WE BELIEVE IN THE GOD OF LIFE
Our two great enemies in life are death and illness. Suffering and death strike all: strong and weak, poor and rich, young and old, good and bad alike.
There comes a time when even the most advanced medical treatment has to give up. People ask: why should it be so? Where does death come from? What has God to do with it? On what side does God stand in our constant struggle against suffering and death?
The Bible, in the "book of wisdom"(2,23-24), gives us the answer: death is not of God's making."God created man incorruptible, and to the image of his own likeness He made him. But by the envy of the devil, death came into the world". Death and suffering, then, have been brought in by the "devil" the great enemy of God and of human being.
Are we convinced that God is "pro-life". That God is enemy of suffering and death?
Life and healing. These are two basic things that man strive to achieve in this world. This desire for live and healing is but a manifestation of man's ultimate desire: salvation an eternal life. In a sense bodily death seems like the normal end of life, but it is "the wage of sin"(Romans 6,23). Even though man's nature is mortal, God had destined him not to die. Death was therefore contrary to the plans of God, and entered the world as a consequence of sin.
The Christian vision of death receives a positive meaning: it is the end of man's earthly pilgrimage. When the single course of our earthly life is completed, we shall not return to other earthly lives. There is no "reincarnation" after death. Our lives are measured by time, in the course of which we change, grow old and die. Remembering our mortality helps us realize that we have only a limited time in which to bring our lives to fulfillment. In death our body returns to earth, but we returns to God, awaiting the reunion with our glorified body. God, in his almighty power will definitively grant unending life to our body by reuniting it to our spirit, through the power of Jesus' resurrection.
We believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.
Fr.Cipriano Bontacchio