Think About It

Given a recent wilderness adventure of mine, I've been thinking about it a bit more than usual the last few days...

   Fifth Sunday of Lent   A 

Readings

John and Jim loved baseball.

They lived and breathed the sport

to the point that they often speculated
on whether or not there would be baseball in heaven.

They agreed that whoever got there first

would come back to let the other one know.

It so happened that John died, and his friend grieved for days.

After about two weeks,

Jim awoke to a familiar voice calling his name.

It was John, and he’d returned with the promised report.

“I’ve got good news and bad news, Jim,” he said.

“The good news is, there’s baseball in heaven.

We play everyday!

The bad news is…you’re scheduled to pitch next Tuesday.”

This Sunday’s gospel makes abundantly clear

the inevitably of death,

even for those who are close to Jesus.

What we see in the death of Lazarus

is seen repeated in the lives of so many saints.

St. Thérèse of Lisieux, a French Carmelite nun,

died painfully from tuberculosis at the tender age of 24 in 1897.

Recognizing her great holiness,

one of the other sisters said to her that, when she died,

a radiant choir of angels 

would most certainly come for her.

Thérèse—ever the realist—

wouldn’t accept such attempts 

to make death “pretty.”

But she also refused to see death 

as something fearful.

When another sister said, 

“Death will carry you off,”

Thérèse quickly responded,

“No, not death.

God will come to take me. 

Death is not a ghost,

a horrifying figure such as one sees in pictures. 

It says in the catechism that death

is the separation of body and soul—
nothing more.

Well, I have no fear of a separation

which will unite me forever with God.”

Staying close to Jesus may not spare us from death,

but faith does have the power to rob death of its terror.

This Sunday’s lengthy gospel

contains the Bible’s shortest verse:

“Jesus wept.”

Death is not the Lord’s plan for us; it never has been.

Jesus weeps, not because he believes that death is the end,

but because it pains his Sacred Heart to see us suffer—

suffering that’s a result of sin.

Yet Jesus does not stop at shedding tears.

He will proceed from Bethany to Jerusalem to shed his blood,

that by his own dying on the cross and rising from the grave

death might be swallowed up in victory.

The sacred writings of the Hindus ask,

“What is the greatest wonder of the world?”

And the same text answers:

“That all of us know that we will surely die,

but each of us foolishly thinks he will not die any time soon.”

Do I give death any thought—

and not just generically or the passing of loved ones,

but my own death, which could come at any time?

And if I do think about death—

do I see it as the end, as something final which I should dread?

Or do I see death as a new beginning,

as an opening to a life beyond this one,

which has the potential to give meaning and purpose

to every moment I spend on this earth?

I can’t be sure if there’s baseball in heaven,
but I do share the perspective of none other than Peter Pan:
“To die will be an awfully big adventure…”

We will soon enough walk again with Jesus

on his way of the cross

It’s a way that necessarily passes through death to new life.

Jesus would not avoid it;

we cannot avoid it.

So why not be ready?