Mother Mary Angelica
Founder of  EWTN Catholic Television 

I just have to join many of my fellow Catholics and take a moment to say good bye to a women who fought the good fight and has now run her race. She was called home to God this Sunday, Easter Sunday. She took her last breath here on earth and awoke to fund herself in the embrace of the one whom she spent her life living for, Jesus, whom she preferred to any other person. She deserves her rest now in the arms of Jesus.  

Mother Angelica was an absolutely fearless women. She spent her life following the will of the Lord as she saw it.  She realized she was but a farmed scattering seed and she would depend on the Lord to bless her work.  She was not afraid to fail. Her monastery needed money and they discovered that they could make a living roasting and selling peanuts. After a time their distributor changed and he let it be known that for the nuns to have their peanuts distributed it would be a good idea if the distributor received part of the proceeds. This Mother realized was called a "kickback" and she told the distributor that the monastery was now out of the peanut business and showed him the door. 

I remember her telling a story about a man who called into her TV show angry because he was surfing channels like he did everyday looking for pornography but he always stopped at this crazy nun and listened to what she said.  Mother was not surprised  and asked hum simply why he just didn't keep surfing?  

Mother told it how it is. She possessed a love of Jesus in Eucharist and founded an order of nuns dedicated to perpetual adoration and prayer.  Mother Angelica will be missed.  These last few years have been tough on her. She moved out of the camera lens and eventually was bed ridden by a stroke.  What a better acknowledgement of her life can there be than to be called home on Easter Sunday.  

Good bye Mother Angelica. May you rest in peace good and faithful servant of Jesus, the Son of God. 

Easter Sunday

They laid him in the tomb. It was getting late, the Sabbath was approaching so they did what they could in the time that they had and the women said they would come back and finish the job. They went back to Jerusalem and crept into their room and each of them seemed to exude the feeling of gloom.  The Master was gone, why had he died? They gave everything up to walk at His side. The Sabbath was over so the women got on the way.  Carrying spices and ointments to anoint the body of Jesus that day, to do to Him the last kindest act, for he lay there dead, they saw Him so they new this was a fact. As they walked to the garden where his body lay, they wondered who would roll the stone away. Finally they were there and thy could not believe what they saw, the stone was away, the body was gone, they were in awe. Two men dressed in dazzling white asked them why they sought the living among the dead the body was gone that is what they saw. The shroud was in a pile at the foot of the crypts cold stone bed and the cloth that covered his face was rolled up in another place. The men in their clothes of brilliant white told them the Jesus was raised late in the night. They told them to tell Peter, James, and John, that Jesus had returned from the great beyond.  To Galilee they must go and go there in haste for Jesus awaits them there and there is no time to waste. So the women left their burdens of spices, and ran to tell the the men of this wonder and they arrived in a trice. The men, they laughed and heaped up scorn, how foolish these women were on this Sunday morn. 

But Peter, James, and John remembered the word that they had received. Could it be as they now perceived that the Lord was risen? They ran to garden and looked in and saw the body was gone and they were in awe. They remembered he said to Galilee they must go so the picked up their cloaks and on the road they went. Their joy was so great that it was very hard to state, The Master had risen on this very date.    

This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad!

Today we celebrate the victory of Christ over sin and death. Had Jesus just died, he would have been no more than another pious preacher. But he tore the veil away and turned death into life. Thank you for letting me tell the story, I know my poetry is bad at best but the story it tells will refresh your soul. You see, because of Jesus and his obedience to the Father, we now can enter heaven.   To all of you, Happy Easter.  Jesus is Risen, He is truly risen.

Holy Saturday - He Descended Into Hell...What's That All About?

