2016 Postmortem

Cardinal Bernardin's gift fits all sizes
When Cardinal Joseph Bernardin died of cancer on Nov. 14, 1996, Chicagoans responded like they did when they heard of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's death. The announcement brought the city of broad shoulders to its knees. The Tribune quoted the cardinal as saying he faced death with peace and that it was a gift from God.

Not only Chicagoans but Catholics everywhere remember Bernardin for teaching us how to die with dignity. Few remember how he taught a whole world to live with dignity through his Catholic vision, the seamless garment of life. Isn't it interesting? The sanctity of life is less memorable than the experience of death.

Bernardin's gift to the world is not a moment in time. It is an eternal teaching to see the world with the eyes of the soul.

The seamless garment of life is a metaphor for the reality that all of us share one life in God. It is not a tenet but an understanding that all of life is sacred, from womb to tomb, in the unborn and the dying, in the murderer on death row and the mother in a coma, in the soldier in Afghanistan and the family in Iraq, in the undernourished child and the pensioner who can't afford a doctor. "When human life is considered 'cheap' or easily expendable in one area," Bernardin said, "eventually nothing is held as sacred and all lives are in jeopardy."