The Image of God - The Meaning of Life

God became human to give meaning to life and to show us that meaning.

Oh, we can get meaning for our lives through our work, our families, the people and things that surround us. But we keep coming back to the feeling that there is something more. There is always the call to Eden.

We were made to be with God. In God we find the ultimate meaning of our lives, because we were created with a hole in our being that can only be filled by God. In God alone can we fulfill the mission of our lives. Only in Heaven will we find lasting peace and joy.

In the meantime, what? God became man to show us how to get through our days in such a way that we will fulfill our purpose. He not only paved the way, but in doing so, He gave us a map. Stay on the road He has created. At the end we will find that Jesus is the gate. Through Jesus alone can we enter Heaven.

written by Laura Weston, widow of Deacon Michael Weston

Life is hard and in many ways. Yet as you hear me say, I keep on talking about how the wonder of Jesus Christ is He brings meaning to life. He gives everything that we experience a meaning. The meaning of the crucifixion. The meaning of everything is designed that if we take it, it is a means to be more holy, to prepare ourselves for eternal life.

And the ultimate test that we face, each and every one of us will face, is death. We are not immortal in the physical sense. We are going to die. And the question is, okay, this final test comes… what happens?

Jesus talks about it in the reading today It’s the separating of the sheep and the goats. But there’s more. He is telling us that everything that we do in our lives is a means to make ourselves holy and specifically points to the relationship that we have with others - to the communion saints, to the communion of souls both living and dying. There is a wholeness from which those people in Hell have separated themselves. That is, and I’ve said this several days now, that to me is the ultimate definition of Hell, to be separated from the love of God.

But in our own mortal lives, we would like to be immortal. We would like our bodies to feel the way and act the way that they did when we were twenty-three or twenty-four or twenty-five when we were young and vigorous and we knew that we were the smartest thing in the world.

But it’s not that. It doesn’t happen that way. We get old and we face the reality of death.

The question then is, we die. Is that it? That’s it. It’s gone. There is no more. We’re like a chicken that’s had it’s head cut off and is eaten for dinner. Nobody remembers the chicken. It’s gone.

Are we exactly the same? Is the reality of our existence total and complete futility? Because if that’s all we are, the only thing that constrains us from doing anything that we please is retribution from someone else. But there would be no morality. There’s nothing here. Why would there be a morality? The only thing I have to worry about is someone else inflicting pain on me.

God said, “No.” No from the very beginning. We are created in his own image and He is eternal. We see in the first reading from Wisdom. If you are listening to it you’re going, “Wow. That isn’t a New Testament reading. It’s an Old Testament reading. Because it is a recognition of the reality of the way that God has chosen to define us and put Himself in relation to us that there is something more. There is recognition that there is something more to our lives that just being a mere flesh that’s going to die. There is something more that goes along with being made in the image of God.

And that’s one of the things that if you read the New Testament and the Old Testament in that context you begin to understand how they are really struggling with this issue. And then you see the answer to the question…through Our Lord Jesus Christ. His humanity, his divinity, His passion, His death, and His resurrection. All of a sudden it’s kind of like, “Aha, that’s it. That’s it. There’s the answer, right there. We believe and we feel instinctively that there is something more. It isn’t simply a life that ends; there’s something more. And the answer is Jesus Christ. The answer is that Jesus gives our existence, our very mortality a meaning. That meaning comes to the promise of eternal life.

That meaning is the sacrifice on the cross because each and every one of us is inadequate in ourselves to warrant to go to Heaven. We cannot do it by ourselves. We have to do it through Jesus Christ, through the grace that He has given through His death and resurrection. The cross, there’s the meaning of life.

And on a personal level, and I’ve mentioned this to you before, I have to bring you back to Parkland Hospital (the Dallas county charity hospital). And Parkland Hospital was an absolutely wonderful place. I dealt with poor people, the poorest of the poor, who were dying. They had lived lives that, from the perspective of the world, they were poor. They didn’t have what you and I have. Many of them probably never even had air conditioning, which is bad in Dallas. Yet there was something special. And I always saw this.

I loved going to Parkland Hospital because I went, “My gosh! I get to see the presence of God, the face of God and not die. The face of God in the people who are dying, who are coming so close to God. And the wonder still remains with me. The wonder just makes me go, “God, it makes sense that when you deal with someone who is on the verge of dying, who has been experiencing extreme pain, and they’re getting ready to die, forget everything that you have seen in the media. It’s not. If you are a follower of Christ it is a time of hope. It is a time of love.

It isn’t a time of… “I’m gonna get this over with, kill me.” No. Because there is a single characteristic that I saw, and I’ve talked to a lot of people about this one. And many people came back and went, “Oh, that's what was happening when my mother died, or my father died, or my friend died. It’s a very simple thing but it brings to light the wonder of Our Lord Jesus Christ. And that is, that when someone comes to the recognition of the fact that they are going to die soon, a single thing, a single characteristic happens, and that is love. Love of neighbor. They become more concerned about other people, usually one person in particular, than anything else.

They come to live the gospel of Matthew that I just read. They come to be concerned, not about themselves and the fact that they are going to die, but about someone else. They come to live the second great commandment. That becomes the fact of life.

And you’ve seen this constantly, you hear about it and you know about it. How many times have you heard the story of, “My mom wouldn’t die, or my father didn’t die. We couldn’t understand, and then my brother finally made it. Or some finally made it and they had the peace that gave them the opportunity to die. And that peace comes from the love that they had for others. That peace comes from the living out of the separating of the sheep and the goats.

That peace comes from the ultimate answer of loving God and loving neighbor that is provided to us by Our Lord Jesus Christ, by Christ crucified. That’s the meaning that comes to the ultimate part of our lives. The recognition of the commandment to love God and to love neighbor.

November 2, 2018