In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.
The end of today's Gospel reading is a warning about something that we could all
be aware of all the time, that is that death is at our elbow, that much, very
much, of what we do will perish with us as unnecessary, mortal.
Does this mean that Christ's warning about the closeness of death should
frighten us and deprive us of creative strength? No, on the contrary; the
Fathers used to say, "keep a constant memory of death," not in the sense that we
should be afraid of death and live under its constant shadow, but rather because
nothing but the awareness of the fact that life is short, that it may end at any
moment, can give to every moment its final meaning, and to the whole of life the
feeling that we must hurry to do good, that we must hurry to live in such a way
that at whatever moment death overtakes us, it will be a moment of triumphant
life. We would live with such depth, so intensely, if only this awareness were
with us constantly. If we were to know that the words that I am now speaking to
you were the last, how differently would I say them, and how differently would
you listen!
If we were to feel that the person we were talking to might be dead within a few
minutes, how careful we should be that our words and actions in relation to him
should be the culmination of all the love and care of which we are capable, that
they should be the triumph of everything that is best and highest in our
relationship.
The reason that we live so badly, utter so many empty words, rotten words, dead
words, commit so many actions that afterwards burn in our soul like wounds, is
that we live as though this life was merely a rough draft of the life we will
one day be living, when we have had time to shape the draft into the final
story. But that is not how things work; death comes and the draft remains rough,
his life has not been lived, just blotted, and there remains regret for the
person who could have been great, but turned out shallow and insignificant.
That is what today's Gospel is about, not that we should be afraid of death, but
that, knowing that it can come at any moment, every moment must be perfect,
every word must be a word of life, filled with the Spirit, fit to enter
eternity. And every action of ours in relation to each one of us should be such
as to give life and express the fullness and depth and strength of the love and
reverence which we should feel for each other and for all. Let us consider this,
and then if we can act upon it, every word and every action will acquire the
dimension of eternity and shine with its light. Amen.