The Monthly Note
April 2011
Life...after life
" O my people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them …" (Ez 37, 12)
by Jacques Lauzier, O.P.
Mankind's greatest enemy is death. We accept illness and suffering with great reservation and fatalism, but not death. We cannot bring ourselves to accept that, one day, all will end. All that we have " created " or amassed, will be of no use. That our names will be forgotten.
Our diplomas, bank accounts…finished for us. Our family, our friends, our surroundings…everything will be taken away from us. Nothing will be left, not even of ourselves. Maybe, just a little bit. A few ashes in an urn, or a few bones in a grave. But what is that compared to what we were, what we represented. Really, death is unacceptable. And we have the right to refuse it…if we look at it from a human perspective.
Luckily, we have another perspective. The one Jesus announced and promised: " Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. " Jesus is already " preparing us a place", there, in this life after life. And this life with Him will not be " boring ", as some may think. The joy that we feel in our body will be nothing compared to the one we will, one day, feel in our " brand new " resurrected body.
We should look forward to this day when suffering will no longer exist, where death will not come to deprive us…of life! And this day will come, this day is here! Yes, it is here because Jesus has already defeated suffering by His sufferings and death…by His resurrection.
Yes! Let us cry out with joy. Christ has risen from the dead to give us a life with Him, that will never, never, never, never, never end.
