Death?
Stanley L. Jaki.
Death is a reality with the longest shadow. Ancient pagan man either
resigned to his inability to escape the reach of that shadow or tried
to put up a brave front to it. Hopes of a life beyond death remained
very vague and unconvincing.
During much of the Old Testament the problem of death remained a
question not to be confronted. Only within the message delivered
by Jesus was death spoken as the beginning of a life never to be
terminated.
Faith in life beyond death could then inspire fearless and often joyful
approaches to most cruel form of death, as shown in accounts about the
last hours of martyrs and saints.
Modern post-Christian grapplings with death are so many vain flights
from death, even though they show the traces of Christian faith in
future life.Unfortunately, the treatments of death i the "new" theology
is too often lost in convoluted phraseology, which conveys little
about the plain Christian assurance that death is merely the portal
beyond which great personal realities--Jesus, Mary, and Jesus-- beckon
to the dying.