Meeting God Face to Face

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An experience I had recently shed light on an experience all of us will have some day.  I experienced the death of one of my classmates.  It was sobering because I suddenly had to face my own mortality!  At the same time it gave me a chance to reflect on that most meaningful encounter of any of our lives:  our readiness to meet God face to face!  What will it be like?  Will I be ready?  Will I be resistant?  Will I be fearful?  Will I be relieved?

Spiritual writer Henri Nouwen once wrote, before his own death in 1996,  “Am I afraid to die? I am every time I let myself be seduced by the noisy voices in my world telling me that my ‘little life’ is all I have and advising me to cling to it with all my might. But when I let these voices move to the background of my life and listen to that small soft voice calling me the Beloved, I know that there is nothing to fear and that dying is the greatest act of love, the act that leads me into the eternal embrace of my God whose love is everlasting.”

How do you feel about your own life – and death?

Ruth Poochigian, O.P.
Madison, WI

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