The term horizon is often defined as where the earth and sky meet. This is actually an apparent horizon or sensible horizon because we see an apparent plane based on our observation point. If we are able to broaden our viewpoint and look beyond our present location of standing on the earth, say from the space station, we could then experience a rational or celestial horizon: where the great circle of the celestial sphere whose plane passes through the center of the earth is parallel to the celestial horizon of a given position. Journeying deeper into space we could discuss event horizons, the boundaries marking the limits of black holes.
Though it would be fun to continue to delve deeper, don’t want to get lost in space, and so let us return to the earth and today’s Gospel where Jesus stated: “Pay attention to what I am telling you. The Son of Man is to be handed over to men” (Lk 9:44). Jesus echoes Isaiah 53:12 in which the suffering servant: “Bore the sins of many, and interceded for the transgressors.” What Jesus offers to us in this statement is the horizon of the cross, the place where heaven and earth, where the physical and the spiritual, where the finite and infinite meet.
Many of Jesus’ followers were and are still confounded by the cross. As Paul wrote to the Church at Corinth: “For Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor 22-23).
Paul echoes what Jesus was talking about – his imminent fate and our ultimate horizon – death. None of us will be able to avoid the final result of our mortality. Jesus taught both through his words and in his death that to be truly free, we need to be willing to lose our life to gain our freedom. We have to face our deepest fears and insecurities, let go of our attachments and disordered affections, and surrender our self-sufficiency and pride. We need to trust and follow our savior if we are to grow. Our life is not lived until we give it away, as Jesus did on the Cross.
The more willing we are to face the reality of our own death, the less likely we are to take the time we have for granted, and the better we can live our lives here and now. During our final four months together, JoAnn and I experienced God’s grace because we faced the reality that her time was near, we embraced the gift of the time we had left together this side of heaven, and through the prayers of so many, we experienced the infinite presence of the love of God in our midst.
There is so much we can experience and enjoy in this life, even though life is hard. If we only limit ourselves to that which we can experience with our physical senses alone, if we deny our own mortality, we limit ourselves. What makes us fully human, alive, and fulfilled is an embrace of both the physical and the spiritual, of both faith and reason, seeking the horizon where the finite and infinite meet, where earth and heaven come together. This approach opens up endless possibilities.
This union happens most perfectly in Jesus Christ, who is fully human and fully divine. Jesus helps us to experience the beauty of God’s creation and our relationships. This happens best when we are willing to enter with him into, instead of resist, the natural rhythm of life and death. We come to appreciate the truth of how fragile our lives really are and so will better appreciate the time we have been given.
Death is not a truth to run from but to embrace. And as we do, we will be less apt to take each other for granted and instead better love one another because we will not be on this side of heaven forever. We will also be able to slow down and rest more in the moments that God offers. Embracing moments of closeness with God, allowing ourselves to savor and rest there with him, we can experience foretastes of heaven now. We will better prepare ourselves for that time when Jesus will lead us into our own death so that we may rise with him and experience a new and infinite horizon.
Photo: Lead us, Lord, through this life into the next.
