This life is a mystery. We learn on one hand how beautiful is creation, how this world is God’s kingdom, that we must carry out our duties of state in this physical world.
On the other hand we’re taught in the end nothing in and of this world, of this life, has any lasting meaning except for the salvation of our soul. In that sense, this life is a passing illusion. Everything passes away, and will be in the end destroyed. Every last thing.
Our health, mortal life, jobs, money, houses, cars, degrees and honors, everything ends up destroyed according to the book of the Apocalypse. In the end, God destroys and recreates the Earth as our final, eternal paradise. That truth is not something you live by when clinging to the things of this life. As I have too often done.
The world deceives us. It teaches us this life is what matters, that the concrete landscape of this world is permanent and lasting, that we’re all going to either live a long life or at times implicitly somehow live forever.
We walk forward on our own individual timelines thinking that over the horizon any day now we will reach the end of the rainbow and find permanent fulfillment and contentment. Everything will come together. In this life, not the next.
We have been deceived by this false version of life, me included. We live so much for this life that when things go bad, especially very bad, then that’s it, life’s value is questioned in suffering, when suffering is the path God set us all on, rich and poor alike.
One moment a young person is enjoying their youth thinking wrongly life will certainly continue in bliss; the next moment they’ve taken a bad spill on their water skis, resulting in a spinal cord injury and paralysis for life. Tragedies happening to many people everyday.
This world has lied to us that we are here to be content with little suffering in this life, setting us up for existential disappointment and the temptation to despair when life doesn’t turn out like that. And it doesn’t turn out that way for anybody. Everybody will face extreme pain and suffering in one form or another throughout their life. Looks are deceiving. A young beautiful woman admired as she walks down the street may have been a victim of rape resulting in unseen mental torments.
We’ve let ourselves be deceived, few questioning the world’s narrative about life’s meaning, and the problem of suffering. Few know why we suffer, except for the gift of faith in Christ Who teaches us suffering is penance for sin to save our soul, for eternal life, in union with Him.
Everything will be destroyed except for our immortal souls, that will end up either in eternal fire and torment or eternal bliss. Every last solar system, planet, plant, animal, and physical human life (except those still alive at the Second Coming of Christ), the entire universe itself, will at some point come to an end. Every last atom and quark, except for our bodies to be resurrected.
This is a mystifying truth. The saints understood it so well that most entered or had entered religious life, or chose an austere life renouncing the world. They had such strong understanding of the supernatural that when they looked out across the landscape of everyday life they saw a valley of tears, a spiritual battlefield over souls, a passing reality in which everything turns to dust. Every person they saw as an eventual skeleton buried in the ground, and a soul either in heaven or hell, and that they needed to do heavy prayers and sacrifices to help save those souls.
That is a stark contrast between a 3000 square foot luxury house, $30,000 new car, a lifestyle of ease, comfort, and high esteem from others. But one day your house could be burned to the ground, you become permanently disabled from head to toe burns, and you lose everything. This kind of thing happens all the time in one form or another. What person doesn’t value their spouse or child more than those things listed above, but how often do people lose spouses or children to premature death.
God knows my own tragedies, but I will confess I haven’t been ready for them as I should have been. They were enough to make me question God’s plan, and to worry to death about the situation. And tragedies hit when you least expect it.
So I am learning even at my not young age how to be ready for tragedies and extreme crosses, and that is to already live detached from this earthly realm, to focus on preparation for God’s judgment to be found worthy of eternal happiness. To even make the radical step of renouncing all the vain promises of this world and to live exclusively for the next. Exclusively.