In the novel I am currently reading, Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson, several
characters who are home on leave during World War II know the odds are very
high that they will die when they return to the front lines. Although most of
us won’t be going to a war zone any time soon, we actually have much in common
with these men. Because we are human, we know that we are going to die. How
does that knowledge change the way we choose to live?
If we are faithfully living out our vocation as disciples of
Jesus, we are in a continual process of reordering our lives differently in
response to the one “whose love allows us to bring Love to life each day,” as
Sr. Colleen Gibson puts it. If we are faithful in bringing Love to life each
day, there is no need to change anything about the way we are living, and we
can be at peace with death whenever it arrives.
The Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore noted that “The
one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at
least started to understand the meaning of life.” The one who plants
trees understands the meaning of death as well. Although death is the end of this life
in the flesh, it cannot contain the love and life we share in Christ, which
will bear fruit everywhere and for all time
.
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