The Afterlife

 have a very sincere and honest question for you: Will you die for me? Please, before you respond, take a moment to think about it. Most of us, being Christians will say yes without thinking about the ramifications of our words.

Recently I’ve had several people write to say that although they do their best to have faith in the Lord and to follow His teachings, they do not receive answers to their prayers. It is as if they are praying to the ceiling, for it seems they are neither heard nor answered.

Simon Peter answered and said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." (Matthew 16:16)

And Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst." (John 6:35)

One morning, I went to the funeral home near my parish in order to offer my condolences to the next of kin prior to the celebration of the Mass of Christian burial. Upon receiving my expressions of sympathy, the brother of the deceased said to me, “Father, I have a question. Where do we go from here?” Assuming that he meant the question literally, I answered, “Well, in a few moments, the funeral director will organize us in paying our final respects to your brother. We will then leave from here, form the line of cars behind the hearse and drive in procession to the Church where we will celebrate the funeral Mass.”

I write these reflections with you today not because I am some kind of an expert on grief counseling, nor even as someone who can claim to have experienced the intensity of the losses that you have experienced. While I lost my own mother some fifteen years ago, I don’t make the claim that I know exactly what you are going through. Grief is a very individualized process, and maybe there is no one who will ever quite understand fully what you have gone through or what you are going through in the present moment. Not as an expert do I write these reflections, but as someone who wants to allow the power of God to bring healing and wholeness to your life. I hope to explore with you in these pages some ways in which we can allow the Lord to bring us that wholeness that we so long for.

Do you know that you serve a God that is so concerned with what happens in your life that He bottles your tears. There isn't anything that goes on in your life that is so small or so trivial that God doesn't care.