the bigger reality - life is eternal - 4th week lent friday

The book of wisdom describes to us the materialistic ways of the wicked person and how he maltreats and thinks ill of the righteous person.  Why?  Because the righteous person is so unlike him, because the righteous person censures his thoughts, and every time he sees the righteous he feels debased and condemned.  The book of wisdom says that the wicked person acts the way he does because he does not believe that holiness will have recompense and he does not believe that the innocent soul will be rewarded.  The wicked man thinks only of this life.  He does not believe that there is life beyond this life – holiness has no recompense, there is nothing, there is no reward for the innocent soul.

When the afterlife is no longer hoped for and even believed in; when the reward of heaven is no longer desired for nor even expected;  when the punishment of hell is no longer dreaded and even treated as passé, and when people believe that life is the only life we have now on earth, then things change. 

This lent it is important to focus our thoughts not just on the temporariness of human and earthly life which will eventually end in death, but also on the bigger reality that life is eternal and it is meant to be lived with God forever in heaven.  Not everything ends in death.  There is life after death, there is reward and punishment.