The Chief Priest and his cronies were now satisfied. This latest messiah, one in a long line of pious fakers, a fraud from Nazareth that had been stirring up the crowds was now dead. They had seen to that. They watched him die a bare three hours after the Romans had nailed him to the cross. His death was faster than some whom the Romans crucified, some of them lasted several days. But he was gone now and the only two things were left to do. First they had to make sure that rumors of his rising from the dead did not occur. To do this Caiaphas, the chief priest, was very clever indeed. Instead of sending temple guards, he enlisted the hated Romans and Pilate assigned a Roman guard detail to watch the tomb and to let no one in or strangely, no one out. The Romans now had an interest in what was surely under normal circumstances an issue for the Jews. They would see to it that there would be no theft of the body and proclamations of Jesus raising from the dead!

The second thing that needed to be done was to scatter the disciples of this faker to the four winds. A couple of threats and maybe a scourging or two would send the men back to their boats and the business of fishing. Yes, everything was under control now, or so they thought. 

It has to be emphasized that Jesus truly died on the cross. He did not go into some state of suspended animation, he was truly dead. The Apostles Creed uses the curious words, "He descended into hell..." What on earth can that mean?  This is another example of why we should be careful in interpreting ancient words using our modern minds. We think of hell as the place of the damned, a place of fire, demons, sulfur, and pain. That is truly a good picture of what hell is. But that is not the hell of the Apostles creed. The hell that Jesus went to after his death was not the hell of the damned, Gehenna. It was instead a place where the just waited for their redemption. Recall the story of Lazarus and rich man. The Bible points out that the destination of the two men were different. Lazarus died and was carried to the bosom of Abraham while the rich man was carried to a place of torment.  The story Jesus told shows that there is an immense gulf between the place were Lazarus was and the place were the rich man was. The place where Lazarus was bears the name of Sheol and is the place where Jesus went to. There he preached the good news to all of the just and opened the gates of heaven for them which had been closed since the time of Adam because of the sin of our late and great ancestor. 

So the redemption that Jesus brought to mankind was for all of mankind, those that came before us, those that were alive during the time he was alive, and those that came after him. 

So on this Holy Saturday we can commemorate the visit of Jesus to the souls waiting in Sheol. The redemption that Jesus brought was for all and we can be happy that he did "descend into hell."  

God bless you this day as you and your family busy yourselves with the preparations the coming of Easter brings. Thank you Jesus for going to the Cross for me.  Thank you for destroying sin and death.  May I live the rest of my life worthy of your great sacrifice.    

I believe in God the Father almighty creator of heaven and earth
I believe in Jesus Christ His only Son...

Good Friday

The Apostles, the chosen men that followed Jesus every day were especially happy on this day, the day when they remembered how God saved them from slavery. The twelve were ordinary men. They were fisherman, there was even a former tax collector among them/  The Seder had progressed though three ritual cups of wine. These men did not drink wine for solace, they drank when they were commanded by the law to do so.  Jesus had not completely followed the ritual. He passed bread and wine to his Apostles and told them that it was his Body and Blood.  They did not understand at first what he had done. Then he said, "Do this in remembrance of me."  They were to the same thing he had done. He had given them something new. He continued the Seder, they drank the third cup of wine and sang the Great Hallel and instead of drinking the last cup of wine, Jesus led them to the Mount of Olives where He prayed and his followers slept. Judas, one of the twelve arrived with soldiers and representatives of the high priest and betrayed the Son of God for thirty pieces of silver, the price of a slave. He was taken to Annas, the real power behind the temple who looked Jesus over, shook his head and sent him to the High Priest.  There in the dark of night, he was illegally tried and convicted of blasphemy.  They gathered again in the morning and confirmed the sentence of death and after a brief appearance before Pilate and Herod, the criminal Jesus was whipped and he was forced to carry the cross to the place of the skull.  He was nailed to the cross and above him a sign hailed him as King of the Jews. The sun beat down on his body. Insects attracted by the smell of blood came and landed upon him.  The pain in his arms was intolerable but he had to pull himself up to breathe. His mother, Mary, was at the foot of the cross as was John the Apostle. In a tender act of love he took leave of his mother and put her under the protection of John. That was the last earthly thing he had to do. He uttered the words, "I thirst."  And a sponge was soaked in some common wine and held up to his mouth. He took the wine and said the words, "It is finished."  In saying this he let it be known that he had concluded the Seder from the previous night by drinking the wine and then he cried out in a loud voice, "Father into your hands I commend my spirit." And with that Jesus died. 

