Fr. Glenn Jones:

Well, we’re coming close to Easter. Next weekend (March 27 this year) is Passion (Palm) Sunday, in which we remember and contemplate especially the passion of Jesus—His arrest, torture and crucifixion. This is why the Catholic devotion—very common during Lent—of the Stations of the Cross. We Christians should be more attentive to meditate on His passion frequently, because Jesus does it for us … takes upon Himself the deserved punishment that our sins and wrongs against God and one another deserve. He saves us from ourselves.

As analogy, we might imagine we’re on the Titanic … some event like sickness or an accident or whatever causes each of our eventual deaths being the iceberg. We continually try to steer our lives away from icebergs, but the big one eventually hits all of us. The ship of our lives is sinking, freezing water enveloping us, we gasp in freezing water struggling to hold heads above, grasping frantically at life. And, as strength fails, and we’re about to go under that last time, a hand grasps ours and pulls us out … pulling us into the lifeboat.

Well, imagine the joy and relief! If you’ve ever been near to drowning, you know the feeling. A reprieve! Despair instantly dispelled! Life again!! We hear often of how those who have been near death recount how glorious life was thereafter: the beauty of the sky, the freshness of the air, the embrace of loved ones? Even food has renewed flavor.

That is what Jesus has done for us. He saves us from drowning into dark depths of our own making because of wrongdoing—from a fearful frantic agony never ending since our souls are immortal. Yet, if we have donned the lifejacket of God’s grace and fidelity to God and Jesus, asked forgiveness of sins, and sought to do good, then Jesus has promised to seek us out and pull us back into life … but to a greater life that we can have ever known in this earthly one. As St. Paul wrote: “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him,” (1 Corinthians 2:9) And as Jesus said: “I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” (John 14:3)

Maybe our earthly lives can be compared to our time in the womb. There we experienced nothing beyond the womb directly, and yet there were hints of what was beyond: sounds, movements, etc. Nonetheless, birth brought us into a whole new world and into new experiences hardly imagined, either by familiarity or by our infant intellect.

Our passing out of this world will be like that—a birth into the new and unknown. Here we know only the material world, and yet we “glimpse” what is beyond through grace, through the teachings of Jesus, through mysterious intuition that there must be something “more”. Through the profound experiences of love. As did Rene Descartes of “I think, therefore I AM” fame, we, too, intuit that there is something greater in humanity than the sum of our solely material constitutive parts.

As we could hardly imagine life outside the mother’s womb, we now can scarcely imagine what truly lies beyond the “womb” of our earthly lives. But while we had no influence on what our lives would be at earthly birth (into wealth or poverty, ease or hardship), we have huge influence on what our “birth” into the life after this one will be. For it will be all in how we have loved God and loved and been charitable to those around us. Along with faith in Jesus, scripture constantly repeats that we will be judged by what we have done in life: do good, and the next life is good beyond imagining; do wrong and evil, and we’re warned of the opposite. It is our choice; each of our eternal fates is largely within our power.

Of course, many dismiss or even ridicule the very idea of afterlife and faith. But, borrowing from Pascal’s Wager, I ask: “What if you, O doubtful one, are wrong and live a life of selfishness and dissipation?” The result: infinite loss. But, for argument’s sake, if you are right and Christians live in delusion, and yet you live a life in accord with the charitable teachings of faith, your legacy will nevertheless be one of honor, of goodness, of kindness and graciousness—a life worthy of even earthly remembrance. And, perhaps, you will have come to faith yourself—one held by billions past and present, and by some of the wisest of history. Is it not at least worth investigating?

Now, in two weeks we’ll celebrate Jesus’ resurrection from the dead at Easter, scripture reinforcing our trust in that resurrection and reminding us that while He is “firstborn from the dead”, as both Sts. Peter and Paul tell us, we are called to follow. We read: “O my people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them…I will put my spirit in you that you may live…I have promised, and I will do it, says the LORD” …and what God has promised cannot NOT be done. Jesus Himself assures us: “…all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come forth, those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment.” (John 5:28-29)

So, let us discard the things that will make us drown, and don the lifejacket of grace, so as the ship of earthly life inevitably slips into the depths and fear of death envelops us, that hand will grasp ours and pull us into that new world of eternal life … one far beyond our as yet oh-so-limited experiences.

Editor’s note: Rev. Glenn Jones is the Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe and former pastor of Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church in Los Alamos.