Today's gospel reading is from John about the healing of the nobleman's son. It hit home as I read it this morning because when Mom was sick we had great faith that the Lord would heal her of cancer, if that was his will. Mom and many of us prayed, meditated and focused on passages of healing in the gospels. Until Mom was sick, I did not realize there are so many! One passage she went back to over and over again was the woman who touched the hem of Jesus' cloak and was healed. Of course, it was not God's plan for Mom to stay here with us. As I read this reflection, I found myself again sitting by Mom's bedside September 14th again with these thoughts in mind. The following meditation is from the Magnificat.
"We are not alone in the hour of death; we have nothing to fear in the hour of death: beause when the times comes Christ identifies himself with us so closely that fear gvies way to trust and anguish to peace. He has lived all of our lives, died all of our deaths; to all of us he has given this peace. It is in the hour of death that our fear, our anxiety, our loneliness will end.
Death is too big a thing for any one of us to face alone. It separates us, for a time from those we love on earth. It is difficult for us earthbound, rooted creatures to want heaven; it is impossible for us to realize what the glory of God will be to us. It is loving God, and that only, that can make heaven, heaven. Here imagination does not help us: we cannot really imagine ourselves loving the "Supreme Spirit" - we even want to cling to our human frailties and comforts, to our human weakness.
It is now that Christ takes over. He has died all our deaths on the cross; now we are going to die his; it is Christ in us who surrenders to God. It is not with our own heart and our own will that we can long for God, but with Christ's. And Christ ahs given his heart and will to us. In this is the supreme mercy that comes to us in the hour of death.
Now I love God with Christ's will, with Christ's heart, with Christ's trust; and because he has taken whole possession of me, in the hour of my death I shall at last love my friends too with his love."
- Caryll Houselander
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