In Death There's Life

Raphael's Resurrection of Jesus

At the 11th hour on the 11th day in the 11th month in 1918, WWI ended. Armistice Day then became Veterans Day now and on Monday, November 11 we honor our veterans, over 18 million men and women in our military.  Thank you, veterans, for your service to our country.

Here's a bit of simple wisdom I like: may your troubles be less, may your blessings be more, and may happiness come through your door. That's all in the Bible, and it’s my prayer for each of you, especially our veterans whom we honor this Veterans Day.

Sunday’s word of God in the book of Maccabees describes the martyrdom of a mother and her seven sons. They stood up for their beliefs and died for them. The author may be asking us, do we speak up for what's right?

The Letter to the Christian community at Thessaloniki urges the community to persevere in their discipleship with Jesus. God will strengthen them, the author writes, so they can fix their hearts on God. That’s a good message for us as well.

In the Gospel according to Luke, Jesus and the Sadducees talk about mortality and immortality. The Sadducees, who don’t believe in life after death, use an absurd example of seven brothers marrying the same sister-in-law and then dying. ”Who’s her husband in the next life?” they ask.

But Jesus distinguishes between “this age” and “the next age.” And even Moses had alluded to life after death.

From a Christian perspective, hidden in every Good Friday is the glory of Easter, when God transformed Jesus into a new awesome spiritualized body. The disciples knew him in the breaking of the bread. The resurrection was real, even though they couldn’t name his new mode of spiritual embodiment. And that new life one day will be ours.

Meantime, we have our Good Fridays. Sometimes problems seem to overwhelm us. In trying times, we may wonder, where is God? This eternal question is highlighted in the book of Job, in the Confessions of Saint Augustine, in the novels of Dostoevsky, and in recent best sellers.

As we reflect upon the human situation, we realize that our planet is wounded, so to speak. At times, suffering results from immoral behavior, from misuse of freedom, from tyranny. At other times, suffering results from natural disasters, from an incomplete universe, a universe in progress.
But ultimately, suffering is a mystery. How respond?

First, remember that God is always near us, closer to us than we are to ourselves. God forever seeks to bring us to the fullness of life.

Second, avoid negative judgments about ourselves. To think, I really deserve it, is a form of self-hatred. God loves us unconditionally.

Finally, remember that the mystery of inescapable suffering has healing and redemptive power. Jesus, through the mystery of his death and resurrection, healed us, reconnected us to God in friendship. Yes, our inescapable aches and pains, born with love, can bring forth new depths of life in ourselves and in others.

As we remember our deceased loved ones in November, we may ask, how do we come to terms with our own dying? Some counselors help people cope by encouraging them to begin drafting a letter to loved ones. This may highlight the most important gifts we can leave them: love, faith in God, hope in life eternal, compassion, forgiveness, and gratitude. This is not the end, but a beginning.

What Matters to God

Dore's Sketch of the Rich Man and Lazarus

In today’s Gospel, Jesus advises us to “Take care to guard against all greed.” He calls one who only accumulates things for him/herself a fool, forgetting one’s absolute dependency upon God, and forgetting one’s mortality.

Yes, we need things in order to live, but all we can take with us in death are our good deeds. As the saying goes, you never see a U-Haul trailer following a hearse to the cemetery.

The reality of death challenges us to answer the most important questions in life: how shall we live and what shall we do? And so, Jesus urges us to make sure we have our priorities straight. Seek first the things of God.

The so-called last things—hell, purgatory, and heaven—are challenging beliefs in Christianity. How can we say at the same time there’s an all-good God, and there’s a hell? Think about it.  Yes, scripture describes the last things.

But Dante’s The Divine Comedy also imaginatively reveals how he awoke in a dark wood (perhaps a midlife crisis) where Virgil led him through earth to hell (remember Dante’s famous line, “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here”). They saw sinners going to the abode of Satan. Then Dante ascended to purgatory, and finally, with his beloved Beatrice, he climbed the spheres of paradise and into the dazzling vision of the Triune God.

The Divine Comedy is a masterpiece in poetry, not easily readable but profoundly instructive about life. Heaven and hell answer the question of justice. Many good people die without receiving in this life a reward for their goodness, and many wicked people die without paying for their wickedness. If there’s justice, there has to be someplace where wrongs are righted, and someplace where good is rewarded.

So what are hell, purgatory, and heaven? The language is best understood symbolically. God does not “send” us to hell; we freely choose to go (unwisely). Also, while accepting the possibility of hell (in light of the dynamic between God's unconditional love for us and our human freedom to reject that love), we don’t have to believe that human beings are actually “in” such a “place.” In fact, we hope all human beings will find salvation.

If we peel away its fiery imagery, hell can be described as the absence of God, the failure to realize our true selves, whereas heaven is the ultimate fulfillment of our true selves. In heaven, we participate in the mystery of God.

Purgatory then is a “purification” in which we become our true selves.  And judgment is our own recognition of what is right and wrong in ourselves.

Finally, we believe that in the mystery of death, God will transform our earthly selves, like Jesus, into a new, indescribable heavenly reality. St. Paul put it well: “No eye has seen, no mind has ever imagined … what God has prepared for those who love Him.”

Yes, Jesus wants us to be indescribably rich: “rich in what matters to God.” (Luke 12:21)