We do not want to die. Okay, I know that some would object to this statement, but opposing sentiments are usually the exception. These exceptions are generally aberrations due to some form of suffering. We have all heard of suicide victims due to mental illness and depression, emotional trauma, excessive physical pain and handicap, and delusion (as in certain cults). In all these cases there is a running away from something (pain or anxiety) or a fleeing toward something (a higher plain of existence or some other such alternative). The latter comes close to the Christian hope, although with one essential difference, true faith defends the dignity and sacredness of all life, here and now.
Our desire for life is joined with a natural longing for happiness and a supernatural yearning for reconstitution and union. Thoughts of heaven are often filled with joyful images. It is associated with the festivity of a wedding banquet. We will be eternally happy. We will know the peace that the world can only dream about. All our analogies pale in comparison to what awaits us. Popular religion often envisions peaceful angels playing harps while sitting on soft clouds. It is a cute picture, but the reality we anticipate as Catholics is more complex. We want to live forever, but not at all costs. That is why the contrary image of hell is ever so frightful. Instead of happy images, popular piety views it as a dark abode of stifling smoke, eternal flame, and agonizing pain. Again, this is very interesting, but here too, the Catholic contribution would go much further. Why is there joy in heaven and pain in hell?
When we attempt to answer that question, our view of life after death becomes much more mature and realistic. Those who opt for hell, despite the irrationality of it, have mysteriously chosen it. A good God will not force his children to be happy and so he honors this choice. This is the most frightful freedom given to us, the ability to embrace or to reject the God for whom we were fashioned. Unlike the Seventh Day Adventists and similar groups, we do not believe that the dead momentarily pop out of existence or sleep or become unconscious. They are alive. However, the eternal life promised by Christ refers not merely to continued existence beyond the grave but to a participation in the life of God. This is first made possible in this world through faith, the sacraments, and the grace of God. Thus, the elect of God, despite difficult bouts with sin and the need for constant forgiveness, already in this world walk with one foot in the next.
We believe that the souls of the dead, commonly called ghosts, pass from this world into heaven or hell. That journey to heaven may take them through a period of purgation, a time of cleansing in which our prayers are most beneficial for them. While hell signifies eternal frustration and both a hatred of God and self; heaven is understood primarily as the abode of God. Christ has promised a room in his Father’s house to those who love God.
The life of heaven implies perfection into the likeness (holiness) of God. We are not only completely healed from the lingering effects of sin, but grace builds upon nature making us something greater than if left to ourselves. God fills that space in us that only he can make complete. There is union with God and with those who have gone before us. This reunion with our beloved dead is a principal element of our expectation for the life of heaven. Every loss has wounded us. Every death has reduced us. This is given back in heaven. The stagnant image of heaven and eternal life, so prevalent in popular Christian culture, would never satisfy. The finite creature can never exhaust the mystery of an infinite Creator. Heaven allows an exploration into God himself that will never know final resolution. Heaven is endless discovery and satisfaction. By comparison, everything we know now fails quickly to satisfy. Mortal life is short and often filled with disappointments, hurts, and loss. While we are promised a full restoration, body and soul; like our glorified Lord, we will know the wondrous everlasting fruits of his victory over suffering, sin, and death.
There is an irony today regarding our desire for life and happiness as compared to our society in the grips of a culture of death. Our preoccupation with our own personal lives and transitory pleasure seeks to disfigure what life is really about. Many who claim a faith affiliation live and act as if this existence is all there is. When this life becomes difficult, increasing numbers want the option of euthanasia. Quality of life decisions and careers often take precedence over the lives of the unborn, leading to millions and millions of abortions. Many are advocating infanticide for those children deemed defective, as if a handicapped life has no worth, and creating too great a burden upon us. The new deity of science is holding out the prospect of longer lives through DNA manipulation and the harvesting of body parts from clones designated as non-persons. It may sound like Science Fiction, but the brave new world is rushing upon us and the dignity of human life may very well be a casualty.
