Welcome to our daily rosary meditation. Let's begin in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen. Let's call to mind all those we've promised to pray for.

The middle of Lent is a good time to think about the reality of what the church calls the last things.

Death, our particular judgment, purgatory, hell, the end of the world, the last judgment, and the new heavens and the new earth.

So Teresa, spring is about ready to come, so let's reflect on death.

This life is a preparation for the next one and there's a certain sense in which you can tell how well

you're doing based on your attitude to death. If your hope is set on union with God, well, then death will be the fulfillment of your hopes.

But if your hopes are set on things of this world, well, then death means the end of those things, in which case death will be the terrible

disappointment of all your hopes. John of the Cross writes,

The soul does not fear death when she loves, rather she desires it. Yet sinners are

always fearful of death. They foresee that death will take everything away and bring them all evils.

Since sinners love the life of this world intensely

and have very little love for that of the other world.

They have an intense therefore fear of death,

but the soul that loves God lives more in the next life than in this and takes little

account of this temporal life. So ultimately death is not a bad thing. In fact, because of what Christ has done,

Christian death is a very positive

St. Paul said, for to me to live is Christ and to die is gain.

And the great Teresa wrote,

I want to see God, and in order to see Him I must die.

And finally, the little Torres wrote, I am not dying. I am entering life. I love this passage from the great classic The imitation of Christ where we read

Every action of yours every thought should be those of one who expects to die before the day is out.

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