DEATH

PRAYER MOMENT

Friday, 1 November 2013

DEATH

Pause.  Bring to mind that you are in the presence of God.

Reading. “On this mountain the Lord will destroy death for ever. He will wipe away the tears from every cheek.” (Isaiah 25: 6-9)

Reflection. Death is the invisible shadow that is linked to every life. People in every age and place have sought ways of softening its hard reality. Great pains have been taken to build bridges between the living and the “living dead.” With the coming of God into the world in our flesh and in his submitting to death, something new happened. Death lost its sting (1 Cor 15:55). “Life is changed, not ended” (Preface for the Mass for the dead). Those who killed Jesus thought they had got rid of him. But his death was just the beginning of a new creation,  a transformation of the human community in every age and every place, which continues to this day. Such grand thoughts do not take away the pain of the individual deaths we meet every day. When Jesus met one – a widow’s only son had died (Luke 7:11-17) – “he was moved with compassion.” But the two go together: every death is charged with sorrow and with the glory that is to be revealed.    

Prayer. Lord Jesus, this time of the year we pray in a special way for those who have died, that they may enter into the fullness of life you have prepared for them and for us.  Amen.