Age-defying crèmes, surgeries to make us look younger, so many gimmicks are out there because there is a market for them; the market exists because we think of death and few of us welcome it.  We don’t want to die, and so we spend some of our life consumed with not dying and death.  In some senses, we need to think about our mortality and have an “eternal” plan, but we’re fools if we’re consumed by it; we can spend more time mired in thoughts of death (or avoiding it) than we spend living life.

There is only way I know to cheat death: Jesus Christ!  In our Gospel today, we hear a lot of talk of death, but very little listening to the answers.  This isn’t just happening in the Gospel, it’s happening in the world all around us.  Have we not heard of Jesus Christ, life in Christ and living by faith and trusting in the Lord?  I know that this is something that people reading this blog reflection will already have well underway, but we cannot then tire from sharing the message – Jesus didn’t.  Obviously some will say that this is absurd: Christians don’t cheat death!  Well, we experience death, but we move right through it.  It is an experience of our lives [that is our life eternal].  My brothers and sisters in Christ: live life, love life, embrace death!  The only way to get to heaven is through death itself, an experience of life.