhile spending some time with this phrase, which is full of meaning and of both human and divine kindpess.
It has been noted that the expression is only used after the time of Abraham, our father in faith. Before that, the genealogies in Genesis 1-11 say simply He died. The history of the people of God does not appear as yet in the successive generations which traverse recorded time. But after Abraham, the father of Israel, the fathers follow each other like links in a living chain. Those which have to take their temple with their predecessors thus do so in a precise moment in the history of salvation. This link of flesh and spirit which has been their earthly lite with all its vagaries, all the events which have shaped it, is now joined to the incamated tradition of bis fathers. Sometimes one finds a slight variation: He was reunited with his ancestors often crowns a happy old age, the fulness of days being a sign of blessing.

What did this form of burial mean for Israel?
In its most immediate meaning: Y014 gai( come to your grave in ripe old age, as a shock of grain comes up to the threshing floor (Job 5:26). The distinction between body and soul is strange to the Hebrew mentality, and consequently death is not looked upon as a separation of the two. A living person is a living soul and a dead person is a dead soul (Num 6:6; Lev. 21:11). Death is not annihilation; as long as the body, or at least the skeleton remains, the soul is there, albeit in a very enfeebled state, as a shadow in the underworld of Sheol (Job 26:5; Is. 14:9; Ezek. 32:17).
These ideas justify the care taken of the corpse and the importane of giving it a decent burial, because the soul continues to feel what is happening to the body. Thus the worst of misfortunes is to be abandoned without burial, to be left a prey to the birds and the beasts of the field. (I Kings 14:11; Jer. 16:4)
The situation of the tomb was very important. The tomb belonged to the family, whether it was established on its own ['and (Jos. 24:30; I Sam. 25), or on a plot bought expressly for the purpose (Gen. 23). It was normal to be buried in the tomb of bis father (Judg. 8:32; 16:31). h was an express desire (II Sam. 19:38) and David paid this last respect to the bones of Saul and his descendants. To be excluded from the family tomb was a punishment sent by God (I Kings 13). The expression: to sleep with bis fathers and: to be reunited with bis own, used in reference to the death of certain illustrious ancestors and of the kings of Judah and Israel, have perhaps a primitive explanation in the use of the family tomb, but they took on a broader meaning: they became a solemn formula signifying death, and they underlined the endurance of blood-ties beyond the grave.
Speaking of man en route for his eterna! home, Koheleth reminds us: the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it (Eccles. 12:7). It needed the slow progress of Revelation to develop the idea of an immortality which would surpass the diminished existence of Sheol.
But biblical man was not alone in this arid waste of the afterlife. Ne found there solidatity with his family or with his tace. He was part of a generation, of a wave of humanity linked with its predecessors; this is the meaning of the toledoth or genealogica) tables which form the weft of the fabric of salvation history.
At the head of the fine, the ancestors are the fathers par excellence, those who contained within themselves the future of the tace. If the patriarchs aro the fathers of the chosen people, it is because of a spiritual as well as a physical paternity, on account of the promises and the blessings given to them and passed on by them to their sons. The successive generations are defined by divine election.
Israel remembers the exploits of her ancestors: Before their fathers God worked wonders (Ps. 78:4). These wonders were not forgotten; they were passed on from father to son so that each one celebrated the God who brought his people out of Egypt. In sleeping with his fathers in the repose of God, each son of Israel brought a fresh stock of wonders to enhance the memoria) of the Covenant and enrich the living memory of the chosen people. This is why the Wisdom writers like to sing the praises of their ancestors, making them pass before us one by one, bearing the judgment of tradition:
Let us new praise famous men,
and our fathers in tbeir generations (Sir. 44:1).

There is also something else: this supreme union with their fathers went back to the divine fatherhood. Whether they called him El Shaddai, Elohim or YHWH, far the Israelites God was always the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God o/ our fathers. It was his merciful love and faithfulness that the generations of the living rediscovered and perpetuated in themselves.

Christian viewpoint
When the fullness of time carne in Christ we no longer find the traditional formula in the gospel: He slept with bis fathers. The long chain of genealogy we find in Matthew had come to an end: Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Cbrist (Mt. 1:16).
In the new view of salvation, a man who had been saved would find his fathers not in the tomb but in the risen Christ. The image of the Old covenant brought us into the solidarity of the Kingdom, bound us to the family and to the communion of saints.
It is no longer question of an individuai death, but of an event involving the whole Church. In each Christian who dies the whole body of Christ moves nearer to its fulfilment: it is not question of a single sheep being scparated from the flock, but on the contrary of one who enters the great sheepfold. Far from being still more isolated, those who die enter the life of the everlasting community. They are reunited with their own people, the people of the next world.
These fathers who await us, these are the loved ones who fell asleep in faith, called by the Father one by one to cross the threshold into eternity. They were taken from us in order to pass beyond the voi!. We call to them in vain; they belong to another world. Silente is our only answer, but it is the silente of God. In the hope of rejoining them for all eternity, we follow them in mind and heart, and that part of ourselves which aspires to the Kingdom of Life is already with them.
When I fall asleep in the Repose of God, may it be with my fathers...

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Sr. Marie-Madeleine Jung, a Sister of Bethany, lives in Jerusalem and is the foundress of a movement which prays for peace and reconciliation.