A reading from the Book of the prophet Isaiah (38:1-3, 10-19)
In those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz came to him, and said to him, ‘Thus says the Lord: Set your house in order, for you shall die; you shall not recover.’2Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall, and prayed to the Lord:3‘Remember now, O Lord, I implore you, how I have walked before you in faithfulness with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your sight.’ And Hezekiah wept bitterly.
He said: In the noontide of my days I must depart; I am consigned to the gates of Sheol for the rest of my years. I said, I shall not see the Lord in the land of the living; I shall look upon mortals no more among the inhabitants of the world. My dwelling is plucked up and removed from me like a shepherd’s tent; like a weaver I have rolled up my life; he cuts me off from the loom; from day to night you bring me to an end;* I cry for help*until morning; like a lion he breaks all my bones; from day to night you bring me to an end.* Like a swallow or a crane*I clamour, I moan like a dove. My eyes are weary with looking upwards. O Lord, I am oppressed; be my security! But what can I say? For he has spoken to me, and he himself has done it. All my sleep has fled* because of the bitterness of my soul. O Lord, by these things people live, and in all these is the life of my spirit.* O restore me to health and make me live! Surely it was for my welfare that I had great bitterness; but you have held backmy life from the pit of destruction, for you have cast all my sins behind your back. For Sheol cannot thank you, death cannot praise you; those who go down to the Pit cannot hope for your faithfulness. The living, the living, they thank you, as I do this day; fathers make known to children your faithfulness.
From the writings of Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar (+1988)
The human being in general — and each individual in particular — is a mystery. This being emerges from nature and transcends it. On the one hand, he looks to nature, which it is his task to render serviceable and to bring into order; on the other hand, he looks to God, whom he must seek after "in order to find him" — but his transcendence does not yet guarantee him the finding of his final goal. This must come to him in freedom. In himself, he constitutes the boundary between the world and God (as the Greeks already noted), and it is for him to order the things in this world with a view to his own transcendence. He must therefore relate the world to that which lies beyond him, without knowing himself the goal toward which he must orient him¬ self. The shadows of contradiction are deepened by guilt and death. He can neither close himself into his own finitude and mortality which is his real life, and leave the future to an anonymous human race and an anonymous providence; nor can he behave as if his death counted for nothing, and simply busy himself with the general goals of humanity, with the technical administration of the world of things where death plays no role. The riddle is totally and incessantly exasperating.
Only the involvement of God in Jesus Christ takes the human being fully seriously, and not just the species as a whole but each individual…
Only the involvement of God in Christ takes human finitude, guilt, and death seriously into account, and does not stand contemptuously aloof from this world and its tragic tasks in order to resettle the human being in a spiritual world on the other side; instead it gives the whole fiasco of life in this world a meaning beyond itself by making all human concern for the world into one of the presuppositions for the resurrection, for bringing the "marks of the wounds" into eternal life. Human sweat and blood were not in vain; God in his free involvement brings everything into the final, perfect form of the world. Hence in the "solution" that God offers to the human riddle, all the tensions remain and no aspect of the human being is suppressed. For God is great enough to embrace this endlessly open being in his own still more immense openness.
Musical Selection(Isaac Watts)
How short and hasty is our life!
How vast our souls’ affairs! Yet senseless mortals vainly strive To lavish out their years.
Our days run thoughtlessly along, Without a moment’s stay; Just like a story or a song We pass our lives away.
God from on high invites us home, But we march heedless on, And ever hast’ning to the tomb, Stoop downwards as we run.
Draw us, O God, with sovereign grace,
And lift our thoughts on high, That we may end this mortal race, And see salvation nigh.
Prayer
God, our Creator and Redeemer,
by your power your only Son has conquered death
and has passed from this world into your kingdom.
Grant that all the faithful departed
may share his triumph over death
and enjoy for ever the vision of your glory.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,