When I was in graduate school studying to be a therapist, one assignment was to write what we would want to have in our obituary. Twenty-seven years later I remember that assignment. We had to choose an age to be, a cause of death, a list of accomplishments, who would mourn us, and what religious rites would be observed. That assignment really made me think.
How would you evaluate your life if you knew you would die very soon? Where would your regrets be? What would you see as good? How would you know if you had loved God well? One of the spiritual tasks of dying (and of the latter years of life) is to put your life in perspective—to look at the meaning of it, to come to terms with what you did not accomplish and pass on what you did accomplish, to make peace with yourself, with others, and with your God.
Moses is doing that in today’s Old Testament reading. Moses feels like an old friend to me. He has been a principal character in the daily scripture readings since July 14. God chose him to be the greatest prophet of the Old Testament. God talked to him face to face. God chose him to lead the Israelites for forty years.
Now Moses is 120 years old. As we marvel at his longevity, we forget he was 80 years old when he first approached Pharaoh to “let My people go.” We know little of those first 80 years beyond the story of Pharaoh’s daughter drawing him out of the river, his killing an Egyptian for beating an Israelite, and his marriage in Midian. His adventures began when he encountered God in the burning bush and gave himself up to God’s service.
St. Augustine was another who came to God later in his life. I wonder if Moses, as he reflected on his life, thought and felt what Augustine expressed so eloquently: “Late I loved thee, O Beauty so ancient and so new, late I loved thee….Thou didst touch me, and I burned for thy peace.” (Confessions, Book X, Chapter 27)
In today’s reading Moses shows how he loved God well. He acknowledged the real leader of the people had always been and would remain “the Lord, your God.” He passed the human torch to Joshua. He acknowledged he would die before the people would enter the Promised Land. “Be brave and steadfast,” he says to both Joshua and the people. Be brave, steadfast, and obey the Lord. Moses may have begun to seriously love and serve the Lord at age 80, but he did it well.
I was 40 years old when that professor asked me to write my obituary. That was perhaps the first time I seriously thought that some day my life on earth would end. Dr. Richard Johnson, who studies the spirituality of aging says, “The real mark of middle age is that instead of counting the days since you were born, you begin to count the days until you die.” I guess I entered middle age with that assignment.
In today’s Gospel Jesus highlights the opposite end of life. When the disciples asked Jesus who is greatest in God’s Kingdom, Jesus called a child over, “Unless you turn and become like children, you will NOT ENTER the Kingdom of heaven.” What did Jesus mean by “like children?” He clarifies, “Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven. And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me.”
That is reassuring to me, because since “late have I loved Thee” is true for me, I have regrets. Loving God well is still hard.
Being brave, steadfast, and obedient is a work in progress. Being like a child is much easier for me. I doubt if I will live to be 120 like Moses. Maybe I will reach 80. Maybe I will die soon. I don’t know. But I can try to love Thee well like a trusting child–now.
Prayer:
“Lord, today praise easily comes to me. Thank you for your gifts to me: For the gift of Moses whom I’ve come to love this past month as I’ve read his story; for the goodness you are showing in my life now; for the work you are giving me to do; for forgiving me for being late at loving you with all my heart. Thank you for the meaning you have given to my life so far. Most of all, thank you for loving me, way back in the beginning of my life, just as you loved Moses. I have not always seen your hand or your goodness. I have not always been steadfast. I have definitely not always been brave!
Give me the Holy Spirit gift of courage today. Teach me the virtue of fortitude. Help me become now like a little child. Let me trust you as your beloved daughter. And, Lord, when the time comes for my real obituary, may it be filled with the story of how you loved me, and how I remained these last years of my life truly brave, steadfast, obedient, and in love with you. May I, like Moses and Augustine, live ‘late have I loved Thee’ done well. Amen.”
