Let Us Shut Out the
Fear of Death and Meditate upon Immortality
Our obligation is to
do God’s will, and not our own. We must remember this if the prayer that our
Lord commanded us to say daily is to have any meaning on our lips. How
unreasonable it is to pray that God’s will be done, and then not promptly obey
it when he calls us from this world! Instead we struggle and resist like
self-willed slaves and are brought into the Lord’s presence with sorrow and lamentation,
not freely consenting to our departure, but constrained by necessity. And yet
we expect to be rewarded with heavenly honours by him to whom we come against
our will! Why then do we pray for the kingdom of heaven to come if this earthly
bondage pleases us? What is the point of praying so often for its early arrival
if we would rather serve the devil here than reign with Christ.
The world hates
Christians, so why give your love to it instead of following Christ, who loves
you and has redeemed you? John is most urgent in his epistle when he tells us
not to love the world by yielding to sensual desires. Never
give your love to the world, he warns,or to anything in it. A man cannot love the Father and love the world
at the same time. All that the world offers is the lust of the flesh, the lust
of the eyes and earthly ambition. The world and its allurements will pass away,
but the man who has done the will of God shall live for ever. Our part, my dear brothers, is to be
single-minded, firm in faith, and steadfast in courage, ready for God’s will,
whatever it may be. Banish the fear of death and think of the eternal life that
follows it. That will show people that we really live our faith.
There, is the
glorious band of apostles, there the exultant assembly of prophets, there the
innumerable host of martyrs, crowned for their glorious victory in combat and
in death. There in triumph are the virgins who subdued their passions by the
strength of continence. There the merciful are rewarded, those who fulfilled
the demands of justice by providing for the poor. In obedience to the Lord’s
command, they turned their earthly patrimony into heavenly treasure.
My dear brothers, let
all our longing be to join them as soon as we may. May God see our desire, may
Christ see this resolve that springs from faith, for he will give the rewards
of his love more abundantly to those who have longed for him more fervently.
Source: The Liturgy of the Hours – Office of Readings
From the treatise of St Cyprian on mortality
Image taken from Wikimedia Commons
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