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Filed under: Discipleship, Easter, Eschatology, Forgiveness, God, Jesus, Redemption, Reflection, Repentance, Sacraments, Sin | Leave a comment »
Traditional Catholics and Homeschooling parents are always lamenting the fact that they cannot find modest swimsuits for the young women in the family. Everything is designed these days to show ballooning cleavage and legs extended past the waistline, or so it seems. It is all a very scary business, especially if there are young men and teenage boys on the beaches too. Remember, the most dangerous thing for a teenage girl is a teenage boy! Many of us have not visited beaches in years so as to preserve the custody of the eyes. Well, if you are tired of parading your young daughters to the ravenous beach wolves, there is hope in sight. It comes from a highly unlikely place, the Muslims.
SPLASHGEAR MODEST SWIMWEAR has been designed with loose-fitting swim shirts (yes, even that pretty neck is covered!), swim pants (legs, what legs?) and hair covers (which she can use at Mass, too!). Why these girls look almost like boys they are covered so effectively. Fathers will no longer have to worry, indeed, they can get modest swim-gear for their wives too (they come even in jumbo sizes!).
The Church should start its own line, and we could sell to “good” Catholics and Muslims alike. But until then, the Muslims have online and mail-order catalogues! If our kids are afraid that others might make fun of them, we can start groups that will go to pools and beaches together. Catholic homeschoolers and Muslim girls can swim together and urge authorities to force those nasty boys to go somewhere else! With strength of numbers, our families and girls can admonish the other so-called Catholic females on the beach: “Have you no shame for exposing yourselves in underwear? Protestants, I mean Prostitutes wear more clothes than you! Why don’t you save money and just wear a couple pieces of cotton thread instead of that $500 string-bikini! Your butt is fat! My newborn baby sees you and all he wants to do is nurse!” You’ll have those immodest sirens running from the beaches in tears.
The Lord appears to Mary Magdalene, consoles her, and sends her off with the news, “I have seen the Lord!” (see John 20:11-18). The insistence upon the witness of women in the Scriptures reveals to us just how much both men and women were called to be Christ’s disciples. Mary Magdalene proclaims the Good News to Jesus’ other followers, the men with whom he had entrusted his apostolic authority and power. Notice his words to her. She is so thrilled to see him that he must immediately tell her not to cling to him. He exclaims that he is “ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God!” This is one of the clearest statements by Christ that his particular Easter event will also be ours. The words also echo the time when he taught his friends to call God, “Our Father,” in the Lord’s Prayer. We, who belong to Christ, belong also to the one who sent and raised him up. We who are now identified with Christ can appropriately call God our adopted Father. He keeps us in existence and in baptism refashions us into the likeness of his Son.
“Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the Lord, your God, heeding his voice, and holding fast to him” (Deuteronomy 30:19-20). These words when offered to the People of God by Moses were an encouragement to follow the commandments, and thus to seek God’s blessing and not his curse. So often this translated into the naive understanding that if one were good, only good things would enter one’s life. However, in the book of Job and then in the life of Jesus himself, we become well aware that sometimes suffering and even death can inflict the very best of people. The Christian appreciation of this text is very deep. Like a child trusting utterly in his or her parent, we are to rely upon and to be faithful to God — no matter what. Jesus lived out this passage, because as ironic as it might seem, by allowing himself to be betrayed, mocked, tortured, and murdered — he was choosing life for us. Now, in response to his sacrifice, we too have to open ourselves to a share in this life — a life which will ultimately be beyond the reach of pain and death. Notice what the Scripture said, we are to love God, heed his voice, and cling fast to him. We are to hold on so tight that no storm of sin and weakness can drive us away from him. This will require that our love for him always be fused with obedience, just as Christ was obedient unto the Cross. The secret is not to give up on God even when the times become difficult. What is more, we need desperately to find the peace and joy which comes with perfect discipleship in this life, despite the cost, loving God entirely for his own sake.
