Life after Death

In the Wrath of Kahn, perhaps the greatest Star Trek film of the franchise, James T. Kirk (now Admiral Kirk) enters the new Enterprise for the first time. Kirk is greeted by Captain Spock and responds with a notable quip, "Yes, we've been through death and life together." This reference to the movie's opening scene of the Kobyashi Maru test has been for me a kergymatic inspiration of recent.

Is this not the primary kergyma of the Gospel? That each of us has in one way or another been through death and life together, in Christ.

Is this not our shared reality? We all have been thru life and death together, even a child knows this from the feelings of loss and abandonment. Such for a child is an experience of death. And the loving embrace or uplifting smile of a caregiver is an experience of life, even if just an instance or glimmer.

We need to acknowledge more often that our shared experiences of the Gospel is that "we have been through death and life together." For in Christ we have access to the New Eden. In Christ, we experience a rebirth from death, a true Genesis experience, not made of human innovation but made of divine salvation. Christ saves us from death, that is, He gifts us the freedom to live eternally. And here on Earth, we are graced with a taste or glimpse of that abundant life.

Going much deeper into my personal experience, I experienced the death of my first wife after 25 years together. Yet by God's grace, I was able to experience again the joy of life with my wife and her adopted son. Overwhelmed by God's love for me, I am experiencing the abundance of joy in a new way that I could never have imaged.

Life after death is a strange experience when you remain living in our fallen yet redeemed corporeal reality. I am alive after experiencing the death of my spouse. The death of a spouse is the closest one can experience his or her own death, if you believe and have lived a marriage in which the two become one, as I have.

I am no longer who I was, yet that part of me who does remain has been forever formed by who I was because of having been her husband. I became the man I am today because of her being in my life. Because she and I became one flesh. She more than any other person beside myself made me the man I am today. Furthermore, I am still influenced by her because I know she still lives, not just in the memories of those who knew her and loved her. She remains in my life because she is with God, and God is with me, and I in them. We are in communion.

So life after death is possible because of God and His grace that dwells within us and among us, bringing us together from death to life.