Calvin had last preached in St Pierre's on 6 February. But fits of uncontrollable coughing and blood bleeding from his mouth prevented him from finishing his sermon. He struggled to get off the pulpit. He asked to be carried to the church for the Easter Service, 2 April, when Theodore Beza preached. The most poignant moment in the service surely would have come when it closed with the hymn, Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.
Though bed-ridden most of the time now, he continued to work. When friends counseled rest, he would protest, "Would you have the Lord find me idle when he comes?" But friends who came to visit, hoping to comfort him—including his mentor and former colleague in the church in Geneva, Guillaume Farel, then 80 years old—always left finding themselves prayed for and encouraged depite knowing that his end was near. Calvin departed this life peacefully in the late afternoon, Saturday, 27 May, 1564, aged 55.
Not wishing his grave to become a shrine of superstitious devotion, he asked to be buried in an un-marked grave. Calvin must have already understood that his fame would outlive him; in asking to be so buried, he chose to be forgotten except for what he could not take with him. As he had lived burning out his life for the glory of God, so he decided that nothing even in his death should distract from that glory. What a way to live, what a way to die!
©Alberith, 2015