“…we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out” (1 Timothy 6:7)

Death severs the soul not merely from the body, but from everything else that is of this world.  For when we die we take with us only the character which we have been fashioning for ourselves.  All else is left behind – house and garden, furniture and personal effects, food and clothes, worldly comforts and amusements; and we shall find ourselves in an entirely different world in which the values, to which we have been accustomed here, are turned upside down.  What things here are first in the world’s esteem – money, pleasures, position – these are the last. And those that here are last – forgetfulness of self and devotion to God – are first.

Death, by ushering the soul into the eternal and permanent world, brings it for the first time inescapably face to face with reality and so reveals the unreality of this world.  All we see around us now is passing away before our own eyes.  The moth devours, the rust corrodes, the beautiful foliage of summer rots under our feet: change and decay are on every side.  And we and our generation are subject to the same inexorable process.  “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass.  The grass withers, and the flower falls…” (NRSV, 1 Peter 1:24), but God remains ever the same and his years will never end (Hebrews 1:12).

In the next life all is centred on God not, as in this life, on the things he has made.  One day, by the brutal logic of death, this life, which we now think is so substantial, will appear in retrospect like a dream, and the next which now seems so shadowy, will be seen to be the true reality.  Then we shall realise that the things which are seen are temporal but the things which are not seen are eternal; and we shall be amazed that we should ever have imagined it otherwise.

In the next life many of the things for which here people scheme and strive, are valueless.  In the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, when the one was in torment and the other at peace, what use would either of them have had for purple robes, fine linen, the daily banquet?  Such things would have been as valueless to them as bars of gold to someone on a desert island.

So in the next world, where God is seen with the blessed Saints and angels, only Christlike qualities of soul will count: purity of heart which enables one to have the bliss of seeing him, and an intense love of goodness, truth and beauty which makes seeing God an unimaginable joy.  What a splendid guess the pagan Greek poet made over 400 years before the birth of Christ: “Who knows if this life be not death, and death the real life?” (1)

What a terrible shock it must be for a soul, on passing from this life, to find that it had been living and spending its energies for things which, in spite of all that they seemed at the time, were in fact nothing.  Each attachment and strong affection for worldly possessions and pursuits holds the soul down like an invisible cable, and prevents it from soaring to God.

There is many a man and woman who, instead of putting their trust in God, bolster up their confidence in themselves before their fellow human beings by relying instead on expensive clothes or on their ability to buy luxurious amusements.  How pitiful their condition will be when death with one swift blow knocks away these props by which they have been supported.  Truly did St Thomas à Kempis write, “O how great a confidence shall he have when dying, whom no affection for any earthly thing detaineth in the world!” (2)

Not without reason does our Blessed Lord stress the necessity for his followers to be inwardly detached from the world, “…one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions” (NRSV, Luke 12:15), and we remember also his saying about laying up treasure, not in earth, but in Heaven, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (NRSV, Luke 12:34).  And we recall the Parable of the Rich Fool, who, in his excitement at an exceptional harvest, settled down to planning new and larger barns, and looked ahead to a long and luxurious retirement.  “But God said to him, ‘You fool!  This very night your life is being demanded of you’ “ (NRSV, Luke 12:20).  Or again, ”You cannot serve God and wealth” (NRSV, Luke 16:13), which St John echoes saying, “Do not love the world or the things in the world.  The love of the Father is not in those who love the world; for all that is in the world – the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches – comes not from the Father but from the world” (NRSV, 1 John 2:15-16).

“…we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out” (1 Timothy 6:7).  Let us then shed our affection for worldly things now so that we may enter the next life unencumbered by their futile load.  For we shall never reach the heights of eternity except by travelling light.

References

1. Quoted in Langridge Retreats for priests.

2. Thomas à Kempis The imitation of Christ, Book 3, chapter 53, para 2.  Published in 1933.  London: Burns Oates and Washbourne Ltd.