Fr. Don's Daily Reflection - December 7, 2024
Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from You.”
Talk about the return of Christ is for many almost unthinkable. We are so far from the world view of the early Christians. But the final event we call death is close to us--and that we can see as another side of the return of Christ. The young are shocked by the death of people their own age in accidents, from suicide, even from cancer. None of us can avoid the nearness of death in this time still dominated by a virus. The elderly hear daily of the deaths of longtime friends. Grief at such deaths is only appropriate. Nothing so affects us as the death of those who have been near us. Even if we have shared a belief in Christ and hope for resurrection, that doesn't change the fact that a child is gone, a friend of many years no longer here.
Speaking to this in First Thessalonians St. Paul reminds us readers that God will bring forth from the dead all who have died believing in Christ. “Otherwise you might yield to grief, like those who have no hope” (I Thess 4:13-14). Those who have no hope of eternal life certainly are in a different situation than the believer. But for the believer, too, hope in the resurrection cannot simply erase the loss we feel. While we celebrate funerals full of hope and even joy in the resurrection, we cannot bypass the time necessary for grief.
Beliefs do not simply obliterate emotions. Over time our experience of the Eucharist and prayer can help heal emotions by putting before us the fact that the suffering and death of Jesus were followed by his resurrection. Paul writes, “We shall be with the Lord unceasingly. Console one another with this message” (I Thess 4:18).
Psalm 27: “I believe I shall see the Lord’s goodness / in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord; be strong; / be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord!”
