This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.
In many respects, Christianity is an earthy religion, staring the less savory aspects of human existence straight in the face.
One of these realities is death. “Memento mori” is a Christian expression dating back into the mists of time: “Remember [your] death.” It is a fitting expression for meditation during Lent. At our death, all the pleasures we have heaped upon ourselves will be for nothing; all the praises of men, mere vanity. “You have lived on earth in luxury and pleasure; you have fattened your hearts for the day of slaughter,” says St. James in the fifth chapter of his letter. This is quite an image: To the extent that we focus our lives on passing pleasures and vanities, we fatten ourselves for the slaughter of eternal condemnation.
We should remember our death, not in fear, but in hope. Christianity is able to face death because death does not destroy the source of the Christian’s joy.
In today’s gospel, Jesus faces death head on. He associates the essence of His work with and for His Father with the calling of the dead to life.
Consider in passing how His enemies were so deaf to His message, that they did not pick up on this key lesson for their lives, but rather only on the claim that inflamed their envy: The claim that God was Jesus’ Father.
Just as occurred with the envious Pharisees, in our smug modern time, when the travails of life have been beaten back a bit by medical advancement and technology, there can be a vain, academic tendency to reduce all Jesus’ words to allegory and metaphor, to read into them too much out of mere academic curiosity.
But when speaking about the resurrection, Jesus was not sitting in some ivory tower classroom in the halls of academia, pontificating vainly about overcoming our little challenges in life and assuaging our psychological boo boos.
He was talking about real death–the kind that comes to us all, putting our bodies six feet underground as food for maggots. And He was talking about resurrection, real resurrection, from that death.
And in similarly plain language, He makes it clear that some rise to life, and some to condemnation–the latter, those who have “fattened their hearts for the day of slaughter.”
Memento mori. Remember death. It comes soon; live with an eye to ensuring resurrection to life, for yourself and as many others as possible.
Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Imagine the stage of your own death. Maybe quietly in your bed at home, maybe in a hospital bed, maybe in an accident–one way or another, one moment you are here, and the next, you are standing before the Lord, rising either to life or to condemnation. As you look at yourself there, beg Jesus to protect you in His mercy and Providence from sin, and ask Him to make your life fruitful according to His wishes for the salvation of others.
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