Death

DEATH

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"For who is Resurrection and Life "

================================================ " Thinking of death, is not living in anguish and fear. Looking at our existence in the truth And in the light of this hope to which have been all and all called. =================================================

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Death, this word brings on depression, dark and blue for people, the first colds of the winter and the fine rain pierced, the falling leaves, the sadness and the mourning.

It is true, but does it be necessary truly to

deplore it? This time does not invite the reflection, and the contraction of family bonds, in exchange of remembering them the most emotion of life, to a vision of things and beyond, in a light to lie down the sun who announces a dawn? This morning, the door of this cemetery was somber in the haze, it carried to the melancholy. But here is that, in the afternoon, its mirrors have been knocked suddenly by a sunbeam that in fact to gush as a rainbow. The cemetery is the place of rest.

We only rest for a new travel.

But if we already have left, on the way,

leaving on the shore of this

earth this selfish cumbersome part of? Our heart refuses the disappearance of the dears. It is so intolerable that, despite, we hope all that is not finished. This is not possible.

We

want to find again those we like and those who died. Poets, playwrights, moviemakers of all periods have well felt that. The poet expresses it in this sentence: " Beyond tombs, the eyes that one closes, see again ". When death arrives, it shocks. Wondering if it is possible, if this is not a bad dream. The one we loved is dead. Its absence digs a terrible loneliness. And we begin to regret because we did understood.

not love him enough, we did not

Now that he is no longer here, we

discover all his wealth;

his qualities appear with more flash and hits defects blur.

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Flowers that we bring try to tell all that, but so badly. So much memories are coming back, when we see those faces. Some people tell, others melts and often others cries. Thewhole time, men have thought that there is another life after death; but it is very difficult to represent, because death is still a mystery. Pyramids of Egypt, some of them have 5000 years of existence, are mortuary homes where all was made for the survival of the king of the country. The body of the Pharaon was mummified with an incomparable art to hide all of what was the more

horrible in death, the decomposition,

and placed in a coffin triple to the bottom of the inviolable reputed pyramid. In many country, a perpetual flame unknown soldier.

remains on the tomb of the

There is no great manifestation without reviving the

flame and laying flowers. Thus, the most honored monument in the country is the tomb, not a famous man, but that was an absolutely unknown man, choosed among thousands others unknowed. There come all heads of state to honor all the citizens of their homelands. Death ask so much questions. It is the great problem on which all philosophes are thinking . It is necessary to know from time to time to stop in life to reflect there.

Because, who ever we are, death is a personal drama that we

walk alone.

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Confidences of the great invalids, soldiers that are going to die, tell it well:

dying the seas on the point to enter alone a sort of labyrinth

where the people can accompany it, even its close to the most intimate that surround it and to which it tempts to link. The Christ himself, who has taken our human condition, has known this loneliness of the death. To the garden of Gethsemani, during his agony, he complained when he was with

his companions to be alone in front of death. Their

capacity of comprehension slipped on its solitude to this supreme hour. And on the cross, it had this shout:

"My God, why did you leave

me? Thus, death lives alone, crosses alone. But, as

fearsome as death can be, which nobody contests is an

event of life, the last indeed, but the most important. Death, in our life, is getting less human. It has become a taboo. We do anything not to speak about it. Even the word is forbidden. We agree to speak about it differently:

we speak about

a end, a fatal accident.

The most beautiful death is when you did not see it : "He did not feel it", we say, "it is better like this" . Ask these children what is death.

They have very

few ideas and

make incoherent replies. All has been done not to show them a real dead. And God knows nevertheless if children of today see dead on television’s screen, scenes of war, accidents, novel - fiction, crimes of all sorts. But a death that comes across the screen, that remains extract.

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It is that to this age, one likes to provoke it, to throw it challenges. Youths

take

scary

risks,

confront

the

greatest

perils,

moving

in

motorbikes or in cars "to open tomb" , as the expression says. In these moments they feel to live more, that they display ahead others, that they behave in masters of their life. The risk is such that they find it very nice. They do more and more, even though they will be very bad when one of their friend will lie, death, at their feet. It seems that death

less preoccupies our contemporaries less than

the last generations. One would wonder rather what senses can well have the life, since it goes to a definitive death as all door to think it. And then, it is such a habit to coast the death in great number. Each morning by opening its newspaper, there is the statement of dead on the road, dead of the war, the famine or cataclysms. Ahead the death, some are resigned. To them, it is a fate, a law of the human kind. The important is that life

is to be transmitted and

to be

continued. And some even want to put there a term, to avoid an old age where they would be the people decreased, wastes of the company. Once, suicide was considered with horror, nowadays we would easily approve it when it is a real want to subtract from the degradation. There is also the attitude of rebels for that the death is absurd, since one has the desire to live. It is intolerable. How God can allow that, or there is no God. For a lot of people, the best is to think of death the less possible, thinking of her like a foreign and especially not to notice when it arrives.

