Come to your death as an angel to wrestle instead of an executioner to fight or flee from and you turn your dying into a question instead of an edict: What shall my life mean? What shall my time of dying be for? What is it going be like, that cottage of darkness?
When Mother Teresa was asked what would happen to her congregation after she had gone, she is said to have responded:
"A person emptier than myself will come along."
The implication here is that the greatness of a person lies in the depth of his or her own self-emptying. Another implication is that what is emptied of oneself will be filled with the self of God. Poverty as a chosen life-style is precisely this:
"To empty oneself of all that one is and has so that all will be at the disposal of the Lord."