Life

Life. Life is something amazing, beautiful, so remarkable that it invigorates you. Life is the warm midnight air on summers eve. Life is the growing of vegetation on a spring day. Life is the winter wind atop of the world's highest peak. Life is the leaf, floating... Floating... Floating downward, its decent to the cold autumn ground. Life is everywhere. Life is in the rolling plains of the countryside, in the busy streets of the city, in the endless oceans, and even in the countless stars. Life is out there waiting for us to find it. Waiting for us to become inspired, for life is better than our wildest dreams. The midnight rides on a lonely road in New England, with the windows down and the wind blowing through my hair, invigorates me. It gives me life. It brings me closer to life so that I may see its secrets... Life. You must find life so that it can inspire and invigorate you, so you can discover its secrets and show them to the world. For life is beautiful, and must never be wasted. 

Jewish Mourning

 



The Jews believe that the day of death is of much greater importance than the day of birth. This is because the day of death for a person is the culminating moment for their mission in life. The Jews call the time when our soul leaves our body yetziat. They also believe that the soul does not leave this world until the burying. (I guess ghosts are just people who were never buried) Autopsy, embalming, displaying the body, and cremation all violate Jewish respect for the dignity of the human body.

The Burial of the body must occur as soon as possible to preserve the integrity of the human body. In Jewish belief when we rise from the dead our bodies will be made of the earth in which we were buried. The burial of the body is preceded by the Taharah and the Levayah. The Taharah is when the body is cleaned, groomed, and water is poured over it in a ritual. After this is done the body is dressed in special white clothes called tachrichim, which signifies purity and holiness. The Levayah is the procession of the body to its final resting place. Mourning between death and burial should be spent praying for the soul because it is stuck between two worlds.

After burial is the Shivah. The Shivah is a seven daylong mourning period for first-degree relatives of the deceased. The first-degree relatives gather in the home of the deceased and mourn their death. During this time period many of the relatives will wear keriahs. Shivah literally means seven and originated when Joseph mourned the death of his father, Jacob, for seven days. (Genesis 50: 1-14) The day of the funeral is the first day of Shivah. The seudat havra’ah is the first meal after the funeral and is usually supplied by neighbors and friends.

During Shivah the relatives cannot wash their body, shave, look in mirrors, have sexual relations, and study the Torah. The relatives must sit in low stools or on the floor to represent that grief has brought them down. Relatives do not return to work until Shivah has ended. Visitors are allowed and greatly welcomed to come to the house and share in the mourning for the deceased. They are to stay quiet unless conversation is started by one of the relatives, in which they should normally only talk about the deceased. Jewish visitors are supposed to bring food for the family out of respect. The end of Shivah signals the end of the traditional mourning period. I watched a Shivah in a show called Weeds.

A secular funeral consists of an explanation of the ceremony, poetry or prose readings, a tribute to the deceased, reflection, and a few words of farewell. Non-religious people can choose anyway of honoring the body. They can have the body cremated, buried, dropped in the ocean, put in space, cremated then thrown anywhere in the world, they can literally have anything legal done to their body because they have no religion, which means no restrictions, rules, or beliefs on death. Mourning for a person without a religion can take any shape or form because it does not matter, they have no religion. Mourning to those who have no religion can be very diverse. Those who do believe in afterlife might pray or think about the deceased while those who do not believe in the afterlife might do nothing. Most normally try to put a religious spin on the funeral because somewhere in their ancestry, someone was religious.
 

Pope Francis’s Homily at Easter Vigil Summary

            

Pope Francis starts off his homily by talking about how the disciples were with Jesus to the very end, and since they had shared so much with Jesus they were very stricken with grief. Pope Francis then goes on to talk about how the women had so much love for Jesus that they went to his tomb and found it empty. This was something new and unexpected in their lives, and situation like this arise in our everyday life, especially religious ones. They make us fearful and have to come out of our normal routine, and God is always surprising us with new things in our life. Some might be good and some might be bad, but there is always a reason for everything.

Pope Francis then says that we must embrace the newness that God gives us. We must never get too down on ourselves, we must always keep our head up and keep trooping because there are no situations God cannot change and no sin to severe for God to forgive. Pope Francis goes back to talking about the gospel and how the two angels told the women that Jesus had risen from the dead. Jesus’ death had now turned into an event, an event that would change these women’s lives forever. It would also change all of humankind forever.

Jesus no longer belongs to the past but is part of the present; he is the ever lasting “today” of God. The newness of God that was presented to the women, and to all of humanity, is that Jesus won a victory over death, sin, evil, and everything that degrades humanity. Pope Francis calls daily problems that wrap us up in bitterness and sadness the evils of today in which death lives. Pope Francis then goes on to tell us that we must trust in Jesus; let him enter our life because he is life. If we have kept Jesus at a distance now is the time to accept him as our friend, our savior, our God. We must have faith and trust in him because he is close to us at all times.

The women who met the angles responded to their message with fear. The angels told them to remember what Jesus had told them when he was still in Galilee. Remembering everything Jesus had done and said during their time with him gave the women the confidence and faith to bring the message of the angels to the rest of the apostles. For us remembering everything God has done in our lives will help us open our hearts to the future, we must always remember the things God has done for us. Pope Francis ended his homily by reminding us to “not look among the dead for the Living One.” 

 Pope Francis is doing a lot of risky things that are causing the Swiss Guard a lot of headaches. He is going out into the people and sharing the message of God, which can be quite risky because there are a lot of people that want the pope dead. Pope Francis is a very humble man and I believe that his humbleness can teach everyone around the world to really help the poor and live more simply. Pope Francis also stresses that we must work for peace in the world and he also supports women in the church. The Pope’s main mission is that we must come back to the church and urge other Catholics back too. This is an important mission because many people have moved away from church, especially young people.