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Here is a great invalid on his bed of hospital. That this no longer is in his clean house, surrounded his, that one dies henceforth, but to the hospital or to the clinic. best

physicians

and

Indeed, one there is often better nursed.

surgeons

are

there,

with

observation, operation, transfusion, resuscitation.

their

machines

The of

And it arrives strong

happily that the pain is conquered by progress of the science, and the life prolonged some. But the day arrives as where the invalid is condemnee. And instead of to warn it the gravity of its state, one contrives in its surrounding in order that it dies in its ignorance of the death. The miserable:

bristled tubes in the mouth, the nose, wrists, it is

going to die, when no longer there will be person to its bedside. The invalid is dead.

After so human ceremonies, its body is

transported in automotive van because our time is pressed and all is motorized. Wel go to the church or directly to the cemetery situated as far as possible from the cities, not to disturb the living people. When there was a true fraternal community, religious funeral ceremonies are an opportunity to demonstrate the solidarity in the misfortune, because the life of some families is sometimes broken, annihilated by the loving disappeared. Nevertheless, a Christian community that would be solely centered on solidarity and compassion gestures and never think the senses and the importance of the death, would forget the essential. The Human being is to know he will die.

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And

interrogation is always staying.

What is there beyond the

death? Is there nothing or another life All time, one has wondered on this subject. Eventhough we don’t want it, The man has a desire of surviving. Inside the man, in its unconscious , there is a sort of desire to say no to the death, to be immortal. But how to perpetuate? The means ordered by the life is to make children. parents believe they

survive.

Thus, the

The name of family perpetuates.

The

ancestors also continue to share the existence of the living people. We

survive

again

thanks

to

portraits,

statuses,

documents,

constructions, that remain in the memory of men. To the bottom of whole that, there is this certainty that, if death will occur, the man is greater than death. If so of our contemporaries do not want to think of the death and do not support even the name, this is not only that they fear to die, but they can not support the thought of a last judgement, therefore to be judged. We are in a period where we speak a lot justice in the world; but we

do not want especially to imagine that there is a justice after this

world. We would better think about it . The Christ has spoken about vain to describe the

judgement after

death. But it is in

pleasure and condemnations that wait us beyond.

The Christ himself has only discreetly raised the sail.

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He is from another

world whose dimensions are not ours.

What

we call the "eternal life" is a life of mystery. It would be childish to place the sky behind clouds. promised by the Christ, the

The sky

"Kingdom of skies" as he told, situated in

others dimensions that the time and the space.

It is vain to situate it

here or there in galaxies of stars. It is where God is . This would be another stupidity to imagine the life to the sky as a perpetual ceremony where one would tell prayers. Better costs to keep in the spirit, the image of a banquet, a wedding, as Jesus has expressed himself to speak some, because everyone there is to the joy. What is sure, it is that the immense tramples human will have finally found its unit in the fraternity.

All will recognize for children of

God, will participate in its divine life and will be associated to its activities to all ever. We would insist perhaps too on terrors of the final judgement.

O

the Gospel is especially mercy, forgiveness and hope of happiness. God never rapes the liberty of its creature.

It has a great respect

for the man and the leash such that it has wanted to be made himself. The hell, it is for the damned, to remain what it has wanted to be: proud, lecher, jealous, hateful, liard, ..., in a total refusal of love of God and others. Its internal fire, its remorse, is what feeds him. The life is serious

and it is necessary to be vigilant.

The only

irreparable misfortune, is to be found a day without repenting, ahead the face of the one who forgives. www.vinh.tran.free.fr

The certainty of an other life, over of the death, we hold it, we Christians of the Christ resuscitated. Before him, great men of God who have written the Bible had this inspiration that between the pain and the death, there was a mysterious report. The death was linked to the pain. The experience of the life, all the history of their people had learnt them that the pain entered the heart of the man, that there is a crack in it, something broken. Because we often make the pain while we could have make the well, and We fill the earth of violences, crises, injustices and wars. For these prophets, the corporal death was the sign of a far more intimate and spiritual break between the humanity and God. The death was the salary of the sin. But they also understood that God had kept for the man an immense love. Jesus, Son of God, has come among us. It became a man, taking all our human condition, including the death, safe the sin. His whole life was a struggle against the pain and his delivered his last fight on the cross. He died, victim of the hatred, but in his heart, he had conquered the pain. The evening of his death, his body was put in a tomb, dug in the rock, with a large round stone that was rolled to close the entry. But the third day, when faithful women came to perfect the embalming, they found the stone rolled. The tomb was empty.

