If one can die like Our Lord – then one may live like Our Lord in Eternal life.
My mother in law sick – very very sick…
She had been sick for a very long time. And during the period of her illness, she became very very thin. In fact, by the time my husband went back to visit her (she lives overseas) she was so thin that he described her as looking like a skeleton. In fact, by the time my husband was actually able see his mother, he was so afraid of causing her additional pain – because she was so thin – that he struggled very much to touch her or kiss her or hug her. He felt that she was so thin that there was simply nothing to numb the pain when he touched her skin – no insulation from any careless touch, so to speak…
And I have been thinking about that day as I have been thinking about how thin my mother in law became. You see, her thinness reminds me of the demands made of us for Salvation…
Eternity looms before every human soul. We can either have an eternity of salvation or we can have an eternity of damnation. And the only way into heaven is with empty hands and a full heart. And the only way to empty our hands is to give away everything of this world. And that means we must give away even our physical bodies. After all, in death our bodies rot away and become dust – just like the dust to which they return.
In the final entries of Saint Faustina’s diary, she spoke of the strangeness of the feeling of her own body decaying. She spoke of the strangeness of feeling that her body had started to waste away while her soul was still inside it.
And I have been reflecting on that today. For it seems that there will be nothing more left of us before we die. It seems that we will be withered away before we draw our last breath.
And when I think of that, I think of Christ. Of all the persons born in this world, it is ONLY Christ (and the Blessed Virgin) who were both conceived without Original Sin, who deserved NOT to wither away. And yet – before Christ gave up His Spirit – His body was beaten and battered and bruised. In fact there was so little left of Him that when His side was pierced with a lance water came out with the blood – because He had already bleed out His blood before…
And I have been thinking about that today. For it seems that if God Himself died with a Body completely expended, then I have no reason to ask for anything less. For if one can die like Our Lord – then one may live like Our Lord in Eternal life. And for that – it is probably worth being reduced to a pile of bones before I draw my dying breath…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
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