Reflection from
John 11: 11-27
When we celebrate the life,
we celebrate a great mystery, a precious gift which comes from God. In Christ
this gift receives a character of fullness and it is through him that we can understand
that the life doesn’t finish here in this world. The inheritance of life of the
people who advanced us has a great value for us who are called to continue in
the faith to live with meaning. If we cannot see any more the people who
advanced us, the true values lived and left by them are the evidence that their
passage among us wasn’t in vain. Saint John Calabria used to say: “If we have
God in us, we shall do the good only with our passing”. Celebrating the dead is
fraternal manifestation of our recognition of how they continue being important
for us all, because the death is not an absolute end; it only concludes one
stage of the life. In
moments of sorrow, of sadness and nostalgia, let ourselves be helped by the
prayers of the friends and enlightened by the Word of God, which strengthen us
in the faith and commit us in the life.
As Christians, our main
characteristic is the hope. Thus expresses S. Paul: “If Christ didn’t rise our
faith is vain and our hope is without sense”. The God in whose we believe is
the God of life and when gave the life to us he bound us to himself, making us
his beloved sons and daughters. For much we suffer while we are in this life,
nothing is compared to the joy to be experienced with the glory that will be
revealed to us. In this sense, let us learn from Jesus that, although the
situation of so great sorrow and suffering which he experienced on the cross, he
maintained his unshakable trust in the providential action of God: “Father,In
your hands I commend my spirit.” This should be the confident and constant cry of our
spirit, raising the assurance that God neither abandons us and nor keeps quiet before
what happens with us. The response from God before the death of Jesus comes
right away with the resurrection, that is anticipation of our own resurrection
and so, guarantee of our full life, for he is not God of dead but of living. In
other words, God doesn’t want the death. In Jesus he reveals himself as
resurrection and life.
Why do people die? Jesus taught us to cultivate the faith
in God Abbá, who is turned to us with
all strength an activity of his compassionate and liberator love. He attracts
us to himself with bonds of tenderness and he desires to keep us bound to him.
At the same time, he is always coming in our direction and he expects being
welcomed. Our life on earth passes only for one stage. It should continue her
journey in other stage, because we are called to the fullness. Conscious of
this reality, said the wise Augustine: “O God you made us to you and our heart
are restless until they rest in you”. For the one who has Faith, the
death is therefore, repose in God, through which all of us have to pass to
become full. The fundamental moment of our life will come in which we shall
meet definitively with God, before whom we won’t be asked if we belonged to
some religion or how many times we went to church, but how much we were able to
love. The
choices which we do in the course of the journey will determine the direction
our life. Through Christ’s will, our life should attain the fullness, which
starts in the daily care, in the small gestures of affection at home, in the
school, in our work and in our community commitment. We are invited to maintain
the communion with God who is the primordial and infinite source of life.
Fr Ndega
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