Boldly facing life’s decline

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

WE may be at the moment enjoying life because we are still young, healthy, vibrant and, yes, beautiful and handsome. But never forget that there will come a time when all these qualities start to ebb away, and we start losing things—our memory, our hair and teeth, our hearing, our sense of direction, etc. We can have cognitive decline, and then we lose our life itself!

We have to be ready for this eventuality which should not be a cause of great concern. In fact, instead of worrying and fearing, we can manage, if we have the proper attitude, to be happy about it. We would even be most welcoming of it, just like looking forward to a beautiful sunset that can move us to wax poetic and even romantic.

The darkness of the night that the sunset precedes will never strike as a terror to us. Again, if we have the proper attitude, such darkness can only mean some kind of liberation, of attaining a deserved rest in the definitive home meant for us after going through the drama of the day. We would have the happy sensation that we have finally settled down.

And the secret can only be one, which actually can be accessible to everyone. It’s a matter of being guided by our faith that tells us that our life’s decline, especially if marked by a lot of suffering, can and should channel the most expressive form of love that Christ showed us and continues to show us by offering his life on the cross for all our sins.

It is this kind of love that turns everything beautiful and meaningful, even if they are considered ugly in human terms. It is this kind of love that can defy the usual aging process all of us are subject to. We unavoidably will get old, but that state would only affect us physically and temporally. Spiritually, we can manage to stay young, serene, cheerful and hopeful. We can remain young for all eternity.

This love is given to us freely and abundantly. If Christ commands it of us, it is because he, in the first place, enables us to have and to live that kind of love. In fact, he will do it with us and for us. That’s the only way we can love the way he loves us, as he commanded us to do. (cfr. Jn 13,34)

Make no mistake about it. This love can only be done in and with Christ, since while it is a human love, it is also, first of all, a divine, supernatural love. We cannot love that way simply relying on our own powers. We need the power of Christ to do so.

With this love, we can boldly face our life’s decline. We would just be sport about it, knowing how to suffer the unavoidable weakening and losses that we are going to experience. We would know how to let go of our earthly life so we can enter into our definitive life with God in heaven. And Christ not only teaches us how to do this letting go thing. He does it with us. We won’t be doing it by our lonesome, to be sure.

We need to understand this truth of our faith very well and help in spreading it around, to free many of us from unnecessary fears and worries about getting old, about facing life’s decline!

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com