Jesus is the Lamb of God.  His blood saves us all. Be at peace on this Good Friday and in your prayers remember the man from Galilee who died this day so very long ago and changed the disobedience of man into obedience and in doing so destroyed sin and death.  

Holy Thursday / Maundy Thursday

DaVinci's painting of the Last Supper looks nothing like the one at the left. He has the apostles and Jesus sitting at a very ordinary table  that  you might find in a well appointed home perhaps in Italy in the middle ages. But our picture shows how the Jews were to eat the Passover meal. They were to eat like free people, reclining at table. The Seder was a meal that was to celebrate the freedom from slavery that God gave to his chosen people.  One of the most important lessons that was given to us at this Last Supper took place before the more solemn moments we will talk about later, but it too was a solemn moment. 

The people of Judea lived in a dusty climate. They wore sandals and the dust and dirt of the street would dirty their feet. The lowest servant of the house would be tasked to wash the feet of the guests as they arrived. It was both a thoughtful gesture and it served to keep the house clean.  A lad did not go and tell his father that his ambition was to be a foot washing servant.  This was not a job that one would aspire to. So imagine their surprise when Jesus took up the pitcher and bowl and towel and began to wash the feet of his disciples.  To them Jesus was the Son of God, the Messiah that the nation had been waiting for.  He was their teacher and their lord.  For him to was their feet was am affront to his dignity. But Jesus often did things that they did not understand so they meekly acquiesced to this strange thing.  The Jesus got to Simon Peter, the appointed head of their merry little band.  Peter had a lot of faith in Jesus.  He got out of a boat and walked to Jesus on the water and he was fine until his faith kind of left him for a moment and Jesus had to rescue him.  Today, at the most holy meal of the year for the ancient Jews, Jesus was stepping down, in Peter's opinion from a place of prominence to the lowest place a person could be, from God to a foot washing servant.  When Jesus came to Peter, he refused to let the Lord wash his feet. Jesus said to him that what he was doing Peter would understand later. Peter for his part stayed obstinate and kept his feet tucked behind him.  Jesus then told Peter if he did not allow this, Peter would no longer be a disciple. Peter, you have to love him for his exuberance, realized what he had to do and allowed Jesus, God on earth, to wash his feet. Jesus then delivered his mandate that we should wash the feet of others and that the greatest among them should serve as the least just as Jesus, the Son of God had done.  The meal continued. 

Then Jesus took bread, blessed it and broke it and said, "This is my Body." They took and ate it  He then took the cup of wine and said, "This is my blood."  They each drank from the cup.  He then said "Do this in memory of me."  They now understood what Jesus had done. They gave us the New Passover which would be their legacy to pass on to all other believers.  The things they had heard along the Sea of Galilee now made sense. They would have the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ to feed them and keep them through the countless generations that would pass before Christ returned in glory. 

The ritual of Passover mandated that four cups of wine be shared. After the third cup a song was sung, the Great Hall El - which was Psalms 113 to 118.  After that a fourth cup would close the Seder but it was at this point that Jesus changed things. He arose and they went out into the night , heading for the Mount of Olives.  We will cover more of this tomorrow when we discuss what happened of Good Friday. 

Catholics call today Holy Thursday and Protestants call it Maundy Thursday. Maundy means Mandated. Jesus on this date mandated that we Christians wash each others feet. It also means that we are to be loving and kind.  We should fall over each other not to get to the position of power but we should fall over each other in doing acts of kindness to one another and to those outside of the Christian community.  

Today, as we enter into the Sacred Mysteries of Holy Thursday let us remember Jesus, the Son of God, stooping low to wash the dirty feet of the Apostles.  With this example we should be proud to serve one another.

