Thirty-second Sunday of Year C
November 2007
99.9% of us want to live on and on and on. A very small minority, because of ill health, either physical or mental, wish to end their lives in this body. But even these wish to live on in better circumstances.
Up to very recently in human history (even in Christian history) the primary aim of marriage was the procreation of children who would carry on ones name or business or dynasty. Hence we have people like Henry V111 having a multiplicity of wives in an effort to get a male heir. In many eastern countries and in most of Africa (even to the present day), a childless marriage or a marriage with no male issue is regarded as invalid or at least adequate cause for divorce.
None of us want to die and be forgotten. This is the way we are made. At least, we want our children and grandchildren to remember us when we are dead and gone. We would all like to get into the history books. Hence people with the money or the power, want to leave a legacy by which they will be remembered as the centuries go bye - statues, books about themselves, donations to public facilities with their name on a plaque, etc.
The big curse of humanity is death. The big promise of Christianity is Eternal Life. My present body is not ‘fit’ for Eternal Life. Nobody knows this better than I myself. My present body with its shortcomings and limitations could not possibly accommodate me in Eternal Life. Even in this life, all the components which make up my body change completely over a period of every seven years. So the body I have at any particular moment of my life is a continually changing and temporary dwelling for the ‘I’. That is for the non-corporeal, immortal spirit which is ‘me‘. Just as my present body is in the process of chronic failure and will finally be completely discarded by my immortal spirit, so too, only what is immortal currency well survive my physical death and accompany my immortal spirit into Eternal Life.This immortal currency is the bonds of love which I have forged with God and with my fellow human beings during my life. So in Eternal Life it will not be of consequence who you are married to or who your parents are or who your children are but who you love. So that I would not fear physical death or be unduly worried about the gradual or sudden dissalution of my present body, God Himself became a human being and went through this whole process Himself. Just as Jesus Christ rose from death with a glorified body, I too will rise from death with a glorified body. As we read in 1Cor. 15: 54-55. ‘And after this perishable nature has put on imperishability and this mortal nature has put on immortality, then will the words of scripture come true: Death is swallowed up in victory. Death, where is your victory? Death, where is your sting?’