I do not want to die. Who does? I am not a religious poster I am a person, and I have doubt in just about everything. No one lives a day of his or her life without a moment of torturous doubt. So yes, I do not want to die, but that does not make me a sinner. Our own savior did not desire to taste death. Jesus Christ prays earnestly and sweats blood while he awaits his own death, “ Father if you are willing, take this cup away from me. Nevertheless, let your will be done, not mine,” Luke 22:42-43. Of course His death is a million times a million harder than our deaths could ever be, and obviously this was a time of anxiety for Jesus not a celebration. We humans do not want or enjoy change even more do we hate lose and separation. Jesus who shared in our humanity also felt the pain and lose caused by death. When Jesus asked where they had put Laruzus they said, “ ‘Lord, come and see,’ and Jesus wept; the Jews said, ‘See how much he loved him!’” Our lord was sorrowful at the sight of the death of one of his loved ones. If Jesus felt this way then I think sorrow over death does not show a lack of faith.

Now with all this doubt there is one thing I try to “hold on to” and that is a faith in the after life, heaven, hell, and purgatory. I try to remember Jesus’s promise to His followers. “I am the resurrection. If anyone believes in me, even though he dies he will live, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die,” Jesus promises his servant Martha, John 11:25-27. The fulfillment of this promise seems to me the only thing worth putting faith and time into. How do I fulfill this promise? By doing as He instructed: believing in Him and thus doing His will. Indeed, as Saint Paul says to the Corinthians, without this promise of a resurrection the very Christian faith is a complete, odious and pitiful scam! “How can some of you be saying that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, Christ himself cannot have been raised and if Christ has not been raised then our preaching is useless and your believing it is useless. Indeed, we are shown up as witness who have committed perjury before God…” 1 Cor 15: 12-16.
Basically Paul seems to say that without the resurrection the Christian religion is a lie and there certainly would be no good news worth spreading. Nonetheless I feel more like weeping when I hear about death than I do celebrating.