The Mystery of Death
The Mystery of Death: Awakening to Eternal Life © Copyright 2020 by Monkfish Book Publishing Company. Introduction and Commentary © Copyright 2020 by Cynthia Bourgeault.
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Paperback ISBN 978-1-948626-15-6
eBook ISBN 978-1-948626-16-3
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Boros, Ladislaus, 1927-1981, author. | Bourgeault, Cynthia, writer of commentary.
Title: The mystery of death : awakening to eternal life / Ladislaus Boros, S.J., with introduction and commentary by Cynthia Bourgeault.
Description: Rhinebeck, New York : Monkfish Book Publishing Company, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019055190 (print) | LCCN 2019055191 (ebook) | ISBN 9781948626156 (paperback) | ISBN 9781948626163 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Death--Religious aspects--Christianity. | Death. | Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre. Milieu divin. | Christianity--Philosophy.
Classification: LCC BT825 .B563 2020 (print) | LCC BT825 (ebook) | DDC 236/.1--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019055190
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019055191
Book and cover design by Colin Rolfe
Cover art by Henrik Dønnestad
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Rhinebeck, New York 12572
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Contents
Boros, Teilhard, and The Mystery of Death: An Introduction and Commentary by Cynthia Bourgeault
I. THE METHODOLOGICAL POSTULATES FOR AN ANALYSIS OF DEATH
1. Death as a Metaphysical Process
2. A Temporal Process in a Non-Temporal Transition
3. Death a Fundamental Modality of Living, Concrete Existence
4. The Workings of the Death-Process Revealed by the Transcendental Method
5. Starting-Point for the Philosophical Analysis of Death
6. Summary of our Methodological Considerations
II. THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS FOR THE HYPOTHESIS OF A FINAL DECISION
1. The Presence of Death in the Will
2. Death as the Fulfilment of Knowing
3. Integral Perception and Remembrance in Death
4. Love as a Projection of our Existence into Death
5. Meeting-Point of the Historical Dialectic of Existence
6. The Previous Sampling of Death Found in Poetic Experience
7. Accomplishment and Perfection of the Kenotic Actualization of Existence
8. Revised Definition of the Whole Concept of the Process of Death
9. Summary of the Philosophical Demonstration
1. The Ending of our State of Pilgrimage
2. The Place of our fully Personal Encounter with Christ
3. The Universality of the Redemption
6. Christological Basis for the Hypothesis of a Final Decision
7. Summary of the Theological Discussion
Boros, Teilhard, and The Mystery of Death
AN INTRODUCTION AND COMMENTARY BY CYNTHIA BOURGEAULT
Somewhere in the mid-1970s, a copy of the book The Mystery of Death by Ladislaus Boros came into my possession. I can’t recall the circumstances, but a $1 price sticker on the inside dust jacket suggests it may have been a yard sale special. However it arrived in my hands, it was certainly one of the great spiritual bargains of my life, for its bold and mystically luminous Christology dazzled my young theological brain and carved itself deeply into my heart. For nearly forty years, it has been one of the cornerstones of my own spiritual understanding.
In these same forty years, however, Boros managed to fall almost entirely through the theological cracks. When Herder and Herder, the American publisher of The Mystery of Death, melded into Seabury Press and then vanished altogether in the late 1980s, Boros’s chef d’oeuvre seemed unfortunately consigned to a similar demise. Nowadays, when I mention the name Ladislaus Boros to my Jesuit colleagues, I find to my surprise that most have never heard of him; nor does a current web search for “Jesuit scholars/death” produce his name. While a few of Boros’s Swiss confreres still remember him personally and have offered their helpful comments and clarifications for this commentary, I would venture to say that beyond his immediate circle of European colleagues, his work has now been largely forgotten. Its most serious devotees at this point seem to be my own Wisdom students, who resolutely wade through the dense scholastic metaphysics in order to unearth the treasure buried in the field.
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