An excellent piece from the pastoral constitution on the Church in the modern world of the Second Vatican Council and very appropriate on the eve of another Lenten season. While we do not like to talk about death and try to avoid at all costs, Death is the result of sin and is universal. Sooner or later it will claim us and all those whom we love. Death is part of the result of the curse that God our Creator placed on this world as a result of Adam and Eve’s first rebellion (Genesis 3.1-19). It is appropriate for Lent because during Lent we focus on doing our part in repairing our alienated relationship with God the Father, the Giver of Life, our life support. God, of course, has acted first on our behalf to achieve this reconciliation by becoming human to die for our sins that we might have life. The Father did this because he loves us more than we love ourselves. The excerpt below reminds us of this reality of Death and serves as a wake up call for us to get our minds right by getting our relationship with the Lord right, and that of course requires humility on our part. There is only one solution to the problem of Death and that solution is Jesus Christ because only Christ has died and conquered Death. It’s the paschal (Easter) mystery talked about below. Those who poo-poo all this are delusional and setting themselves up for the eternal destruction they fear most. Please don’t be among them or let them con you. Don’t ever be ashamed of the gospel. Ever. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

In the face of death the enigma of human existence reaches its climax. Man is not only the victim of pain and the progressive deterioration of his body; he is also, and more deeply, tormented by the fear of final extinction. But the instinctive judgment of his heart is right when he shrinks from, and rejects, the idea of a total collapse and definitive end of his own person. He carries within him the seed of eternity, which cannot be reduced to matter alone, and so he rebels against death. All efforts of technology, however useful they may be, cannot calm his anxieties; the biological extension of his life-span cannot satisfy the desire inescapably present in his heart for a life beyond this life.

Imagination is completely helpless when confronted with death. Yet the Church, instructed by divine revelation, affirms that man has been created by God for a destiny of happiness beyond the reach of earthly trials. Moreover, the Christian faith teaches that bodily death, to which man would not have been subject if he had not sinned, will be conquered; the almighty and merciful Savior will restore man to the wholeness that he had lost through his own fault. God has called man, and still calls him, to be united in his whole being in perpetual communion with himself in the immortality of the divine life. This victory has been gained for us by the risen Christ, who by his own death has freed man from death.

Faith, presented with solid arguments, offers every thinking person the answer to his questionings concerning his future destiny. At the same time, it enables him to be one in Christ with his loved ones who have been taken from him by death and gives him hope that they have entered into true life with God.

Certainly, the Christian is faced with the necessity, and the duty, of fighting against evil through many trials, and of undergoing death. But by entering into the paschal mystery and being made like Christ in death, he will look forward, strong in hope, to the resurrection.

This is true not only of Christians but also of all men of good will in whose heart grace is invisibly at work. Since Christ died for all men, and the ultimate vocation of man is in fact one, that is, a divine vocation, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being united with this paschal mystery in a way known only to God.

Such is the great mystery of man, enlightening believers through the Christian revelation. Through Christ and in Christ light is thrown on the enigma of pain and death which overwhelms us without his Gospel to teach us. Christ has risen, destroying death by his own death; he has given us the free gift of life so that as sons in the Son we may cry out in the Spirit, saying: Abba, Father!

Gaudium et spes, nn. 18. 22