Tuesday in The Week of The 2nd Sunday After Pentecost (06/16/09)

So we are always confident; even though we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord -- for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we do have confidence, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him.

--2 Corinthians 5:6-9

Outside, the heat index was into triple figures. Inside, the air-conditioner was pushed to the limit. Every pew was filled, and chairs had to be set up in the narthex to accomodate the overflow crowd. It was a packed house. And it happened twice in one day. Two memorial services are enough for any day.


My experience at both services was something akin to a spiritual daydream. You listen as best you can, smile at the fond remembrances, sing some of the treasured hymns of the faith. But you cannot help but wonder:

The clock of life is wound but once

And no one has the power

To tell just when the hands will stop

At late or early hour

My daydreaming about death -- and maybe yours too -- is brought back to reality by the startling assertion of Saint Paul in today's reading. In the midst of ruminating about death, he writes of confidence! When we are in our bodies (life), we are away from the Lord. When we are away from our bodies (death), we are with the Lord. Whether at home or away, we are always confident and we make it our aim to please God.

Making it our aim to please God is not necessarily easy -- especially when fronted up to death. The easier alternative would be to please the self and draw as much pleasure out of life while we still have life to live. Neither of the men we remembered yesterday gave in to such counsels of despair or casual fatalism. What they did do was live their lives to the hilt! In a manner of speaking, they lived outside of themselves. To paraphrase Martin Luther, they lived in God by faith and in their neighbor by love. In living like that, I'd venture to say, they found that certain something of which the blessed apostle wrote: confidence!

PD