End

“It is certain that we shall be taken by surprise, and that the time will come sooner than we think.” (Father Charles Arminjon, “The End of the Present World”, page 28). 

Death on the Pale Horse (Benjamin West)

I have been reflecting on important things.  I have been making plans for the things in my life that are most important to me.

And as I consider all the various things that I can do I am faced with quite a startling idea.

One day – and not very far into the future – nobody at all will remember my name.  For a time, the people who know me and interact with me on a semi-regular basis will remember me.  I might receive a phone call from a friend, or a text message from one of my children, my husband and I will chat, as will my parents and siblings talk to me.  And then, one day – in twenty or thirty years (and certainly not more than fifty years into the future), many of my friends will have passed away (or perhaps I might have passed away), and fewer people will speak to me.  My parents will no longer be alive on this Earth and my siblings will be getting older and less healthy – if we all survive to such an old age.  My children will be busier.

And then I shall die.  And when that happens, for a time my children might remember my name.  They might even pray for me a little.  Perhaps even their children will vaguely remember me from time to time.  Certainly their children’s children will not think of me at all.  And within the space of perhaps one hundred years (at the most) from this moment in time, I shall be completely forgotten – as forgotten as the dust from whence I have come.

Father Charles Arminjon wrote in “The End of the Present World” at page 28, “In truth, if the earth and all it contains must one day disappear by fire, the goods of this world are no more to be esteemed than wood and straw. What point is there, then, in making them the object of our desires and cares? Why seek to build and leave marks of our genius and power where we have no permanent abode, and where the form of this world will be removed, like a tent that has no travellers to shelter? It may be said that it will be a thousand years before this frightening cataclysm takes place; but Christ has said that a thousand years are but an instant compared with eternity, and when the moment comes—when, from the land of the future life, we are the witnesses and actors in that supreme drama—the whole span of humanity will seem so short to us that we shall scarcely consider it to have lasted a single day … Christ tells us to meditate upon these great teachings, for it is certain that we shall be taken by surprise, and that the time will come sooner than we think.”

And I have been reflecting on that too.

For it seems that I have placed all my fixations on the things of this world, and it occurs to me today that “it is certain that we shall be taken by surprise, and that the time will come sooner than we think.”

For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.