The Good News about death

ON the Commemoration of the All the Faithful Depart, or All Souls’ Day, celebrated on November 2, we are reminded of these very reassuring words of Christ: “Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and I will not reject anyone who comes to me, because I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the one who sent me.” (Jn 6,37-38) 

 He further said to clarify things even more: “And this is the will of the one who sent me, that I should not lose anything of what he gave me, but that I should raise it on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I shall raise him on the last day.” (Jn 6,39-40) 

 I believe it is most worthwhile to meditate on these words often to convince ourselves that we should never be afraid of death because as long as we believe in Christ, we are assured of eternal life, of achieving the ultimate and definitive dignity of ours as God’s image and likeness, children of his, sharers of his divine life and nature. 

 If our faith is strong in these words of Christ, we know that death is actually a most welcome event because it represents our salvation, our liberation from exile and alienation from God. Death would mean that we have successfully passed the test God has given us in this earthly life of ours. 

 That is why, the saints were never afraid of death. In fact, they would look forward to it, irrespective of whether death came through natural causes or through martyrdom or accident, etc. 

 The secret, of course, of converting our death as a way to our liberation and salvation is to die with Christ. Only with him can our resurrection, our victory over sin and death, take place after our death. St. Paul encapsulated this most wonderful truth of our faith when he said, “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his.” (Rom 6,5) 

 No wonder then that Christ culminated his redemptive work with his passion and death on the cross which provided the ransom for all our sins. Only then would his own resurrection take place. Christ made this point clear when after being rightly identified by Peter as ‘the Christ of God,’ he proceeded to talk about his passion, death and resurrection. 

 “The Son of Man must suffer greatly,” he said, “and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.” (Lk 9,22) 

 We have to deepen our belief that with Christ’s resurrection, sin and death have been definitively conquered, and a new life in God is made available to us. We are now a new creation, with the power of Christ to conquer sin and death and everything else that stands in the way of our becoming true children of God. 

 And so, we have every reason to think that we can live forever in Christ over whom death no longer has dominion. In spite of whatever, we have every reason to be happy and confident, as long as we are faithful to Christ. 

 We just need to realize more deeply that Christ is alive and wants to live his life with us, because we are patterned after him. Let us not miss this most golden opportunity.

To be a saint requires a miracle

ON the Solemnity of All Saints, celebrated on November 1, we are reminded that we all are actually called to become saints for the simple reason that we are meant to be God’s image and likeness, sharers of his life and of his nature as God wants us to be. To be a saint is to be God-like. 

 That is why Christ always compared us to God. “You are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect,” he said. (Mt 5,48) On another occasion, he said, “Be merciful just as your Father is merciful.” (Lk 6,36) 

 Reiterating the same idea, St. Peter said, “You must be holy in everything you do, just as God is holy.” (1 Pt 1,15) St. Paul, for his part, said, “This is the will of God, your sanctification…” (1 Thes 4,3) 

 But for us to become saints, as we should, we need God’s grace. We cannot achieve that simply using our human powers, even if we are expected to use them to the full. And this means that somehow a miracle must happen for us to become saints. 

 This is where we have to ask for that miracle. And that miracle can only take place if we have deep faith. Like those characters in the gospel who begged Christ for the miraculous cure of their ailments, the miracle took place because of their faith. In all those miracles, Christ commended those who received their miraculous cure for their faith. 

 Yes, faith is needed for miracles to happen. We have to be clear about this point. For miracles to happen, especially the most important one which is for us to become saints, to become God-like as we should, faith is needed. This was dramatized in that gospel episode where Christ was presented with a paralytic lying on a stretcher. 

 “When Jesus saw their faith,” the gospel narrates, “he said to the paralytic, ‘Courage, child, your sins are forgiven.’” Christ said this before he went to cure the man of his paralysis. He cured the man precisely because of their faith, that is, their belief that Christ was truly the expected Redeemer. 

 Nowadays, many people claim that miracles do not happen anymore. They say miracles only took place in the distant past, the time of the gospel when Christ went around in the land of Judea and Galilee. But now, miracles are considered obsolete, if not an anomaly. 

 This is like saying that Christ, the son of God who became man, has ceased intervening in our lives, that he was purely a historical man, subject to time and space, and that after death, he is simply no more, completely wrapped in the spiritual world, if ever that exists, and that he has no immediate and tangible impact on our lives. 

 We have to be clear about this point. Christ is always around and is actively intervening in our lives, directing and leading us to our proper end, in spite of our very erratic ways. He can never be indifferent to us, and is willing to suffer and die for us just to save us. Precisely he came as an expiation for our sins. He is the one who pays for our sins. All we have to do is just to try to go along with him in the best way we can. 

 What we have to do is to feel that we are helpless without God’s grace, without begging for a miracle for us to become real saints!

Nourishing our hope

IF we are guided by our Christian faith, we know that our life here on earth is not our definitive life. We are meant to pursue our ultimate definitive life with God in heaven. Thus, our life here on earth can only be marked by the indispensable virtue of hope which is first of all a gift from God. 

 We are reminded of this truth of our faith in the Letter of St. Paul to the Romans. “We groan within ourselves, anticipating our adoption as the sons of God, and the redemption of our body,” he said. “For we have been saved by hope. But a hope which is seen is not hope. For when a man sees something, why would he hope? But since we hope for what we do not see, we wait with patience.” (8,23-25) 

 To be sure, this waiting with patience that hope involves is never a matter of doing nothing. It’s an active waiting filled with desires and deeds to do a lot of good. In other words, to fill our waiting, our patience, with love. Hope is nourished by love. 

 This love that nourishes our hope for heaven need not involve big, extraordinary challenges and trials. It can first of all involve the usual ordinary little things that we get involved in everyday. It’s precisely in taking care of the little things that can truly show how our love is genuine, and how our hope is nourished by it. 

 Yes, we can have a foretaste of heaven, our true definitive home, through the little things of each day. Impossible? Think again. It’s Christ who says it in so many words. “The Kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed…The Kingdom of heaven is like a yeast…” (Lk 13,18-21) 

 We need to reconcile ourselves with this happy truth of our faith that we do not have to wait for extraordinary circumstances for us to reach heaven and even to have a taste of it even while still here on earth. With the little, ordinary things in our life, we have all the means and chances to have heaven within our reach. 

 The secret again is to do everything, no matter how little or insignificant it is in human terms, with love. That is, with the love of God, reflecting and channeling God’s abiding love for us in everything that we do, which usually are small and ordinary things in our day. 

 Sanctity, our ticket to heaven, certainly requires heroism, even to the point of martyrdom. But we can be sure that by being consistently loving in doing the little things of life, especially when they are hidden and unappreciated humanly, we would already be very heroic indeed. 

 The Book of Sirach says: “He who despises small things will fail little by little.” (19,1) We have to be most careful because the neglect of little things can easily lull us to complacency, or to think that nothing is wrong and that everything is just fine. 

 We obviously have to contend with many obstacles along the way. We can tend to be narrow-minded and short-sighted, full of improper biases and attachments. We easily make rash judgments and are often at the mercy of our emotions and passions, putting our reason and faith to sleep. 

 What we have to do is to learn to find Christ in the little things which comprise most of our day, if not of our whole life. Another way of saying it is to learn to refer everything to Christ, no matter how little or insignificant it is. 

 This is how we nourish our hope!