17th Week of Ordinary Time, Thursday, 8-3-23, Year A
Readings: First Reading Ex 40:16-21,34-38 Ps 84:3-6a, 8a, 11; Gospel Mt 13:47-53
Optional Memorial: St. Apollinaris Bishop and Martyr
Theme: Live Each Day As If It Were Your Last
There is only one certainty in this life on earth and that is death. Eventually, we all will face this reality. To contemplate death is to also contemplate life with Christ. Many of us do not want to think about our death and if our thoughts go into a morbid and worrisome way, it can be debilitating. But, when death is pondered in the light of Christ as a part of our life, our pilgrimage here on earth to our final home in heaven, it can awaken in our soul all that we yearn for in life everlasting. It can help us prepare for that eventual transition, one to eternal life. If we do not consider our death and ignore a life of virtue and repentance of sins, we could end up suffering eternal death and torment in the fires of Hell.
Fr. Robert Nixon, OSB, translator of Thomas Kempis’ work, “Meditations on Death, Preparing for Eternity,” said, “For if an eternity of either ineffable bliss or of horrendous torment awaits each soul after its departure from this world, then our preparation for this departure is quite literally the most important duty of our present life.”
One of the many constants in the Gospel is the final judgment of humanity at the end of the world. We hear one of those constants today in the “Parable of the Net.” The parable of the sewer of seeds, the goats and sheep, and many others, remind us of what we should be preparing for. In death, there are no do-overs. If you walk out the doors of this church today and suddenly die, the state of your soul is set and there is no way to change it.
So how do we prepare for eternity? We meditate on our death through proper understanding, interpretation, and the wholeness of the scriptures and their teachings. Through scripture, we then celebrate the gift of Christ’s sacrifice, through the Holy Mass and partaking in His Body and Blood, and we live our lives as Christ taught us.
Jesus alludes to this in today’s Gospel by stating that every scribe who has been instructed in the Kingdom of Heaven is like the head of a household who brings from his storeroom both the new and the old. What are the new and the old? As St. Jerome describes in his Biblical Commentary, “The scribe who has become a disciple will employ both the old, the Law and Prophets, and the new, the Gospel. Neither is sufficient without the other; for the Gospel is the fullness of the Law.”1
I hear many people say they only read the New Testament because they just cannot believe in the God of the Old Testament, who was the cause of so much punishment, death, and harsh judgment. They only see the surface of the Old Testament as written by errant human beings who were inspired by God to write down in their own words what He needed to convey to us. Without a properly formed conscience and understanding, they completely miss the leadership, care, and counsel that is the love of the one and only living God.
So, take some time to consider your moment of death and prepare for it by converting your life to one of holiness, ridding yourself of vices, living virtuously, and loving God and your neighbor more completely. To quote Thomas Kempis after his description of those who die in the state of sin and vice and what they will suffer in the tortures of Hell, he writes:
“But for those who have lived holy and upright lives, and who have prepared themselves diligently by prayer and penance, the situation will be very different indeed. For when they realize that they are about to pass from this world of sorrows, this valley of tears, they will not fear at all. On the contrary, they shall rejoice knowing that they are about to depart for their true native land of Heaven, and there to enjoy unending and infinite bliss in the company of glorious angles and saints, illuminated by the magnificent and glorious radiance of the Holy Trinity Itself.”
Saint James Catholic Church 