13th Sunday Ordinary Time (B) 30 June 2024 Death
Here [raising the young girl to life] we have God restoring life, something He is very good at doing. He can make life out of nothing, and He can make an existing life more alive, reflecting more perfectly His own life, something He has to an infinite degree.
We have a great desire for life. We do what we can either to avoid death or overcome it.
Death is an unwelcome visitor; it was never of God's fashioning (first reading). We are not meant to like it; God certainly does not. He allows it into the world but He will not let it have the last word.
We wrestle with God and His will on the matter of death. We have difficulty accepting death of loved ones, our own death, or death in general.
We do what we can to postpone death, attending to physical safety and healthy living, but we cannot put it off forever.
We can, however, take the sting out of death. The sting of death is sin (1 Cor 15,56) and if we could remove the sin then dying becomes like falling asleep (Gospel) She is not dead but asleep.
Removing the sin happens in two ways: that we stop committing it, and that we repent of the sin we have committed.
As we expel the sin from the system we become more ‘alive’ and much happier.
Indeed, dying is just like going to sleep if we can go far enough in that direction. The saints fell asleep in the Lord, either through a peaceful death, or in martyrdom where the focus was not on the pain of dying but instead the martyr’s love for God.
We cannot stop the dying itself but we can leave behind the fear. We yield ourselves to God's care: Into thy hands O Lord I commit my spirit. (Lk 23,46)
In His Passion and death Jesus spoke to the women of Jerusalem, to the Good Thief, to His Mother and St John, to the Father in prayer – all outwards movements. He was not feeling sorry for Himself. He was not afraid of dying. Perfect love casts out fear (1 Jn 4,18).
We can restore some of what we have lost. It means living according to God’s will - the way we live and the way we die.
Things we can do to overcome the fear of death:
1) Express to God our sorrow for sin. Sin is the real
culprit, even more than death is. Death is the outwards result while sin is the inner cause.
2) Live in harmony with the will of God, and a lot less will go wrong in the world, making it a safer and happier place.
3) Pray for a happy death. St Joseph is the patron of a happy death. When he died who else was in the room? Jesus and Mary! We cannot get much better than that. Death is not lonely as it may appear, not if we have friends from Heaven.
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4) Trust in God's grace to carry us along.
We cannot stop all the sin in the world but we can atone for it, and in proportion as we do that there will be Life instead of death. Imagine an army on the move, only this army brings love not the usual destruction. Together we make such an army.
In the meantime we seek cures for diseases and whatever natural remedies can be found, even things like drive safely. God wants us to preserve life as far as we can, within reason. But these things only postpone death; we need supernatural means to overcome death, and forever.
We could say in summary: we do not like death but we do like God, and His holy will.
