27 April 2015
Monday of the Fourth Week of Easter
The Western world is dying. Of course, Scripture tells us that “the form of this world is passing away” – and so a certain extent in a fallen world ongoing dying is in the nature of things. Yet this is even more than the natural falling away. Whole populations are simply not reproducing, and are being replaced by other peoples. The populations who are dying are the richest, most technologically advanced people that have ever lived. Or existed…
I suspect they are dying because they, well, don’t want to live. However satisfying technological things appear to be, there is a deeper truth of the human heart that is made for love, and is made for God – and that cannot possibly be satisfied by cars or computers or any sort of wizardry or gadgetry. We are made for love, and love is in very short supply. Not the love of “one night stands” – or some years of sensuous cohabitation. No. Love of its nature demands eternity if it is true love, and the “ships that pass in the night” sort of life simply is not worth living. And love longs for purity, something the cynical world ignores.
Pope Benedict wrote of this very clearly: that there was a death wish upon the developed world, where in spite of apparent prosperity, life was simply not worth living for many people, and so the prospect of “eternal life” was no prospect at all. Our Lord Jesus identifies Himself as “the life”: He is love incarnate, and, though people killed and kill Him, He returns, because He loves us, and love is faithful by its very nature. Bishop Sheen’s famous show was called “Life Is Worth Living.” Yes: it is worth living, and living abundantly, when it is rooted in the goodness and mercy of God, watered by His ever renewed forgiveness, flowering in the loving eyes of His People. “I am the Life”: the only life worth living.