Although there is no Mass, the rituals for Good Friday are very moving and evocative. However, it is the faith that we bring to the ceremonies which gives it importance for us. An outsider to our faith, might look upon such ritual with awe towards its simplicity and yet confusion as to its meaning. This is because we celebrate a theme which much of our culture seeks to ignore or postpone. We commemorate death. Assuredly, it may not be death as many people understand it, but nevertheless it remains something mysterious and even feared. Our society, with its newfound confidence in science, ironically hides the tragic death of the unborn behind the guise of linguistics while many in the medical field go to elaborate techniques to keep certain other people alive, no matter what the cost. One of the tasks of the Christian is to visit the sick; and yet, how often have we hesitated from that duty? And we know why — because to meet an elderly or handicapped or sick person is to face the specter of our own mortality, death. We dye our hair, or wear something over our heads that lost recently at the horse races; we cake our faces in makeup to cover the blemishes and wrinkles of age; we diet to wear clothes that we could not fit into even as teenagers; we take an assortment of drugs to maintain our vitality; we do all this and more to escape the prospect of age and the ghost of death which lingers in the periphery of our lives.
Many years ago I was counseling a man who had stopped going to church. He said that he did not have to go to services to pray and that the churches were filled with hypocrites anyway. I admitted that there was some truth to his accusation; but I then asked him to honestly tell me whether or not he was really praying alone either. He paused. Hesitantly, he said, no. I then quite pointedly inquired about who he thought should go to church? He wondered what I meant. I responded that Christ came for sinners and that we have tried ever since to fill our churches with them, this priest included. The poor man began to see his own hypocrisy. The only difference between him and churchgoers was that we admitted we were sinners and therefore sought God’s forgiveness. Jesus spoke directly to this when he said, “The healthy do not need a doctor; sick people do. I have not come to invite the self-righteous to a change of heart, but sinners” (Luke 5:31-32). There is no shame in admitting that we are not perfect, only in trying to hide our frailties behind the lies of pride and deceit. I wish I could tell you that this revelation changed the life of this man. But, I have no inkling. He did not come back into the worship space where I presided. The blinders immediately came back down and he rationalized away everything I said. I pray for him, just as we all should. And yet, there is some sadness in knowing that when our family in faith comes together, he and so many others are not present. No one, anywhere, can ever take their place here and so we are the poorer. We desperately need the witness and solidarity of one another. With this in mind, I would sincerely encourage the constant support of one another, not with the badgering of a people who think they are better than others but with the example of a faith lived out both in our particular churches and in the world outside. The Pharisees and the scribes to whom Jesus spoke did not realize that they most of all needed Christ’s forgiveness and healing. Let it be a lesson about which we shall always be mindful.
The title chosen for this subheading might make one imagine a romantic setting where some daring spy has an affair with a deadly enemy agent. Such is how our minds and imaginations work these days. The arachnologist might fantasize in some poor anthropomorphic way about the love of two black widow spiders. The male was under her spell. Did he know that her embrace guaranteed new life and the end of his own? Snap! She bites off his head — oblivion, the end of a relationship — now he is merely fodder for a patricidal cannibalistic brood. Sweet and deceptive is the kiss of death. Perhaps the maiden being drained of her blood by a vampire in a late-night B-movie would think so? I digress enough. While these might make interesting if not sick asides; what I want to mention briefly is a far more realistic kiss, a kiss which has touched the lives of each and every one of us.
A few years ago, I recall watching a re-run episode of the old series, The Twilight Zone, which I think might help us to appreciate God’s Word. In it, three robbers made an incredible heist of gold bars. It was worth a fortune. However, the gold was too hot to handle. So, one of the men, being a scientist, devised a way for them to go into suspended animation or sleep, to wake up healthy and rich a hundred years hence. They bet their lives on this proposition for wealth. A hundred years later, they awaken from their slumber. Sometime during their stasis, a rock had fallen and had broken a glass cylinder containing one of their friends. He was dead. There were only two left; so much the better. They would be richer for it — they thought. The remaining two men exited their cave in the desert with their loot. The sun was hot. Civilization was no longer where it used to be. The truck they had counted upon broke down. They fought with each other. Greed set in. The water became scarce. A tussle broke out and suddenly, there was only one man left. He laughed. He was rich beyond avarice. He carried the heavy bars in the hot desert sun. Just when he thought he was finished, he met a couple of people in some kind of futuristic hot-rod. He fell to the ground. “Water, water,” he begged, “Give me some water and I’ll make you rich beyond your dreams!” He held out the gold. One of the people whom he met pitied the dying man but found him very curious. For everyone knew that in the latter twenty-first century, gold was easily accessible and virtually worthless.
“Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you” (Isaiah 49:15).
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