Rev.
Fr. Emmanuel Emenike Onyia.
WHY WE
SHOULD OFTEN THINK ABOUT THE REALITY OF
DEATH
As
customary in our seminary, every 2nd November some persons are selected to
visit the cemetery. On one occasion, I was privileged to be among the people to
visit a cemetery at Oke Are in Ibadan. On our way to the cemetery which is
located on a hill in the heart of Ibadan, passing through the market and
streets all I could see were people struggling, buying and selling, fighting
and cursing each other. I saw a lot of beggars, sick and poor people, among these people were the rich, the educated, as well as their leaders both
traditional and political. It was indeed an interesting community.
But
getting to the cemetery I saw in a wall the names and dates of so many men and
women who had passed on from this interesting community. Then I asked myself in
my deep reflection, where are all these people whose names are listed on this
wall? Were they like us before? Are we going to be like them later? Where will
all of us in this beautiful community be in the next hundred years? The answers to these questions are difficult to understand because we don’t think about the inevitable event of death
This
is not different from what Jesus is reminding his disciples in our Gospel
passage today, where after his great miracles, when everyone was full of
admiration for all he did, Jesus said to his disciples, ‘For your part, you
must have these words constantly in your mind: that the Son of Man is going to
be handed over into the power of men.’ But they did not understand him. Just
like prophet Zechariah in our first reading today who said: “Raising my eyes, I saw a vision. It was
this: there was a man with a measuring line in his hand. I asked him, ‘Where
are you going?’ He said, ‘To measure Jerusalem, to find out her breadth and her
length”
Dear
friends, today we are reminded about the true reality of life, that we all are
going to die one day and the dust of our flesh and bones will return to the
earth while our Spirit retires to God knowing that we will account for how we
lived this life. We are going to give back to God the gift of life he has given
us because our life is a temporal assignment.
So,
why not start living this life according to the present reality since we do not
know how and when we are going to account for it? Why not accept joyfully who
we are now as we work hard to be better tomorrow? Remember, everything is in
the hands of God, we brought nothing into this world and we are taking nothing out
of it. So why not pay attention to the Word of God reminding us of this reality?
Little
wonder St. Jerome whose memorial we celebrate today says: that ignorance of the
scripture is ignorant of Christ. Hence today, we can recall his great
contributions to the Church and the Christian faithful, especially for his
compilation of the Latin translation of the Greek Bible. Jerome experienced
all sorts of worldly pleasures as a young student of philosophy. But later his
conscience led him to conversion into the Christian faith as he renounced all
of his past sinful ways of life and devoted himself deeply into the study of
the Scriptures, from which comes all his great works we still study today.
LET US
PRAY: Lord God, our life is meaningless without you. Through the interception
of St. Jerome, grant that we may realize the shortness of this life and so
prepare to give account on how we have lived our lives in this world. We ask
this through Christ our Lord. Do have a blessed weekend
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