Decision 2016 - so far

I usually try to stay away politics in my blog. But this upcoming election has been on my mind and I just want to say something about it.  It looks line we are going to have to choose between Clinton and Trump. This is the first time in my sixty plus years of living on the planet and participating in elections that I would not mind having a choice of "none of the above."  Each of the people we seem to be nominating to run are outstanding in many ways, but that is not good.  Both of them are liars. Hillary lied about using a private server for email when she was secretary of state.  On the other hand Trump will say whatever he can to get himself votes. I read an article on line about The Donald and it pointed out, for example, that despite his rhetoric against Muslims, whom he said that 1 our of four is a terrorist, he does business with them and has made a lot of money off of them. So he says one thing that will tickle the ears of some and thus he will earn their vote. To listen to Trump is to listen to a man who will stop at nothing to achieve his goal.  If it takes a little white lie here or there, well so be it.  

We Americans have put up with eight years with a president that has been ruling by decree and a legislative branch that does not want to do anything. So we are at a stalemate and that is why Obama has had to rule by decree like some twentieth century despot.  All we need to make it really like the 1930's is for Obama to annex the English speaking parts of Canada and welcome them back to the homeland.

As a Christian we have to be thoughtful as to whom we are going to vote for when it the elections comes to pass in November.  We deserve better than the choices we are going to be given, We will Hillary promising women the right to women's health - which means abortion will become more of a problem than it was before.  When I was young I followed the Democratic party and like my parents before me voted the straight party ticket.  I have not done this since the 1980's as I have to pick the candidate that most represents what my values are. 

The GOP supports life and right to life causes and this draws me towards them. That Donald Trump will be their boy come the November election rappels me.  Trump has no experience in politics, and actually he came by his money honestly, he inherited it.  Hillary and her hubby Bill "I didn't have sex with that girl" Clinton  have their money too, from speaking fees that range in the six figures. 

I am going to have to pray about this election except I know that there is no way that I can see where I can vote for Trump so maybe my mind is already made up.   Share some thoughts.  

When is Home Not A Home?

The vast majority of us are going to end up in a room that is eighty four inches long, twenty eight inches wide and twenty three inches high. These are the dimensions of a standard casket. It will be the home for our bodily remains. When you think of it, that is not much space. The grave we will be placed into will be about six feet deep and three feet across, that is a total of eighteen square feet of mother earth. Inside of the casket we will return to the basic elements that made up our body and eventually they will leach back into the ground. That is a sad ending for us if that was all there was to it. But as we know, there is more, much, much, more.

Nothing that we have here on earth can come with us to heaven. All of the things we worked so hard for here will be taken by someone else. Our land, our home, our books and other possessions will belong to another. 

This world with all of its beauty, with all of its wonder is not the place we are meant to be. The place we are meant for is a place that even if we let our imaginations run wild we cannot really see what the reality of it is. That place of course is heaven, the place where the Lord God dwells along with the angels and saints. 

Our hearts know this. Even people who worship pagan deities know this. Siddhartha begins life experiencing all good things and soon the sweetness turns to bitterness and he looks for fulfillment elsewhere. Famous saints learn this, some the hard way too. St. Francis of Assisi spent his youth enjoying wine women and song. He tries to become a soldier and realizes that this is not as satisfying as he thought it was going to be. Eventually he embraces poverty and he does so as a man embraces a wife and he was faithful to her his whole life. He found satisfaction in serving God and relying on God for all things. 

Surely we must use the things of this earth. We need the basics, food, drink, shelter, companionship for example. Beyond these basic needs do we have to strive for ever more luxuries land and gadgets?  I am not saying that they are evil in themselves, but they can never be ours permanently because one day we will die and we cannot carry the things of this world with us.  

Maybe we should concentrate more on our relationship with God and His kingdom first and then on relationships with our family and friends. These things will come with us. When we get to heaven our relationships will be restored, we will recognize our mother, father, sister, brother, uncles, aunts, grandparents, everyone we ever knew and they will recognize us. I cannot describe what heaven will be like. The only thing I know about it is that no matter how great I think it will be, it will be infinitely better. Is anything on earth worth loosing heaven for? 

