Like drops of water, some shining for an instant in free-fall, others swathed in grey, invisible, our lives run their course and disappear in the sea. Some fall from low-hanging clouds and their journey is brief; others fall from a great height, changing from ice to snow to water as the place of disappearing approaches. Fragile, changing, ever so brief—does this mean meaninglessness?
This weekend, two young college students died in their car, sitting outside their dorms talking; a malfunction in the car likely producing carbon monoxide poisoning. They simply fell asleep, it seems, never to awaken again in this life. Brief droplets, ever young. It makes one think hard about the value of life and the goodness of God. How can life be so very fragile and taken so easily, so senselessly, it seems? An age-old question, but just as painful as the first death. Something in us recoils and refuses to try and square this with Providence; some ask the hard question, receive no satisfaction, and turn away bitter, the water of life turning bitter.
I remember, too, a grainy, friend-filmed video of Carlo Acutis clapping his hands with joy and predicting his own death, another brief and shining droplet, coursing its way through this world. I visualize him, and other saints, simply stepping off the train of life; they were gone, in a sense, before they were gone: they stepped away from the focus on accomplishments and wealth and projects, progressivism, politics, except as any of these had to do with love, with the love of God. And when the signal came, they jumped from the train like an Old Western cowboy onto a horse and into a far country.
I also just watched A Hidden Life, about St. Franz Jãegerstätter, who refused the oath to Hitler and was guillotined for this at thirty-six years old. Many told him that his death was senseless; his widow and children were deprived of him for most of their lives.
Life.
It must be something beyond this, or God does not care. It must be that this life is, just simply, brief in the light of eternity, and that we, who reach the age of reason, within it confirm or deny who we were meant to be: therefore, it is an essential, deeply important element of our existence, but yet so very brief, as brief as a race. Those little ones who do not reach the age of reason are gathered like early, pure drops of water.
It changes everything, if one looks at life this way.
Your every moment, charged with depth and death, a jewel because of the rarity and scarcity, yet just a fleeting shadow in comparison with Real Life, beyond tears and sorrow and separation, for those who sought God beyond the doubts and the tinges of despair we can identify with. This absolute brevity makes me less grasping and more grateful, surprisingly, which makes me think this must be true: the saints must be right, both in the intensity with which they loved those around them in every precious moment (which the film about St. Franz shows artfully and beautifully), and in the way their gaze was already turned beyond all the gathered moments of earthly life; the moments in their earthly lives gathering towards a single call, the Presence that drew them to all that truly lasts, the way St. Carlo Acutis clapped in expectation and St. Franz wrote just before he faced execution, "I am completely bound in inner union with the Lord."
So much becomes unimportant, and yet some things become immeasurably important: where I live, the clothes I wear, the admiration for my accomplishments fade; the search for the face of God becomes everything. In between is the purpose He has for you that you may not understand completely in the brevity of your falling from cloud to the eternal sea of God, but because He cares for you and knows you, He will tell you about it after the veil of falling water recedes and you rest at last on an eternal shore, real land at last.
