As we grow older, it feels as though a switch is flicked, and we then gradually change the way we view life. It is a movement from our younger selves when everything seems unending and timeless. How we dream what our next twenty years will be, imagining how our dreams and plans would unfold, how successful we would become, and what kind of life we would have. But as the years pass, we gradually realize that life does not really work the way we imagined it. Perhaps, the most painful realization is that as we become more aware of our responsibilities, we also become more aware of the limits of life. Yes, everything will come to an end. People grow old, places changes and even memories passes away. Oh, how we become nostalgic over these things!
These are part of what we usually call ‘adulting’. And out of these inevitable changes, there may rise a fear out of the painful realizations of our own limitations. It may drive us to spend energy on thinking what we can do to make life more secure, to make it be under our own control. This may not be totally bad, natural prudence may dictate such plans, but eternity begs to differ.
The Best Plan
That is what the First Reading teaches us today, because for Saint Paul, the best plan is Christ. Everything in this world passes away, and the wisest decision we can make when confronted with this reality is to lean on the One who lives forever. Like what Saint Paul said, although we do not know what will happen to us, how long we continue living or when we will die, yet this uncertainty must not destroy us, especially if we found what gives meaning to both possibilities: “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”
I remember what happened with my friend when she had Bell’s Palsy. At first, she thought it might have been a stroke and with, death seemed coming sooner than expected. She started praying while on the way to the hospital. She said, “Lord if it is your will I survive this, thank you very much. If it is your will that I die now, thank you very much. Anyway, both of these are the same!”
There was something very beautiful about that attitude because she was not saying that life and death were simply the same thing, but that either way, she belonged to the Lord, and therefore she did not have to spend those moments trying to control what she could not control.
Freeing
This sweet surrender to the Lord is a very freeing way to live. For while we take care of ourselves and do what we can to preserve the life that God has given us, we also learn to let go of ourselves and allow ourselves to be led by God. This does not mean that we are to be stoic in face of many challenges and difficulties as we are human beings who naturally feel pain and desire life. Christian freedom transforms this attitude, for in it, even when difficulties come, we do not allow them to take way the peace that comes from knowing that our life ultimately belongs to Christ.
If we want to turn our adulting into maturity, rather than asking ourselves, “Will everything happen as I want”, let us ask instead, “Whatever happens, will this lead me closer to Christ?” May God grant us the grace to remain faithful to Him, so that we can boldly proclaim, whether I live or whether I die, I am the Lord’s. Just give me Christ, and that’s enough for me.
