As the time we await arrives will we be ready to meet Christ?

As the time we all await arrives will we be ready to meet Christ? 

While growing up each of us probably did not have a lot of questions regarding our final days on earth.  The thought of discerning between life and death was not something we had time to address.  But as we began to mature and perhaps listened to our seniors or priests speaking about our souls and how we were preparing ourselves for the final moment God calls us back home, our fixation on what is real remains hidden no longer.

After all, when our childhood was filled with dolls for girls and trucks or cowboys for boys, what else could there be that required our attention?  When I was at that age either Roy Rogers and Trigger or Buck Rodgers at the movies on Saturday afternoon was our prime concern.   Oh if only we could return to the time when obeying our parents' requirements held our attention to doing what they told us to do.  But those days are gone and now as parents and grandparents it is our wisdom from age and experience that must become the advice of Proverbs, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, wisdom and instructions fools despise.”  (Prv 1: 7).  Have we all heard sayings like this that surely passed our hearing but somehow slipped out of range of our senses? 

This is not a lesson from the past by one who cannot keep on drifting on the sea of no return, it is a note of aged wisdom that each of us has a limited time here as humans living a pre-planned existence that awaits the glory of God as soon as we are called by his grace.  From the perspective of a deacon who has dealt with people living in the goodness of God, some suffering the ugly C word, many now buried from the death of age or disease, and most asking what’s ahead for me now?  To answer their fears that don't hide the truth from reality, I know we must prepare their unknown path that is ahead and try to give them the words of Jesus, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."  (Mt 11: 28).  Of course this verse finds Jesus giving comfort to those who might have doubted his words, but fits well into the final moments of a loved one’s thoughts of finding a glory we all might find when our eyes close for the last time of our life.

In a world where so many antiChrist philosophies have risen in society, a warning to those who now have also pushed the thought and belief of the existence of God from their understanding of what a soul is and our spiritual and physical attachment to Christ who died and rose because of his love for you and me.  This is not a catechetical premise to be tested on, it is the truth and through this factual word why God sent his Son to call us away from sin and find the meaning for his Incarnation given out of God’s eternal love for us.

A challenge mandated by the Church is to use the understanding we receive and evangelize as many people we may encounter.  Everyone lives in hope and nurturing  their faith will give one more person the path to find the Lord Jesus Christ now and on the day of their departure back to heaven.

Ralph B. Hathaway