Second and last in series

The existentialist atheistic philosopher Albert Camus said that he did not want to die, that he did not want anyone whom he loved to die but that he knew that he would die and that everyone he loved would die. Camus concluded that this made human life absurd. If death is the final end, then I agree completely with Camus. If there is no life beyond the grave, if this terrestrial existence is all that there is, then human existence is absurd.

In one of his essays titled “The Myth of Sisyphus,” Camus pictures Sisyphus being punished by the gods. They think that they have come up with a perfect torture. Sisyphus is condemned to push a rock up a hill, then watch it roll down. He is condemned to do this for all eternity. What could be more frustrating, futile or meaningless?

Yet Camus argued that in a meaningless world we can invent our own meaning and live fruitful lives. I disagree completely. If reality is meaningless and absurd, then I think Sisyphus should have lain down and allowed the rock to roll over him! I believe that for human existence to make some kind of sense, there must be some continuation of life and love beyond the grave. If there is no life beyond the grave, then death wins and love loses.

In his book “The Word In and Out of Season: Homilies for Major Feasts, Christmas, Easter, Weddings and Funerals” (Paulist Press) theologian Richard Viladesau offers some important insights into the mystery of the resurrection of Jesus and our resurrection. After commenting that the resurrection of Jesus validates His mission, Father Viladesau writes the following:

“It means furthermore that our lives are validated insofar as we live by the same convictions and relationships that animated Jesus. The resurrection of Jesus – of the one who lived and died in this way – tells us that spirit triumphs and becomes eternal, not by a flight into a pure ‘spiritual’ world, but by involvement in the realm of matter. Religion, for the believer in the resurrection, cannot be merely an affair of the mind or heart, anticipating liberation in an ethereal beyond; it must be commitment to the human reality of this world, particularly in its failures and in its need. It is exactly in the transformation of the world by self-giving love – even to death – that eternal life becomes possible and real.”

I believe deeply that the world can be transformed by self-giving love and that this self-giving love conquers even death. This is what has happened through Jesus’ offering of Himself in love. Part of the meaning of the resurrection of Jesus is that death loses and love wins.

Father Viladesau refers to a scene in Dostoevsky’s classic novel “The Brothers Karamazov” in order to emphasize the power of love in the face of death. In that great artistic masterpiece, a character says that if you wish to find eternal life believable, you must live your life right now in self-forgetting love. The reality of eternal life will become clearer to us if we live lives of self-forgetting love. Indeed if we live our lives in self-forgetting love not only will the reality of eternal life become clearer to us but we will begin to experience something of eternal life here on earth. We will begin to share here on earth in God’s life.

If someone were to ask me what love can not accomplish, I don’t think I could offer an answer. I think that the power of love is so great that I know I cannot put any limits to it. Love has accomplished mini-miracles in the lives of many. In the life and death of Jesus, love has conquered death. I believe that this conquest of death can happen in our life and death also if we live and die committed to Christ.
In one of his plays, the existentialist personalist philosopher Gabriel Marcel, whose philosophy I like very much, has one character say to another, “When I love you, I discover that you will live forever.”

The idea that loving someone reveals to you that the person you love will live forever appeals to me a great deal. Why is it at every wake for a deceased the mourners ask the same question: “Why did my mother die? Why did my baby die? Why did my spouse die?”

The reason is that love seems as though it should last forever but death seems to indicate that love does not last forever. The resurrection of Jesus reveals that the experience of love is valid, that love can last forever. The promise of eternity that love suggests is validated by Jesus’ conquest of death.