  

Reconciliation With God and Man -

I went to confession this last Wednesday. 
My spirit always feels so much better and I feel so much more alive once experience this great gift of God's love for us. This sacrament seems to have fallen out of favor for some of my fellow Catholics and I feel sorry for them because they don't know what they are missing.  There are all sorts of reasons people do not go.  Let's talk about some of them and see how they stack up.

"I go straight to Jesus for forgiveness, I don't have to tell a priest my sins. Jesus forgives me." 

On the surface this sounds real good and is very convincing but it is not what Jesus has in mind for his followers. How do we know this? First of all Jesus gave the power to the Apostles to forgive sin. He said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me...and later "As the Father has sent me even so I send you, And when he said this he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. If you retain the sins of any they are retained. (John 20: 21-23) We also read in Matthew, "Whatever you bind on earth is bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. (Matt 18:18) 

That we are to confess verbally is clearly implied because how were the Apostles to know which sins they were going to forgive or not forgive unless they were told about them? 

What advantages are there in confessing aloud to a priest? The following has been harvested from an article on Catholic Answers. Click the link to read the whole article (LINK) 

1. First he seeks forgiveness the way Christ intended. 
2. By confessing to a priest, the Catholic learns a lesson in humility, which is avoided when one confesses through private prayer.
3. The Catholic receives sacramental graces that the non-Catholic does not get - through the sacrament of penance sins are forgiven and the graces are obtained. 
4.  The Catholic is assured his sins are forgiven and he does not have to rely on a subjective feeling.
5.  The Catholic can receive sound advice in avoiding sin in the future.

This assurance that I have been forgiven by God AND his Church which encompasses all believers, both those in full communion with the Church, my fellow Catholics and those brothers and sisters that are either not in communion with the Church but are brothers and sisters because of our common brother in the person of Jesus Christ, the Son of God and our savior. 

Some Catholics have not been to confession in years. Some not for 5, 10, 20 or even 30 years or longer. Being away from this great sacrament for so long causes a person to be greatly afraid as to what will happen to them if they tell a priest they have been away for so long. They envision hearing a gasp of horror from the priest and imagine hearing a long demeaning lecture.  

NOTHING COULD BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH!!!  

Don't you remember what scripture says that there is more rejoicing in heaven when one sinner repents than over 99 that did not have to repent?  Be honest with the priest, tell him how long you have been away, don't remember what to say? Father will help you. He will make it as easy for you as possible. The first step is yours. You have to go into that confession room, you have to take the first step.  After that it gets easy. The Holy Spirit brought you to this place, God already knows all of your sins, all you have to do is to face up to them and to confess them, be sorry for them, and try your best not to commit them again.  Don't be afraid, the Grace of God awaits you in confession. Take advantage of it. 

God bless you today and as we prepare to enter into Holy Week, remember God loves you more than you can imagine. He loves you just as you are and wants you to take advantage of the sacrament of confession and become closer and closer and closer to Him.  Peace! 

Some Strong Coffee !

There is nothing like a hot cup of coffee to get you started in the morning.  The aroma gets the blood flowing even before you get the first scalding sip past your lips.  When your body feels that first sip it recognizes its old friend caffeine and brain cells all of a sudden snap on and you are finally awake and ready to take on the day.  Well the reading at Mass today from Philippians 3: 8-14 can do for our soul what coffee does for our brain. This reading becomes a shot of espresso for our soul once we read the first few sentences and use the proper Greek translation for one word. It does not change the meaning of the text but I think that it enhances it and strengthens it.  The beginning of the reading reads as follows:  "More than that, I even consider everything as a loss because the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus  my Lord. For his sale I have accepted the loss of all things and I consider them so much rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him,,," 

The word we need to change is rubbish. The Greek word that is used here actually translates as "sewage."  The word sewage is much stronger than rubbish and I think it shows Paul considered Christ more important than anything.  Lest you think I am some sort of Greek scholar, I am not.  I gleaned this coffee bean from the homily at Mass yesterday. 

