Do You Want to Live Forever?

I can’t really say I think of myself as an immortal. Do you?

When you choose something – an action or a charity or a purchase, for example – do you choose with the awareness that you are choosing as an immortal being?

Life for Sale

Do you want to live forever? Well, you shouldn’t have to wait much longer. All sorts of people are working hard at this very moment to make that possible. Of course, some of your natural body parts may wear out over the years before they get the process perfected, but in the meantime, you can have really cool implants and assorted pieces incorporated into your body. These bits will be way better than the ones you were born with. Science will do much better than Nature.

After a while, we’ll all get used to it, just like we’re all getting used to wearing masks. Heck, maybe we can have x-ray vision and super strength, just like the cartoon characters in comic books. It all comes down to Science vs Nature and leave God out of it. We are children of the Enlightenment and we use science to find the truth for ourselves. We are the best the human race has ever been, evolution proves that, and we have the power to decide our own evolution from now on. Because science is very closely linked to technology, it is logical to use technology to evolve. This brings us back to the beginning – do you want to live forever?

Years ago there were quack salesmen who’d travel from town to town selling elixirs to cure every ailment. And there have been charlatans forever promising the secret of eternal youth. Now we’re being offered eternal life as something not completely human, only partly human. The sales pitch has changed with the times, but the con is the same. Bait and switch. The biggest con, the biggest lie of all is the lie telling people that their lives are going to end. We have eternal life already, right now. We are going to live forever. We are already immortal.

And the Truth Will Set You Free

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life (John 3:16).

That’s right, you and I and everyone else living who believes Jesus’s promises are going to live forever. We are eternal beings, body and soul and spirit. Some religions, even some Christian ones, believe that after this body dies it is eternally separated from the soul and spirit, but to us that is death. As Catholics, we know that after death our bodies will be glorified just as Jesus was after His resurrection. We will live with God physically and forever.

Who Can We Believe?

We need to let ourselves be bathed in the light of the Holy Spirit so that he may lead us into the Truth of God, who is the one Lord of our life. (Faith, On 5th May 2021 Pope Francis)

Christ gave us the Holy Spirit to be our guide, our teacher, and our companion. Through baptism and especially confirmation we have a strong presence of the Holy Spirit in us to help us understand and follow God’s teachings. Careful listening to the readings at mass over the weeks and years, especially if you go to weekday mass, will reveal more and more of God’s teaching. Remembering what you have heard throughout the day will reveal the many ways God’s Word is alive and active for you all the time.

The Mirror Never Lies

Let us ask ourselves whether we really have taken some steps to know Christ and the truth of faith better by reading and meditating on Sacred Scripture, by studying the Catechism, and by receiving the sacraments regularly. (Pope Francis)

You know exactly what you have been doing day after day – God knows much better. Goethe wrote, “We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves”. We convince ourselves to believe lies others tell as well as the lies we tell ourselves. Oh, call them excuses or reasons, but a rose is a rose and a lie is a lie. Sometimes we like to play childish games with God – not childlike, childish. Things like balancing evil against good, pretending that the good will cancel out the bad.

Of course, if you read your bible or listen attentively at mass you will know that God doesn’t necessarily calculate that way. In God’s mathematics, the evil you do can cancel out the good. (see Ezekiel 33.13) Instead of listening and paying attention to what God tells us, very plainly, we try to pretend that the rules we wish for are the real rules. Sort of like a student who thinks maybe only the correct answers are counted on a test – nice, but the teacher doesn’t think that way and counts the correct and the incorrect. And if too many are incorrect what happens? You went to school, I know you remember.

All, or Nothing at All

However, let us ask ourselves at the same time what steps we are taking to ensure that faith governs the whole of our existence. We are not Christian “part-time”, only at certain moments, in certain circumstances, in certain decisions; no one can be Christian in this way, we are Christian all the time! Totally! (Pope Francis)

Someday we hope to be living in a society of saints, forever. Right now, however, we are living in a school for scoundrels and it is a 24/7 sort of school. Just look at the advertisement on the side of the bus that goes past, or the posters or magazines. Things are so unbalanced that it is difficult to find what is true. Women are hypersexualized and told it makes them free and powerful. I remember seeing a poster for a film where people were all dressed in leather and fought with swords. All the men were fully covered, which makes sense if you are being attacked by swords and arrows, etc. There was one woman warrior (hooray! Power to women!) Oops, except she was dressed in what looked like an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny leather bikini. With a sword. Seriously?

The passing thing can never be the ultimate purpose of immortal beings (Frank Sheed, Communism and Man, p 139).

None of us is going to get any help from the society around us, not what’s outside and not from what we let into our homes through tv and so forth. It is a 24-hour jabber jabber jabber and sooner or later you get used to it. You almost don’t notice it anymore. Next time you go out, especially into a town or city, look carefully around you. Look at the ads and the people. Look at what is really being sold, not just the product you pay for, but the lifestyle being sold with it. It can be distressing, even frightening, especially if you have children.

So, What Are We To Do About It?

Truth has to be repeated constantly, because Error also is being preached all the time, and not just by a few, but by the multitude. In the Press and Encyclopaedias, in Schools and Universities, everywhere Error holds sway, feeling happy and comfortable in the knowledge of having Majority on its side (Johanne W. Goethe).

Here, plain and simple, is what we all need to do so that we join the Saints:

May Christ’s truth, which the Holy Spirit teaches us and gives to us, always and totally affect our daily life. Let us call on him more often so that he may guide us on the path of disciples of Christ. Let us call on him every day. I am making this suggestion to you: let us invoke the Holy Spirit every day, in this way the Holy Spirit will bring us close to Jesus Christ. (Pope Francis)