Nov 20: Death is not Undoing but Passage

William Blake: The River of Life

Saturday of the Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time
Gospel: Lk 20:27-40

“Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection (NRSV, Lk 20:36).”

Lord, it is only because of the sin of the world compounded by our own personal sinfulness that death has become the enemy. It is because of the confusion and misunderstanding that sin brings into our lives that death appears to be our undoing.

Even in the experience of your Son Jesus resurrected, his disciples first concluded that it was you, Father, who had snatched him from the jaws of death and raised him to new life.

How difficult it is for us to grasp the truth even when it is thrust upon us. You speak your one word in the depth of our being in every age and to every person and still so much of your truth manages to elude us. It took much prayer and reflection for the early Church to realize that Jesus was not snatched from death but that he indeed rose from the dead through his own power, the divine life that you, Father, share with him and the Holy Spirit, and indeed through the great mystery of your love for us, that you share also with every human being who will accept it.

Lord God, you offer us a share in your divine life from the first moment of our lives. It brings with it much power. It is because of this life given to us that we are creatures who can not only know but also give ourselves to one another, and to you, in love.

You challenge us, Lord, to make you the center and focus of our lives. The destiny to which you call us is eternity with you. Death then is not our undoing but that necessary passage from this world to the next, a passage that we are able to make through our own power because the life that you give us is then taken up by us and becomes our own.

At every moment of our lives, Lord, you challenge us to let go of what we have been up to that moment to grow in the gift of your life ever offered to us. This lifetime of letting go and new and fuller acceptance, even though it is sometimes marred by selfishness and sin, is finally climaxed in the ultimate act of faith by which we must literally let go of everything that we have made of ourselves in this world in order that we and all that we have touched may have a new birth.

Death then Lord is not undoing but climax. The acceptance of death is the final summation of everything that has gone before and the passage to an even richer life with you.

Father in heaven, in John’s gospel, Jesus speaks of his death as his coming hour of glory. Strengthen me that I too may embrace the end of my physical life as an hour of glory for me as well. Help me to live each remaining minute as a preparation for that final moment on earth, in the knowledge that the resurrection to which I look forward has already begun here and the power to accomplish it is mine, given to me from on high.

Through Christ our Lord. Amen.