4 August 2013
Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Where is death, I sometimes wonder, as I see five lanes of bumper to bumper traffic heading into the city, where is death? I ponder that everyone keeps running in this race, running to the mall, running to the office. Now and then, someone drops by the wayside – we pause, go to a hospital; if it is someone really close, we leave our place in the traffic jam for a funeral. “Vanity of vanities!” A caucus race….
For whom are we accumulating all these things? For whom are we running? At times, a clear meaning: a new spouse, a new home, a new job, new life. Children, even grandchildren. And yet that haunting reality returns : we are all walking dead. It is only a matter of time. There is in all this vanity one ray of hope. We have been baptized, and that baptism is a dying, a symbolic drowning in the waters of chaos and meaninglessness, from which emerges a new being. “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”
So as we get back into our cars and join the long line of “fellow travelers to the grave”: we are fundamentally different. For we have already entered that grave with one who has broken through into eternal life. We do not build bigger barns for our illusive wealth, bigger cars to display our ghostly egos: we enter to humbly serve God and poor, mortal man as we move gently – and in great hope – through this vale of tears. Where is life I sometimes wonder: if you give this traffic jam a good look, real life is only in the Risen Lord Jesus. The rest is a passing shadow, a dance of death.