Search
September 24, 2023: Life is Christ and Death is Gain
-
We know it’s coming down the track like a highspeed train in some European country. It’s the premiere way Europeans travel from one of their small countries to another. On our upcoming trip to France in early November, my sister plans to travel on the first day of arrival from Paris to another section of France that is not so close to Paris to visit the incorrupt body of the forever-holy St. Bernadette of Soubirous. She of Our Lady of Lourdes fame. The best way to get there and back in one day is to travel on a highspeed train for the one and one-half hour ride each way. I’ll be praying for her, unless I happen to join her. Then I’ll be praying for both of us.
What comes down the track like a highspeed train is death. All of us older folks, 50 and over, know all too well how fast time flies by at this stage. It’s no faster than when we were young lads and lassies. It just seems faster. I remember well when in high school, time seemed like it took forever to arrive at the point I wanted so bad; that of graduation. I wanted freedom from those walls. Graduating from high school especially seemed like a 10-year trip through four grades. And that’s without repeating any of the grades. When Senior year finally arrived in the late summer of 1977, it was like a burst of freedom came with it, knowing that, yes, this was the year my classmates and I would actually finish in May, and not in June, nearing July. This was a big deal for an impatient high-schooler, having something to look forward to, sort of like breaking out of prison. I didn’t dislike high school, or grade school for that matter. I just wanted out into the world, and it couldn’t come fast enough. Now, it’s the opposite with time when the topic transfers from high school to death.
We try to apply any workable set of brakes to the speed of our lives. It seems, at least from my angle, that the Grim Reper approaches quickly, like a stealth bomber, ready to unload all his weapons on his next victim. Which could be yours truly. Or one of you four or five readers of this column. Now it seems like the end of life on earth timewise moves along rapidly, having very few slow moments of time, unless you like to go on retreat four or five times a year, which is impossible for a Diocesan priest to do. There’s a reason why we are called secular priests. We’re in the world, working alongside God’s people who enjoy the many spiritual benefits that come with the priesthood of Jesus Christ. We are, however, according to Canon Law, to take a retreat each year, once a year, for a span of five or seven days, I forget which amount of days (and I’m not going to look it up). Church law says that we are to take a rest to slow things down, if you will, through the manner of a spiritual respite. But, once we return, guess what? The train leaving the station of Diocesan Priesthood picks up speed rather quickly, if you know what I mean. It begins to resemble, again, the speed that is presently traveled toward the reality of death from this world of space and time.
Now, I’m not trying to sound depressed about this matter of speeding toward the reality of turning back into the dust from which I came: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Which will definitely happen dust-wise because my holiness does not begin to approach that of the incorrupt St. Bernadette and a few others out there in some part of the world. Holiness on a level I will not know until the Kingdom of God is secured for good. I‘ve noticed from my years in priesthood that some folks, without mentioning names, have approached the day of their solemn death with fear and trembling, which is understandable, but did so without faith in Jesus. Such fear is very hard to witness. It is absent the one virtue (faith) that will bring forth many other virtues, such as trust, hope, anticipation, humility, and whatever other virtues that will safely lead us to what God has prepared for those who love Him. Watching a person go through the dying process with little faith or no faith at all, well, my prayer for such souls is that God will be kind and merciful to them, as I pray He will be to me. That God will bring them some level of peace in knowing that He, their Creator, is their next and final vision.
When it comes to this topic, my first hero, of course, is Jesus. But even our Lord in the fullness of his humanity asked the question, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will, but as you will” (Mt 26:39). If we ponder these words, we can draw from them many spiritual thoughts beneficial to our personal highspeed train ride toward the last day of our life on earth. This, of course, excludes teenagers, because they believe they are going to live forever. The rest of us should ponder these words of Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel. But one of the many thoughts that serve our faith and hope in what’s to come is how Jesus himself had a minimal-to-medium struggle with his imminent death, or the manner of his death. I see nothing wrong with this, and everything proper with it. Life is a gift, and our Lord knew this immensely since he created it. Maybe Jesus asking his Father for another “cup” derives from the question, “Is there any other way to bring about the salvation of the human race through my Person that will not involve a Cross?” And the answer, of course, was NO. In the end, Jesus accepted his fate in totality, knowing he was “going to the Father.” “I am going to my Father and your Father. To my God and your God” (Jn 20:17).
The next person to be admired on this topic of a highspeed train ride toward our impending death is that of St. Paul. And one of the more familiar verses with reference to the life of The Apostle is what our respective Lector at each Mass will proclaim this Sunday from Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians: “For to me life is Christ, and death is gain.” Do we realize how difficult it is to arrive at this spiritual and physical point in our lives? How much does any person need to deal with, or have to stare death in the face, before anyone can speak these words of St. Paul, and do so with full sincerity, absent any and all false humility or seriously false braggadocio? It’s an interesting mix; we know we’re going to die; we know we cannot stop it; we know that our bodies are not made to last here, despite what science is attempting to do in this matter; we know (us people of faith) that God has not created us for life on Earth, but life in Heaven, and still, we profoundly struggle with the reality that death is not only arriving quickly at our doorstep, but that it’s really going to happen to us.
St. Paul wrote the above words to the Philippians not to brag or show off that he somehow had power over death. He had no such power. He could and did write such words of triumph for one reason; that Christ Jesus was in him. And I mean every vein and every persecuted orifice of his body, soul, and spirit. Remove this truth from any of our lives, and life is no longer not only absent Christ, but there is no gain to be had. In a postmodern and post-Christian world, a world where so many folks seem to know things about life and death much better than God does, and this includes some leaders in God’s Church who seem better at misleading, the above fundamental truth of who we are before the Lord assists us in our preparation for the day when we come before the Master. The way I see it is that so much of what takes place in this post-whatever Western culture by Church people and non-Church people are decisions and actions that have settled way too much into the fabric of this world, which Jesus warned his Apostles about, coupled with a lack of self-reflection on the highspeed train ride we are on toward the death of our body, while not keeping intact the life of our soul. Souls are being purchased for Satan in this post-whatever Western culture, and there are both secular and religious leaders who ride this alternate highspeed train toward their own spiritual demise. Which is sad. Losing one’s own soul is one thing, but taking others with you is wrong.
The central importance of not losing sight in our lives of these words of St. Paul cannot be overestimated. It’s impossible to overestimate a way of understanding ourselves in the entirety of our lives (earth and heaven) in connection to the words, “For to me life is Christ, and death is gain.” The best example I’ve been blessed to witness in the living out of these words was my own mother, whose faith in Christ ran so deep that in the end, even living with her dementia, I sensed she never lost sight of what was going to be gained in her passing from death to life. And that God rewarded her for her faith in his Son, knowing what Jesus alone can and will do for human hearts and souls who stay ever close to his Sacred Body.
St. Paul is the champion of all creatures in this matter. Our Blessed Mother would have been the champion in this matter of life and death if God did not favor her being assumed into heaven body and soul, becoming the “second fruit” of the new creation, after the firstfruits of her Son. Instead, God chose St. Paul to remind all generations throughout history that this highspeed train riding toward death is not a ride of horror or abject fear, but one that has the greatest gain riding with us. The gain of Christ Jesus our Lord in all his glory. The gain of his Resurrection. What brings us safely to our destination is our faith in him, lived in the community of his Church. He is our center, our Point Man, our vision, and our final and forever embrace. To him be glory forever. Amen.