The Death that Leads to Life

The greatest labour of one's life will be physical death. Some receive instantaneous death rather than progressive dying. Being alive still on this earth, none of us can say that one is better than the other, though each of us hopes for instantaneous death (unwisely) so as to avoid the suffering which has nothing but ever-approaching death at its end.

For the most part, people are called to die-ing, and not to instantaneous death. Moreover, none of us can count on instantaneous death, and each of us must assume that progressive dying will be in store.

What is certain is that suffering here in this world has infinitely more value for the sanctification of others and ourselves than the suffering in purgatory, which may be longer endurance for those who receive instantaneous death instead of progressive dying.

To the offering of suffering in this world, there is no limit to the love with which it can be offered (and thus the great deeds that occur because of that love), but what we will to limit.

Indeed, suffering for love in this world and the perfect offering of one's death, by the merit of Christ made perfect, one can hope to bypass purgatory and go directly to Heaven - even if the life one has led to that point has been scarlet with sin, and the last minutes of life you have left are but a few.

Ever since John the Baptist’s time, the kingdom of heaven has opened to force; and the forceful are even now making it their prize; whereas all the prophets and the law, before John’s time, could only speak of things that were to come. --Matthew 11:12-13

Of course, the force is in the abandon with which you die to yourself.

This, to repeat, is certain: the greatest labour we will ever have in this world is the labour to which each one of our lives is headed: physical dying.

No morphine can remove this - the separation of the soul from the body, with the entirety of the lifetime you have lived standing out in irremovable relief, each moment standing on its own.

And we are called to leave the manner of our death up to God, whether it be instantaneous or progressive. Also, we are not only to offer our life to God; we are to offer our death to God, and not only when we are dying, but right now.

Have you offered your death to God?

You should.

What if our lives became that very labour, so that physical death itself was the easiest thing, and was no labour at all?