Field Trip Reflection

Kaugnay sa tripping naming sa sementeryo isinulat ko ito kagabi.

To have a deeper understanding of eschatology we cannot ignore the reality of our ‘individual eschatology’ that is the death of every human being, our loved ones, our friends and including our own deaths. In our modern and secular society, people often avoid thinking death seriously because death is always associated with pain, distortion of our dreams and goals in life. We live in a society where the fulfillment of our modern life is measured by what we have: money, beauty, youthfulness, power, popularity, fast cars, etc. As a consequence of our ‘culture of having’ society we sometimes exaggerate death to such extent that it becomes an object of fear and dread. In perspective, a ‘culture of having’ or ‘death denying’ culture is somehow equal to a ‘life denying’ culture for both ignore the possibility of the self’s relation to God.

Death is always associated with permanent separation that we dare not hope to happen between ourselves and our loved ones. This is certainly explains what St. Paul calls “the sting of death.”[1] But no matter how hard we try to avoid the thought of death we are aware that sooner or later each of us will encounter death. Because death is the final universal phenomenon: no matter how wealthy, influential, powerful, beautiful, healthy and holy we are, we all must die. However, others welcome the coming of death peacefully as death can end up people’s intense suffering in the world.[2] Still, others see death as something that denies our opportunity for further accomplishment in life and which terminates the only life we know.[3] Death in our general understanding, affects not just the physical body rather the whole reality of the person, body and soul. Death is more than a clinical or biological annihilation of the human being; it comprises the individuality of the human person as both physical and spiritual being.

Nonetheless, death is always a mystery and can be the most anguishing question we can encounter: “It is in the face of death that the riddle of human existence becomes most acute.”[4] Death according to Christian faith is not only mysterious but it has a far deepest meaning as well especially in our journey of life on earth with God, and with one another. The mystery of death makes us aware of our human fragility and weakness before our God. The mystery of death makes us aware that without God we are unable to prolong our lives forever. For it is only by having this attitude of humility that one will come to accept the awesome, transcendent and unknown dimension of death.[5] Moreover, humility raises the question of the mystery of God: “God’s creativity, silence, otherness and transcendence.”[6]

We find in the Bible the description of death as the consequence of sin,[7] and as the result of humanity’s rejection to the love of God.[8] Death is not the end of everything for we human beings are “created by God for a happy goal beyond the reach of the miseries of this earthly life.”[9] In a word, the mystery of death radically opens up the existence of something that is beyond our human understanding; it is in and through death that we can enter into the Kingdom of God and live eternally. So we can only make sense of death according to our faith in Jesus Christ who gained victory over death and rose again to life.[10] Therefore, dying with Christ in the hope of resurrection, “means to surrender one’s life, with all its accomplishments and failures, dreams and disappointments, into the hands of God, who alone, can raise it up into everlasting fullness.”[11] And, thus, although death may appear mysterious as it is, in light of Christian faith, death is a free gift which offers us the possibility of being united with Triune God and with our loved ones who have already died, and have already attained to true life with God.[12]


[1] 1 Cor 15:56
[2]Otto Hentz S.J., The Hope of the Christian, (Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1997) 49.
[3] ibid. Otto
[4] GS 18
[5] Dermot A. Lane Keeping Hope Alive: Stirring in Christian Theology, (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1996) 54.
[6] ibid. Lane 54
[7] St. Paul states several times that death is a result of sin. In his letter to the Romans he writes, “Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned” (Rom 6:23).
[8] cf. Wisdom 1:13; 2:24
[9] Gaudium et Spes 18
[10] Cf. 1 Cor 15:56 f
[11] Sachs p. 80.
[12] Gaudium et Spes 18.