In this section you can find a daily commentary on the Gospel of the Day.

Saturday 20 November 2021

Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time
 
Word for today
The Gospel of Luke 20:27-40

Endless Life

With what eagerness does man desire to be immortal here on earth? Man desire immortality on this earth not for an endless life, but so as to be present when what they have been devoting themselves to with effort and commitment for all their life will finally be fulfilled on this earth, so that they will be able to catch a glimpse of the trace of glory and success left by their projects and works. Men tend to desire more earthly than heavenly immortality. This is one of the obvious signs that the human heart is in rebellion against God and His creative act. Trusting in God and seeking earthly immortality is provocative. Believing in God without being certain of an everlasting life in God, is contradictory.
But how can we be sure that life is immortal in God's light? Is it just a matter of faith? Actually it is not. It is a matter of evidence. If the overwhelming evidence of the extraordinary beauty of life that God has given us is not enough to open up our mind to the reality that life is endless in the heavenly dimension, no text, no religion, no dogma can let us open up the doors to the knowledge of immortality in God's light. Immortality is often linked to the very meaning and significance of life, as if life has meaning and nobility because it is immortal. This is very naive and disrespectful of God's creative work.
It is not immortality that makes life beautiful, but the beauty of life that makes life immortal. It is not the immortality of life that makes life important, but it is the importance of life, according to God's desire, that makes life immortal. So those who want to know the meaning and purpose of life, deny its evidence and beauty. Those who think they know the reason of our existence are impostors who want to obscure God's fantasy. Those who seek the meaning of life are like a bird which, while flying, looks for a line in the blue sky and, not finding it, it gets disappointed and stops flying.
When a man and a woman love each other and they get really well together, how long would they like to live and love each other? Forever. So, immortality is inherent in what is beautiful and gives us joy. It is not to live forever that makes us happy, but it is being happy that consequently makes us live forever. When we are very happy and satisfied, in well-being and health, we do not question about the meaning of life or where we come from and where we are going to. Never. But when we are sad, lonely, sick, in misery, submissive, then our questions are endless and overwhelming in their logic rationality. Human wisdom will never be able to appease all the questions about the meaning, importance and value of life. Only happiness, joy, harmony and peace will. Always. All the evil that men are continuously committing will never deprive the power of life of its marvel, but it creates an ocean of suspicion and doubt, questions and disappointments.
We can spoil the fragrance of life in a thousand ways, but life is always perfect and gorgeous. Life is endless and it will make us enjoy its beauty forever because it is wonderful, because it is a gratuitous, supreme, marvelous gift that is already breathtaking here, on earth. And it will be forever, simply by God's gift. In this sense it is not spirituality that gives depth to life, but it is the depth of life created by God that makes everything spiritual.
The life that God created for His human creatures is a life which, after the bridge men call death, cannot die any more, and in it there will be nothing of the relations and psychological and social mechanisms that we know today, there will be no wives and husbands, children and relatives, and the sons of resurrection will be like the angels because they are God's children. Life will last forever. We will sing forever, we will dance and sing forever. We will work in the heavenly city of light, without fatigue and pain, in total harmony, with responsibilities and tasks, forever. We will celebrate and play forever, praise and we will bless God's glory forever, in Him and for Him, because He is not God of the dead but of the living, for to him all are alive.