13th Sunday of Year B
July 2006
"Why all this commotion and crying? The child is not dead, but asleep." `But they ridiculed him.'
This must be the great hope of Christianity.
Your child, your father, your mother, your wife, your husband, your brother, your sister, is not dead, but asleep.
For me, a Christian, life is full of little deaths. Every night when I go to sleep is a little death. When a child goes to university or on a gap year or to do the grand tour, their going is a little death for parents and siblings. When a son or daughter marries and leaves home or goes to work in a distant place it is a little death for those who remain. Of course there is the great difference of watching a loved one sicken and die in pain and distress. Of course there is the huge shock of the sudden and unexpected death. There is the finality of funeral services and burial.
But listen to the words of today's first reading; `God did not make Death, he takes no pleasure in destroying the living. For God created human beings to be immortal, he made them as an image of his own nature.'
For the Christian, at the end of the day, there must be the belief of knowing that the separation is temporary. The person we know and love `is not dead but asleep.' There will be the opportunity to say `I love you' again' There will be the opportunity to say sorry for careless hurts. There will be the opportunity to offer forgiveness for hurts received. There will be the opportunity to ask forgiveness for nasty behaviour. There will be the opportunity to hold each other in our arms and shed tears of joy. A wise man was once asked if he believed in resurrection from the dead.
`Of course I do' he replied. `If I am right then everything will be OK. If I am wrong there will be nobody to laugh at me.'