Liturgical Colour : Green
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, this Sunday’s Scripture readings all speak with harmony and clarity, telling all of us to be prepared, to be ready and not be complacent, in view of the things that are to come our way, and in view of our own mortality. This is what the Lord wants all of us to know, that we may be aware of our own shortcomings and vulnerabilities, so that we may be ready and be worthy of what God will give us at the end of our days.
It is very often that in this world, people are afraid or unwilling or even sometimes violently against speaking and talking about matters pertaining to death. We are reluctant and we often found talking about the end of our earthly lives unnerving and repulsive. Yet, that is the very reality of our existence, which we need to acknowledge and understand, or else, we will fall into the trap of Satan, which is using all that it could in this world to deter us from our salvation.
We mankind were not created to suffer death and suffering its consequences. That was not the intention of the Lord, our loving God Who created us out of His perfect love for all of His creations. And we all enjoy the greatest favours of the Lord and receive the greatest forms of His love, for we are all special, having been crafted and made in His very own Image. We are all the reflections of God’s Image, and yet, we have also diverged from Him, because of our sins.
Sin is the thing that have sundered us from the perfect love of God. Sin is what makes us all suffer death, for sin is the sting of death, according to St. Paul in his first Epistle to the Church and the faithful in the city of Corinth. Because we have sinned, beginning with the disobedience of the first man and woman, eating the fruits from the forbidden tree of knowledge, having been deceived by Satan, we have been made unworthy of God’s grace and the life eternal He had bestowed us with.
But God’s love for us is so great that He does not wish us to perish and to be separated forever from Him, for sin leads to damnation, and damnation brings harm and destruction to the eternal soul. All those sinners who refused to repent from their sins and change their ways, all these have been condemned in death, and in death they will suffer for eternity in hell. And hell is the just reward of all those who have not obeyed the Lord and walked the path of wickedness in this world.
We may think that we fear death because of what we heard of hell and the extent of sufferings that we will suffer there, but this is in fact not the reason why we truly fear death. That is because now we as Christians know that we have hope in the one and only exit from this dark fate of ours, that is in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour. God had sent us His only beloved Son, that through Him all of us may come to believe in Him, repent from our sinful ways and be redeemed.
If we truly believe in Christ, in His teachings, do all the things that He had commanded us to do, and repent from all our sinful ways, committing ourselves to a genuine change in life, then surely we do not need to fear, for then death is no longer a punishment, but in fact it becomes a liberation, as the moment when our earthly life ends and then our new life with the Lord begins.
And because of that we truly have no need to fear death, but only if we have been faithful and have walked faithfully in the path of our Lord. If we have not repented from our sins and continued in our wickedness, then the Lord Himself will reject us, not because He does not love us, but because sin has no place in His presence, and He hates all those sins that we have committed and which He had seen and witnessed.
We fear death because we are all often too attached to the many tempting things in this world, be it money, possessions we have, privileges we obtained, or the relationships and other things we often covet and desire in this world. And all of these attachments are the things that prevented us from being able to truly overcome that fear of death.
We fear death because we are afraid of losing these, and Satan played along with our fears, by seemingly trying to help us to preserve our lives and prolong our earthly existence, to the point that even some if not many among us become obsessed with the maintenance of our lives. And this world is rightly feeding into our desires for such, by inundating us with messages and influences of materialism and hedonism.
How many of us are obsessed with our beauty and appearances? How many of us spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars or more on cosmetics and clothing apparels, trying to make ourselves look youthful and presentable? Of course, it does not mean that we should appear dishevelled and untidy among others, but it means that we should not let our desire to retain our favourable appearances or other worldly desires to control us in that manner.
Similarly, we also tend to want to store up more things for ourselves, working hard and earning more money that we may stockpile them in preparation for the years to come. There is nothing wrong with this, and in fact, we need to do these in order to survive, and also to provide for our own families, to care for each of our spouses and children alike. But it is the obsession with work and money which is not what we should have in us.
We mankind tend to plan for many things, hoping that things will turn up the way we want them to be. Unfortunately, more often than not, this is not the case. We have to understand that often we are not in control of many things in our life. And as I have mentioned that the central theme of today’s Scripture passages is the impermanence of our life, and that we are mortal. We do not control how long our lives will last. God, the Master of all life, alone knows when our earthly existence will end.
That is why we must always be well prepared. We cannot ignore death as a mere fleeting event or something that will come about far in the future. Rather than fearing it or ignoring it, we must use whatever time we have now to rectify the wrongs and mistakes which we have done, and accumulate for ourselves the treasures and wealth in the Lord.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, as Christians we are all called to be active and to be participative in our faith, that we show our faith through our loving actions to our brethren. This is the way for us to seek the Lord, by caring and showing concern to our brethren in need around us, and by the giving of ourselves to help them. It is not by building up earthly glories and wealth that we are considered rich by the Lord, but instead, we are rich in the eyes of the Lord and are found worthy, when we are able to love one another, and when we have that genuine faith for Him.
The time is coming, brethren, when God will decide to call us back to Him. Do not assume that we have much time. Start from this very moment and reflect on our own past lives. Have we been faithful to God? Have we been doing enough to ensure that we are worthy of our Lord’s salvation when He judges us at the end of time? This is our choice to make, brethren, and we should make our stand from this very moment onwards.
Let us all therefore seek to renew our relationships with God, and renew our efforts to commit ourselves anew to Him, not just through mere words alone, but also through concrete actions. Let us not be so focused or obsessed on what we have in this world that we forget what we can do in order to help others in need, but instead use what we have in this world in order to share our blessings and joy with one another, that all will have enough, and all will be able to share the joy in God, and receive salvation in Him together as one. May God help us and bless us in this. Amen.