This is just food for thought. What place do we give to our relationship with Jesus in our life?  Is it the most important thing? Is it maybe in the top ten?  Or do we just think about it on Sunday morning as we sit in Church waiting for it to be over so we can tear into a jelly doughnut? 

This reading and the young deacon (man he looked young) that shared this nugget of wisdom with me has forced me to think on how much importance I place on my relationship with the Lord.  I know he is in the top ten, but if I was going to be honest I could not say that at this moment he is number one in my life.  This of course is something I will have to work on. 

I am going to challenge you today to think about the place of Christ in your life. Are the burdens of day to day life taking precedence or are we inviting Jesus into the little fiddly bits our life?  Are we letting his wisdom show us the way or are we picking and choosing? 

In this season of lent we have the luxury of time to reflect. I for one am going to examine my spiritual life and how it mates with my physical life. Where do I and Jesus connect?  Where do Jesus and I disconnect?  It's going to be a long process I am sure but in the end it will be worth while.  

God bless you today.  Catholics - here is a suggestion to get you started.  Have you been to confession lately?  Try it, taking out the garbage and receiving the forgiveness of Christ is certainly a good starting place. 

Walking With Jesus

There is an old saying that a journey begins with a single step. It was not too long ago that on this blog we spoke about the birth of Jesus and the coming of the magi. One of the gifts that was brought at that time was myrrh which was a funeral spice. Could you imagine bring a bottle of embalming fluid as a gift for a new mother? The journey that Christ embarked on started well before this moment. It started when Eve ate of the fruit and got Adam to join her. It began with the promise of God that He would not abandon us and that He would send a savior, through the woman.  So Christ is now born. He went through his young years just as any child would do. He worked at the side of Joseph his earthly father, who passed on to Him the joys of being a carpenter and of putting in a good days work. The journey of Jesus continues step by step until one day He found Himself on the final journey. He was prepared for this final walk by being scourged which is the process of being whipped with a whip that had pieces of bone or rick sewed into the end each strand that cut the skin open with each stroke. He was then mocked and dressed in purple robes and struck by the soldiers in charge of Him. Then he truly began His last journey, putting one foot in front of the other as he walked to Calvary. Once there he was pushed to the ground and great nails were driven through his wrists and feet and He was placed on public view on the cross. Those that put Him there mocked and laughed at Him.  The sun bore down on his body. Blood from the crown of thorns clouded his vision. He was tormented by insects, a devilish thirst, and lain beyond belief as his tired arms tried to keep him up high for when he sunk, while his arms rested, he would not be able to breathe. Then his journey came to an end and the known as Jesus of Nazareth died on the cross. His body was removed from the cross after being pierced by a spear, and it was laid into the arms of his mother. He was then buried in a borrowed tomb.  If the story ended here then the act that Jesus undertook would have no meaning. But we know that he arose from the dead on the third day and defeated death forever. 

We are called to walk day by day with Jesus always keeping focused on Him and doing to others what He asked us to do, to love them as he loves us.  This is no small demand, if you realize that the road he took lead to his death, he gave everything and He calls us to do the same. 

Martyrs

This week Islam in a show of just how it sows peace and love throughout the word created more Christian Martyrs in Yemen. At least four nuns who were working and taking care of the elderly were brutally shot and killed by these manly and brave jihadists. Why is it that these people always are going after those that cannot defend themselves? 

But let's move beyond the mayhem and talk a little bit about the martyrs themselves. I know that they have arrived in the bliss of heaven. These women had dedicated their very lives to working with poorest of the poor and caring for them in a land that is violently hostile to Christians.  They knew the chance that they were taking, but they stayed and did their work anyway. 

There have been so many martyrs of late giving us their example. The Coptic Christians come to mind. As they knelt waiting for their cowardly captives to execute them they were praying in the name of Jesus. One of those kneeling was not a Christian and he was asked if he would like to become a Muslim and he said simply that to his captives "Their God is my God." In joining his brothers in death, he secured for himself everlasting life. 

