The world would have us believe that to dwell on death is a morbid thing, and yet the truth of the matter is that it is a matter of highest prudence to consider our own approaching deaths daily. The Word of God, Second Person of the Blessed Trinity became incarnate to save us, and He often spoke in the Gospels of the necessity of taking up our cross and following Him. When we consider His life on earth, it was not merely a matter of suffering during the Passion and His death on the Cross, but rather that the life of the Savior was full of difficulties and suffering right from the events of His birth in Bethlehem, the flight from Herod into Egypt, opposition from the religious authorities of the time, and the crowds who were hard hearted and slow to believe. He even exclaimed at one point: “O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?”
Our faith teaches us that the Lord went through all of this for our redemption, and as members of His Mystical Body, we have within our power, with the help of grace, to unite our sufferings and our death with those of the Savior. And we must never be discouraged by our sufferings here below, they help to conform us to Christ, and if accepted with trust in God, they make us holy. Nor must we allow a downcast spirit to overtake us if we find that we repeatedly fail to conform ourselves well. Remember, “A Saint is a sinner who gets up one time more than he falls.”
