In the liturgy, we meditate on the passion, death, Resurrection and Ascension of our Lord. We learn that new life comes from death. Nature shows us the way life comes from death. There is a light in the darkness. Even the daily sleep of death refreshes us for a new day. We are reborn every day. I am not the same person I was yesterday. This is a recurring theme in many of our works of art, our literature our movies and daily lives. We read about this and enjoy the excitement that comes from the results of something as negative as death. We can find meaning in tough times and are restrained in our joy in the best of times. We are enabled to go out to others and show compassion.
The Catholic Times gives us two examples of this death to life journey in two articles commemorating the Easter Feast Day. Stephen tells us of his experience of death."With the sound of the beep, I heard the doctor say, 'he has died'. My wife was crying, and I heard my close friend's words as he was sending me on my way."
Twenty years earlier on his way home from work he fell unconscious and was taken to the emergency room of a hospital where he was pronounced dead and taken to the mortuary of the hospital. He doesn't remember how long after hearing the words in the emergency room of the hospital, but he woke up and walked out of the mortuary on his own.
He does remember opening his eyes in the mortuary and beginning to breath and feeling the cool air in his lungs and realizing that he was alive. When he went to find the nurses, the hospital was in an uproar. His doctors and family came rushing to where he was. They gave him a Ringer's solution which Stephen felt was bringing about a paralysis of the body, and he cried out. They removed the solution, and he was transferred to a hospital bed. He experienced a miracle. He never returned to his work, and has continued as a volunteer helping others in hospice and in other volunteer works.
The second article tells us the story of Angela, who worked in a place of pilgrimage to Korean martyrs. She was living the middle-class lifestyle when three years ago everything came crashing down. Her husband planning to expand his business borrowed money to buy some land and everything took a turn for the worse. They were in great debt. They had to sell everything to pay the debt even the house in which they lived. It was a hopeless situation, and she desired death. There were cliffs on all four sides. If this happened when she was young it would have been different, but now she didn't know what to do.
She remembered the martyrs who got rid of everything and moved to the mountains to live. This idea that God was working through her difficulties to a new way of living began to take hold. This reflection on the martyrs enabled Angela to see life in a new way. She began to see her situation with different eyes. The family became closer together than ever before, they became more concerned for each other, and she found work to help the family along. She realized that not all the possibilities had been blocked. She was born again.
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