We in America have it good. Even though our society is becoming more and more anti-Christian we still have the right to worship as we want to. We do not have to live in fear that our churches will be set upon. Even Muslims in this country receive this protection. 

With all of the protection afforded us I have to ask myself if I, a Christian and a cradle Catholic would have the wherewithal to be a martyr for my faith.  I would like to think that I would but I just do not know. 

Let us pray this day for the defeat of ISIS and radical Islam. Let us pray for the day when we do not train for war anymore and be change our spears into pruning hooks.  Let us renew our prayers and ask God to protect our brother and sister Christians of all denominations in the Middle East from the evil of terror. 

On Death and Dying and The Christian Person

           

Courtesy/consciouslifenews.com/

                                                                During this season of Lent, one of the things we Christians are asked to reflect on is the state of our life and to think carefully about what our destiny is. The fact is that no one will leave this world alive. From the fall of Adam and Eve to the present day, the destiny of the human body is to return to the dust it was made of. If you are human, you will die. No one has escaped that fate, not even Jesus. Jesus did not go into some state of suspended animation. Jesus went through the pain of death that all of us will feel. On that most Holy Cross the body of Jesus went through the process of death. His organs began shutting down to keep the vital processes, heart and brain, going as long as possible. When it could take no more, Jesus knew it was time. To show that He was going to conquer death he cried out in a loud voice according to the Bible, which is a most difficult thing to do while nailed to a cross and He surrendered His soul to the Father. At the moment of death, the soul of Jesus left the body and there was no force to keep the flesh animated any longer. Physically, at that moment, decay began. Blood, without a heart to propel it began to sink into the lower extremities. A soldier who thought that the man from Galilee was faking thrust a spear through His heart and piercing the Pericardium, the sack that surrounds the heart there came forth blood and water. The body was removed and Mary His mother held the cooling, brutalized Body in her arms. Her tears were copious and she did not want to let Him go. But the disciples and friends that were on hand gently pried the lifeless corpse from her arms and laid Him atop a shroud. They wound Him up in it and without too much fanfare on that Sabbath eve, laid him in a borrowed tomb, even in death Jesus had no place of His own to lay His head. 

The picture at the top is allegedly a picture of the soul leaving a man at the time of death. The article states that the blue color is the "life force" and you can see in picture on the left there is a lot of blue, and on the right, you can see just a bit of blue at head level, about to depart. I do not believe that they have captured the soul leaving the body. I just thought that the picture would provide an interesting focal point for this post. 

Like it or not one day, maybe today, maybe in an hour, maybe in the next minute we will die. We will experience in some form what Jesus did, that is our bodies ultimate fate. 

For some of us, the lucky ones among us, the process of dying will begin with a doctor telling us that we have a terminal disease and you have X amount of time to live. I say that you are lucky because you will have time to do what needs to be done. You will have been given a grace, a time to make repairs to relationships and in general take your leave of this world in a more or less peaceful and dignified manner.  But before this all of us will go through several phases including denial of death, bargaining with God, until we arrive at acceptance.  

At the time appointed by God, you will enter into the final stages of this life. You will say good bye in various ways and at the pre-ordained moment you will take your last breath and leave the garden God gave to us to tend and you will return home to our Father. 

For a Christian, death should not leave us quaking in fear. We know that death has been conquered and we will rise on the last day. 