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Jesus was resuscitated the morning of Easter. He got out from his tomb, alive. This event, the greatest from all the religious history of the humanity, and that is the principal even of the Christianity, is still a mystery for us. Nobody has been able to assist the resurrection of the Christ, thus, this historical event escapes from all control, because it is the passage of our existence in this world, to that of another world that escapes us. But we know that many times, Jesus has been seen alive after his death. It did not concern appearances.

He was suddenly there, in the

middle of his companions and his friends. It was well Him. They could speak with him, touch him, eat with him. He was other, He belonged to a new world, inaccessible; but He gave however evidences that he was really Him, without what his companions and all his disciples would have been able to believe that they were the toy of an illusion. Paul ,The apostle, noticed to the first Christians:

" If Christ is not

resuscitated, your faith is vain, you are again in your sins, and consequently also these that are dead in Christ are lost. But now, Christ is resuscitated dead, all will live again in Christ ". Our vision of the death is all exalted of light. We can not be sad as those who believe that all ends to the tomb. Elsewhere ourselves, from now, if we are united to Jesus, we live a life that is beyond the death and that will resuscitate us.

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That is hidden in us, but our future resurrection is already present, doing. Men knew it confusingly that they were born to be greater than the death. With Jesus Christ, it is henceforth a certainty. "Who believes in me will live, eventhough he was dead , and those who live and believe in me will never die" . Jesus told again: " I am the Resurrection and the Life ". We can not separate both things: we will live and we will be resuscitated as him in our body. Our human being forms a whole.

Indeed, a separated soul of his

body no longer is a human being. The body is linked to all what has been our life;

it will participate it also in the new life in God.

It is vain to try to understand the way of this resurrection of our body, because that exceeds us. How, we sometimes ask, our body reduced in ash, dispersed in entrails of the earth, absorbed by others person lived or dissolves in the bottom of oceans, could take form and life? Already the first Christians asked the question and the apostle Paul replied them that they did not have to stay on these material things. The cob of wheat is really the same thing that the seed sown in earth, and however, what difference of state when the seed has become the cob of wheat. Here we see a wonderfull butterfly whose wings gleam under fires of the sun and that takes the nectar of flowers. What difference with the

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caterpillar that it was a few months ago. And it is nevertheless the same creature. Mystery of the nature and that allows and make us some idea, well poor and well imperfect of elsewhere. Trying to penetrate more in this mystery would serve to nothing. We will have many other surprises in the future world. We believe to the future life and to the resurrection on the Word of the Christ. This resurrection of our body that is promised

is an announcement of the

transfiguration of whole the universe. No human body can be separated from the cosmos, it means from the whole universe where we have our roots, where we live, the whole world: With its galaxies of stars Its oceans and its shores With flowers and its trees its birds and its wild animals and servants as also with all realizations of the intelligence, constructions and machines, technical and scientific discoveries.

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As the body of the Christ has belonged to this creation, there has rooted, has lived there and that it has been glorified, wee can tell that the

whole

world

is

associated

to

Him

and

is

called

also

to

a

transfiguration. The Christian faith opens us nice perspectives otherwise and enjoy that so alumni according to whether all are called to sink in the nothingness. This is why the Christian does not sulk to the world, it works to his success, policyholder that to the return of the Christ and at the end of the history, this world will participate in the glorification of son of God. Therefore, it is vain to try to understand the mystery of the life of beyond.

We are carried to imagine a sort of hell, with books of accounts,

and detailed debts, a crucible of purifier fire. And you want to see

earth manners

in a world that no longer

has our time dimensions and space and that escapes us. We know that it is necessary to be deserving God, to access to Him . That our dead have sinned as all the living people.

That God is The

Justice and that He is also goodness, mercy and forgiveness. Holy books tell it well:

"Better costs to fall between hands of God

that between hands of men" . The poet Marie Noel told to God: " You, in your black infinity, I have no fear. I have made my nest in the hollow of your obscure hand. Ha, I really laugh to be dead ".

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Someone notices a day this inscription on a tomb:

"I am asleep

with the sun" . He wondered a long time about what this dead people wanted to say with this cryptic sentence.

Then by reflecting, he understood that

nobody cries when the sun asleep . Why? Because we know that it will rise the following day and will shine again on the earth. Each lay down of sun is followed by a dawn. Being asleep in the death with the Christ, also named "the Light of the world" , and you will be sure that you are with Him, from the dawn of this following day that sings forever. When our mortal being will have coated the immortality, then will be accomplished the holy book Word:

" O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your spur?

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============================================================ "I do not know the day, neither the hour But I know that it is necessary that I die. Where You will want, when You will want O Lord, as You will want, Provided that this is in Your arms. " ============================================================

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