The Joy of Living
Today's readings from the Holy Scriptures speak of the gift of eternal life. The First Reading from the Book of Wisdom tells us, "God did not make death, and he does not delight in the death of the living. For he created all things so that they might exist …” (1 Wisdom 1:13). In my life as a priest, Funerals and Baptisms and Weddings, in that order, line up my calendar of events and the frequency in which they occur. Through them I experience with people the rhythm of life. In an ordinary day, we tend to forget about these milestone events that color our life. There is a concerted effort to put on the backburner of our daily living, the thought of death. Our preoccupation with death would make us morose and melancholic. We as a society would even fail as an economy, since we would not engage in the business of buying and hoarding. Our mediated world shows the exciting feeling of possessing things and enjoying the present moment and subconsciously postponing death.
The Biblical teaching confronts death in a positive way, admitting the pain of separation from this present world. The promise of eternal life is not a denial or a distraction from the beauty or the pain of life in this world; rather, it’s a direct response to the mixture of joy and sorrow that always marks our experience in this world. And this promise has the power to transform how we enjoy our lives now as we wait for life to come.
Michael de Motaigne in “To Philosophize Is to Learn to Die,” in The Complete Essays, describes a group of condemned men to death on the gallows being led through fine building lined with the finest feast and entertainment. With the clock ticking for their torturous end these men do not enjoy the feast spread before them. Montaigne’s point is clear enough. Knowing that nothing lasts forever can spoil your appetite for pleasure along the way. How can we enjoy anything when we know we’re eventually going to lose everything? When we’ve learned to feel the weight of this question, we’re ready to understand why Jesus spoke so often of eternal life.
When Jesus speaks about eternal life, He pictures that life with wine, feasting and resurrection. He is promising a life beyond the reach of death. So, our physical death is a necessary passage to a never-ending life of intimacy with God. So, our present life’s joys and exuberance are to whet our appetite for the eternal feast. Like every feast which is a celebration of an event, the centering of the heavenly experience is a continuation of our relationship with God that we deepen in this present life, through the sacraments and the Eucharistic meal.
The Bible presents the conflict between good and evil as a fundamental struggle that has existed since the beginning of creation. This conflict is not portrayed as an equal battle between two opposing forces, but rather as a rebellion against God's perfect goodness. God is the source of all that is good, righteous, and holy. Evil entered the world through the rebellion of Satan, a created being, who chose to reject God's authority as we read in the first reading. This rebellion then spread to humanity through Adam and Eve's disobedience in the Garden of Eden. So, we are all born into a world that is experiencing this conflict. But God brought about a radical triumphal measure through Jesus Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection.
In today’s Gospel, we see Jesus’ rectifying two of the consequences of that first sin, sickness and death. Jesus agrees to go with Jairus to his daughter who is close to death. Before he gets there, a woman in the crowd, who has been hemorrhaging for twelve years, touches Jesus’ cloak and is healed instantaneously. This woman is freed and is reunited with the community as she was deprived of social life because of her illness. Through the command of Jesus, “Talitha koum” “Little girl, I say to you, arise” He gave life back to her and reunited her to the family.
In our daily lives, this biblical understanding of the conflict between good and evil should motivate us to actively pursue righteousness, resist temptation, and trust in God's ultimate victory, even in the face of present struggles and injustices. The God of power in the person of Christ is always with us and we all will be triumphant in the eternal happiness prepared for us (Mathew 25:34). Fr Tom Kunnel, C.O.