The Life to Come
“It is my choice to die at the hands of men
with the hope God gives of being raised up by him;
but for you, there will be no resurrection to life.”2 Maccabees 7:14
During the final weeks in Ordinary Time, as we prepare to start a new year in the Church, we are given readings that shift our focus to what is above. We must be reminded that the time we spend here on earth is only temporary and that our true home, our eternal home is in heaven. Although that may be the case, what we do here on this earth, may determine the life that is to come.
Sometimes we can get so wrapped up in things of this world — the little things — that we forget and lose sight of what is most important. We must not allow the mundane get in the way of the eternal. In the Gospel, Jesus reminds us that Our God is the God of the living. Those who have died here on earth are really alive, perhaps even more fully alive than they were while here on earth. In the first preface for the dead that is often said during a funeral mass, we are told that for those who believe “life is changed not ended, and, when this earthly dwelling turns to dust, an eternal dwelling is made ready for them in heaven.”
That is our hope, brothers and sisters. For us who believe, when our earthly lives are finished, life will not have ended, but only changed. No longer will we be limited by the confines of this physical world and our physical bodies, but we will be fully alive, dwelling among the saints, in the house in which Our Lord promised He has prepared a room for us. The life that is to come should be what is our primary focus. We live not for this life, but for the changed life that is to come. Then, if we know what the life that is to come is — life with God in heaven — then all that we do and say here on earth ought to reflect that.
We are a people who have been called out of this world to be a people that is particularly God’s people. May we ask for the grace to always seek what is above and allow that blessed life that is to come to move us to do even better here on earth.