I think that in our world today, especially in the United States and Canada, we deny death until the last spadeful of dirt covers our loved ones remains. We spend thousands of dollars to pickle them so they do not degrade so fast. We purchase elaborate boxes to put them in and we seal those to keep the elements out and we place these ornate boxes inside of a sealed concrete box to await the return of Christ. The death merchants sell us all manner of goods, charging five or six times the wholesale price for a casket. They charge hundreds of dollars for thirty dollars of chemicals and cosmetics and some even consider themselves quasi preachers, providing mushy "funeral committal services" at will for those not affiliated with a church.  So, what does all of this expense buy for us? The undertakers will tell you that it will give the family  closure. Well, maybe it does, but if the death was expected the act of taking the last breath may be all the closure a family wants. The morticians say that what they do will give the family a beautiful a memory picture of their loved one that have had all of the roughness and blemishes of death sanded away using the tools of the dismal trade and they say that will give them peace. Maybe it will, but what the undertaker is hoping for, besides a good profit on the deal, is looking towards the next case. He or she wants people to see how good he is at his work and he hopes and prays that the next one to go dies after saying "Let Snodgrass embalm me, put makeup in me, suture my mouth closed, put eye caps on so my eyes don't fly open and please put me in a very expensive box like X was in. Yes, the funeral directors next bit of business may very well come because of the way your mother or father, or friend looked under the theatrical lights on the day of the wake. Look at what an expensive casket (to be honest this casket was probably on the lower end of the price list, but still six times in what Snodgrass paid for it) looks like after twenty years in the ground: 

Courtest: http://www.documentingreality.com/

 Would you care to open the lid and take a peek inside to see how the occupant fared during this twenty year period?  No, me either. An embalmed corpse locked up in an airless sealed up casket and sealed vault soon putrefies and after even a week or two in the ground becomes a lot less that a beautiful memory picture as the anaerobic bacteria changes the body into a blob of goo. So much for the value the dismal trade give you for your hard earned dollar.  

The fact is that once a Christian dies, his or her body SHOULD be treated with respect, for it was a temple of the Holy Spirit. This does not mean we have to spend thousands of dollars in a vain attempt to keep the body from corrupting. "Remember thou art dust and to dust thou shalt return." An inexpensive casket, I am opting for one of those purple cloth covered ones, and burial in consecrated ground is enough.  Overspending on the funeral only benefits the undertaker. 

I watched a very interesting movie on You Tube the other day entitled "A Certain Kind of Death."  (Click Here to View)  This movie follows the processing of two men through the system in the Los Angeles coroners department. What I took away from this movie was how simply stupid we mortals can be. We work our whole lives, we build up a store of goods and yet one day, all of it will belong to someone else as we are buried six feet under the ground.  The movie is kind of graphic, but not in a morbid way. The coroners office buries the ashes of indigents and unclaimed bodies once a year in a potters field. The scene of the workers emptying the cremated remains of sixteen hundred people into a mass grave still is haunting me today. Each of the small aluminum boxes that contained what was left of a person that lived, had dreams and aspirations, had at one time a family that loved them, had jobs, bills, vacations and perhaps hunger, poverty, disease, and finally death came to an end at that moment. Sixteen hundred people were buried that day in the ground, their only marked a bronze square with the date "1997" on it's face. 

So, let's wrap this up.  What does death and dying mean for a Christian? For us it means that we are going home to God to face final judgement for our lives.  So I think that for a Christian living life is much more important that memorializing it after death. I have to confess, while I won't actually be at my own funeral, for my soul will be elsewhere, I would like to think that there would be some who would attend my funeral and some that would mourn my passing. My family consists of two younger sisters and one younger brother, my parents, uncles and aunts have gone to their rest. My siblings have nothing to do with me, I have no idea why and I intend to make certain that all of my final arrangements are made in advance of my departure so they do not have to be bothered.  I don't want them even to be notified. Let them to continue to treat me in death how they treated me in life.  But be that as it may, I intend to be a morticians nightmare. I believe that my body will rise again as did Jesus when he defeated death. I believe that there is no reason to preserve that which is destined to decay. I will request immediate burial or cremation (I have not decided yet) and any funeral goods that I will need to purchase will be of the cheapest, most utilitarian, minimalist type. My estate, if there is anything left and my wife has died before me, I will will to my Church. 

So for a Christian, I believe we must make an effort to do the things a Christian should do NOW and not wait until the doctors give us a terminal sentence. Love, Laugh, Pray, and be Merciful. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit those in prison, visit the sick and yes, bury the dead. 

Te Purple Coffin I want to be used at my funeral