Mar 22 Sun
After death, should I hope for my own resurrection?
Even though all living things on earth die, as a consequence of original sin, man must suffer bodily death.
By death, the soul is separated from the body, but in the resurrection, God will give incorruptible life to our body, transformed by reunion with our soul. Just as Christ is risen and lives forever, so all of us are called to rise at the last day to live with Him.
In the raising of Lazarus, Christ reunited this poor man’s body and soul and regenerated him to corruptible life, the natural life we live now.
But Christ raises us from an incorruptible body to a ‘spiritual body’.
Jesus links faith in the resurrection to his own person: ‘I am the Resurrection and the life.’ It is Jesus himself who, on the last day, will raise those who have believed in him. Already now in this present life, He gave a sign and pledge of this by restoring Lazarus to life, announcing thereby his own Resurrection.
We are on our earthly pilgrimage. This is our time of grace and mercy in which we work out our earthly life in keeping with the divine plan, and thus decide our ultimate destiny. With Gods’ helping and healing graces, our task is to do good and avoid evil. Our work is to love God and neighbor properly. We prepare for heaven by doing good. We prepare for hell by sinning.
The Church encourages us to prepare ourselves for the hour of our death, the end of this pilgrimage. In the ancient litany of the saints, we prayed: ‘From a sudden and unforeseen death, deliver us, O Lord’.
As Thomas a Kempis wrote:
Every action of yours, every thought, should be those of one who expects to die before the day is out. Death would have no great terrors for you if you had a quiet conscience …. Then why not keep clear of sin instead of running away from death? If you are not ready to face death today, it’s very unlikely you will be tomorrow.
As St. Francis put it:
Praised are you, my Lord, for our sister, bodily Death,
from whom no living man can escape.
Woe on those who will die in mortal sin!
Blessed are they who will be found
in your most holy will,
for the second death will not harm them.
And St. Josemaría: “A true Christian is always ready to appear before God. Because if he is fighting to live as a man of Christ, he is ready at every moment to fulfill his duty."
“A son of God fears neither life nor death, because his spiritual life is founded on a sense of divine filiation. God is my Father, he thinks, and He is the Author of all good; He is all Goodness."
“But, you and I, do we really act as sons of God?"
Let us ask the Mother of God to intercede for us ‘now, and at the hour of our death’ and entrust ourselves to St. Joseph, the patron of a happy death.