Have you ever lain back in a hammock and said, “Aah! This is the life”? As if anything besides relaxation is not life. Yet life encompasses everything, even suffering and death. In Evolution Toward Personhood, Ilia Delio, OSF writes: “The gospel message is about life. Anything else…misses the vision of God, who is Life itself.” In the Gospels we see Jesus experiencing life in its entirety. His life was perfect virtue, yet Scripture says he became sin (2 Cor. 5:21). I could never imagine Jesus saying in his agony in the garden and subsequent imprisonment, “This is the life.” Yet he lived that night with his whole being. At every moment of his days on earth, death, and resurrection Jesus was the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
As followers of Christ, we live and move and have our being in him. These weeks of the pandemic have been difficult, sad, frustrating. Yet they are the life we have been given. We begin a new month, and some may count the days since they were employed or had seen their families or had a chance to rest from long shifts in hospitals. Each day has been and will be another day of life. How will we live each day of November?
Let’s include in our daily routines some reading of the Gospels to find the message of Life and the vision of God who is Life itself.
