If your life is Christ, then your death will be only more of Christ, forever. If your life is only Christlessness, then your death will be only more Christlessness, forever. That's not fundamentalism, that's the law of non-contradiction.
Interpretation
Our life's essence shapes our experience of death, reflecting either a connection to Christ or a void in that relationship.
This quote by Peter Kreeft emphasizes the idea that the way one lives their life fundamentally determines their experience of death. If one's life is centered around Christ, it promises a continuation of that relationship in death; conversely, a life devoid of Christ leads to a disconnection that persists even after death. This creates a dichotomy between those who find hope and purpose in faith and those who do not, echoing the philosophical principle of non-contradiction where opposing truths cannot coexist.
In practice
This quote can be used in a sermon to illustrate the importance of living a life centered on faith.
Trusting God's grace means trusting God's love for us rather than our love for God. [...] Therefore our prayers should consist mainly of rousing our awareness of God's love for us rather than trying to rouse God's awareness of our love for him, like the priests of Baal on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:26-29).
Remembering the facts of death and Heaven gives us an even more pressing reason to learn to pray: We do not have an infinite amount of time. We are one day nearer Home today than we ever were before. I guarantee you that after you die you will not say 'I spent too much time praying; I wish I had watched more TV instead.'
Like apes, we breed, sleep, and die. Yet like God we say, "I am." We are ontological oxymorons.
The modern mind always tends to reduce the greater to the lesser rather than seeing the lesser as reflecting the greater.
Our soul, like Mary's body, is to receive God Himself if only we, like her, believe, consent and receive; if only we speak her truly magic word fiat, "let it be." It is the creative word, the word God used to create the universe.
Protestants believe that the sacraments are like ladders that God gave to us by which we can climb up to Him. Catholics believe that they are like ladders that God gave to Himself by which He climbs down to us.
We can see well into the past; we can guess shrewdly into the future, but that which is rolled up and muffled in impenetrable folds is today.
We are a nation that has a government-not the other way around. And that makes us special among the nations of the earth.
Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on.
The five stages - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance - are a part of the framework that makes up our learning to live with the one we lost. They are tools to help us frame and identify what we may be feeling. But they are not stops on some linear timeline in grief.
"I used to think the world was broken down by tribes," I said. "By black and white. By Indian and white. But I know that isn't true. The world is only broken into two tribes: The people who are assholes and the people who are not."
Auschwitz stands as a tragic reminder of the terrible potential man has for violence and inhumanity.
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