Before I Die - Part I
Mark S. Roberti, Director of Stewardship
Heartland Parishes of Ellis County

I have long wondered, before I die, will I have life figured out? Certainly, my faith has taken me a long way in my attempt to understand God’s providence, the reason things happen as they do. But, does one only get so far in understanding God’s will? Though we journey on, does it get to a point when we stop making any significant distance? When I’m on my death bed, on the day before the day when I meet my Maker, will I understand God’s ways any better than I do now?

I truly value what our Catholic faith has taught me about my purpose. I don’t think it can be explained any more simply or clearly than the Old Baltimore Catechism: "To know, love, and serve God in this life and to live with him forever in the next." That has helped me immensely in my walk and in understanding why I need to head my life in the direction of God and His will.

Yet, there is still -- in my view -- a gaping chasm between knowing where I need to head my life and understanding why God sends me, or allows me, down certain paths. Another question I have long had is, why He puts so many obstacles in my way in those times I am trying to serve Him? (As opposed to those time when I am trying to serve myself through Him).

It was Socrates, I think, who said, "An unexamined life, is not worth living." Much to my delight the deacon formation program assigned the seven diocesan candidates a book on patristics, (i.e. the Church fathers) called Learning Theology with the Church Fathers by Christopher A. Hall, InterVarsity Press. St. John Chrysostom has come to my rescue! He has examined this question in a way in which I do not have the capacity to do so. Thank God for the saints, humankind’s "Hall of Fame." With the help of St. John Chrysostom, I think, now, I can rest in peace. I hope this brief article will help you too.

Divine love is often painful love. That’s because the disease love is acting to heal (sin) can only be conquered by suffering love. We cannot understand this love in the snapshot of the moment in which we presently exist, but only through the lenses of eternity and only through suffering. Jesus takes flesh, suffers and dies, and rises again for us. That is likewise our path to eternity.

We are on a pilgrimage. Obstacles and suffering are the path by which we journey. Every path we choose to journey, or choose to avoid, entails an element of suffering. God asks us to do nothing that he would not do himself. Jesus proved that.

We are, individually and collectively, Israel crossing the desert. Our destination is the Promised Land, the Land of Milk and Honey. Not to continue the pilgrimage to reach the other side, to choose to live our lives in the desert when the destination is in reach, should be abhorrent to us. We, like ancient Israel, must interpret our present situation in light of God’s ultimate goal for human history. Yet God’s ultimate plan for us is something we cannot see.

Understanding our lives from the prisms of just the present and the past, does not allow us to understand life through the most important prism, the future. It is the future that is the destination which God has prepared for us in which we are richly rewarded for our efforts (and, even importantly, simply because we are His sons and daughters). But we cannot see God’s grand plan through the prism of the future since we are not yet there.

"The true life and the trustworthy and unchanging realities await us in the future. For the circumstances and events of the present life have the character of a journey, but the realities of the future life await us in our true homeland." Chrysostom asks, " If this is indeed true, if the present life is a journey, if God’s goal for us reaches fulfillment in a life we have yet to experience, [then] what are the lessons God is trying to teach us now?"

This is a question we can ask ourselves whether one is twenty, fifty, or eighty, a track star, an arthritic, or in a wheelchair because our future, understood in the light of eternity, is just as hopeful.

"Pilgrims on a journey will view and interpret the terrain differently than settlers who are striving to set up a permanent residence. Attitudes toward trials, priorities, possessions, and even time will all be affected accordingly." Who would build a beautify, luxurious, home in the desert, Chrysostom asks if his goal was to get to the other side of the desert? What is the benefit of that? It is folly, sheer foolishness.

He states, "But as to us...let us not be seeking out for splendid houses; for we are on our pilgrimage, not at home; so that if there be any that knows that the present life is a sort of journey, and expedition, and, as one might say, it is what they call an entrenched camp, he will not be seeking for splendid buildings. For who, tell me, be he ever so rich, would choose to build a splendid house in an encampment?... The present life is nothing more than a march and an encampment."

His advice, advice that is ever so pertinent in our own day and age, "travel light." He also explains that the many trials God put in our path will remain inexplicable if we ignore or misunderstand God’s purpose in allowing trials.

No, I will not have life figured out by the time I die. But, God willing, I truly will be much further up the part. The path I choose is stewardship. I plan to stay on that path. It’s taken me a long way already. I’ve even found joy in the suffering. Who would have expected that?