A Good Friday meditation on death and knowing the Lord

We found "Blessed Thomas the Skeleton Guy" underneath the alter of a small countryside church we stumbled into on a pilgrimage to Italy in 2011.

One morning, a few months ago, I came to the disturbing conclusion that I don't know Jesus.

Sure, I know quite a bit about Him. I know that He was born of a virgin, performed miracles, forgave sins, was crucified, died and rose again. I know that He ascended to the Right Hand of the Father in Heaven. I know what the Catechism says about Him. I know His words in sacred scripture. I know how He wants me to live.

But I realized I didn't actually know Jesus. I didn't have a relationship with Him.

And this was a problem. As the Lord told Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, "They don't know me so they don't want me."

So...I'm an idolater.
But surely I want Jesus, right? A quick inventory of my what occupies my thoughts and desires led me to another uncomfortable answer.

Whereas the saints were constantly consumed with thoughts of God, I spend my time thinking about...the Packers...buffalo wings...my plans for the weekend. I'm so easily distracted by these idols I've made that by the time I make it 30 seconds into the Rosary I find myself contemplating the sorrowful mystery of the Brewers pitching staff or the glorious mystery of wondering what's for dinner tonight.

Not good. While God gives us the pleasures of life as a foretaste of life eternal in the Kingdom, I'd made those temporal gifts into ends in themselves. And so I dedicated my prayer life this Lent to asking the Lord for the grace to place Him first and to seek and desire Him with all my heart.

To dust we will return
This Lenten journey led me to the bedside of my dying grandfather. While other family members tended to logistical matters that needed to be addressed, I had an opportunity spend some time alone with my grandfather. Making my best effort to offer a corporal work of mercy, I sat in the silence and darkness and offered a Divine Mercy Chaplet for him. 

As I prayed, I contemplated how he was now being stripped of everything he'd worked for and everything he'd built. How he would never again set foot in his home of the last six decades, and how the fruits of his labor over so many years would soon be sold off, thrown away or distributed to loved ones.

All he had left--and more importantly, all he could take with him upon his departure--was Christ.

My grandfather's funeral, which followed a long decline that began shortly after his 93rd birthday, wasn't the only funeral I attended this Lent. The other, entirely unforeseen and unexpected, was for a 32-year-old mother in the prime of her life. But while these deaths were about as different as one can imagine, the common thread is that both served as unsettling reminders of the Ash Wednesday exhortation "Remember, you are dust, and to dust you will return."

Finding Christ
The idols I had made could no longer obscure the certainty that--sooner or later- my rotting flesh will become food for worms.

Faced with this grim reality, how could I behold Christ my Redeemer with anything other than passionate love and indescribable gratitude? Not only is He my only hope for not spending eternity decomposing, but He ransomed me at the cost of His own life and in spite of my great sin.

And that's how, in the silent stillness of my dying grandfather's nursing home room, I met Jesus Christ.

Like Elijah, I didn't meet Him in the earthquake, the wind or the fire. I met Him in each shallow breath of the man at whose bedside I kept vigil.

In my grandfather's suffering, I met Christ at the Cross and I prayed that my grandfather's suffering might be united to that same Cross for his merit. I prayed that my dad's pain in losing his dad might be united to that Cross for his sanctification. And I prayed that the significance of the moment would not fade in my mind, that I, too, would remain faithful so as to spend eternity praising God in Heaven with my loved ones.

Let's keep each other in mutual prayer that we might receive the grace to know the Lord and to love Him with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind and with all our strength.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

Awake, my soul;

Awake, my soul;

You were meant to meet your maker!