Fifteenth Sunday of OT (C)

In our Gospel (this morning) a scholar asks Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” In typical rabbical form, Jesus responds with another question and asks the man what he thinks is the answer. The man responds with the great Jewish statement of faith, the Shema, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your being, with all your strength, and with your entire mind and your neighbor as yourself."

Jesus is pleased with the man’s answer and tells him that if he does this he will have eternal life. But why the question about eternal life? Well, obviously he was concerned about what would happen to him after he died. That’s a question that may very well concern many of us here today.

Andy Rooney once quipped, “Death is a distant rumor to the young.” However, as we get older, and death becomes more imminent most people become more concerned about it. The Swiss psychiatrist, Dr. Karl Jung once said that every patient he dealt with over the age of 35 worried about his death.

Every Catholic should have been taught and know that his soul is immortal and that the reason why he is on earth and has been created by God is because he is destined to live with God forever in heaven-- providing he dies in the state of sanctifying grace.

Immortality means that the soul will never die. In the Bible, heaven is described as eternal, as having no end. We live in time now, but God, the angels and the saints in heaven are in eternity. Philosophers define “eternity” as “the perfect and simultaneous total possession of interminable life.” Let me say that again, “Eternity is the perfect and simultaneous total possession of interminable life.” It’s called “interminable” because it will not end; it will continue forever. It’s “perfect and simultaneous total possession” because the angels and saints possess the fullness of life all at once, not in the kind of step by step progression that we experience in time. In other words, the past, present and future are all one.

It’s a sobering thought to think that my personal existence will go on forever when I die. And, whether I will be happy or miserable in eternity is dependent on my choices in this life and, of course, on God’s loving kindness.

There’s nothing more certain in this life than that each and every one of us will die. In fact, we are born to die. The one common trait of all the famous people of history, like Moses, Abraham, Mother Theresa, George Washington, Winston Churchill and all the rest, is that they died.

Why did God make us? The Catechism tells us that God made us to know him, to love him, to serve him in this life and to be happy with him forever in the next life.

In Jesus’ day, people were concerned about some very fundamental ideas of life and death and they spent a good deal of their time thinking about them. Their culture was religious. Our culture was at one time religious, too. Instead of watching TV or twittering on our phone our grandparents or great grandparents read books. But now, our culture is almost completely secular and in many ways anti-religious and anti-Christian with a particular bias against Catholicism. Because our culture is so secular it focuses almost exclusively on material things, on instant gratification and on the here and now. The constant noise and activity in American culture get in the way of times of silence and reflection that would give us the space to seriously think about what we are doing, why we are doing it and to think about God and our eternal destiny.

The constant change of images on television programs and especially in television advertisements illustrates what I mean. Some of you here, I’m sure remember the early days of TV. In the early days of TV the camera would concentrate on a scene and stay there for some time; not any more. Now, if you notice, the images change very quickly, many not lasting more than a fraction of a second. The purpose for this is to keep the attention of the viewer so that he or she doesn’t change channels. The point here is that this constant change tends to keep the mind on the here and now. The constant change doesn’t allow any time for thinking and analysis about what we are watching.

In this regard, a commentator once said that a reason why so many people love to go to big sports events such as football, soccer and basketball is so that they will be totally absorbed and will not have to think about death. Well, I don’t know if that’s true but it’s certainly an interesting thought.

Time is important, but eternity is much more important. Time moves forward rapidly and soon comes to an end. Eternity goes on forever. God has given each one of us time to work out our salvation, as St. Paul tells us, “In fear and trembling (Phil 2:12). The most important time in our whole life will be the moment we die and have to appear before our divine Judge to give an accounting of how we have lived our lives; of our good deeds and our sins. It’s crucial for the individual person that he dies in the state of sanctifying grace so that he can share in the eternal life of God that is offered to us in Christ Jesus our Lord.

If we work hard to be with him and in him in this life, we will have eternal life; if we are separated from him in this life by mortal sin and are still in that state when we die, we’ll die the death forever. Those in heaven and those in hell have made a choice that results either in eternal happiness in heaven or in eternal misery in hell.

Now is the time of salvation; now is the time to prepare ourselves for eternity and, of course, we don’t know when that will happen. As Catholics we simply cannot let the modern secular, materialistic, anti-Christian culture rob us of the eternal happiness that God so desires for us. In this sense, if we truly want to attain eternal life, we must be counter-cultural. And we do this by seeking to know, and to love the Lord our God with all our heart with all our being, with all our strength, and with all our mind and when we strive to come to love God and do His will in our life then and only then will we be able to do the second half of Jesus’ command, to love our neighbor as ourselves.