Fourth Sunday of Easter
Fr. Anthony Brankin
Do you remember Ted Williams? He was one of the best baseball players who ever lived. You could take all the steroid-enhanced super power-hitters of the last ten years and they still can’t hit anywhere near .400. They say that in all of sports the most difficult thing to do is to hit a baseball, and he did it better than most of them. But I think his personal life was a little less successful—and maybe even tinged with sadness and sorrow. He was not Catholic—and I suspect he belonged to one of those non-descript American Protestant sects that is vaguely Christian and doesn’t mean much to anyone. You certainly won’t ever have to change your life or your own personal beliefs to belong to one of them. But after Williams’s death, his son took his father’s dead body to one of those cryo-genics laboratories. And there they lowered Ted Williams’ remains into an upright stainless steel tank, and froze it solid. They are waiting now for some future time when they assume that modern science will find a way to thaw him out, reanimate him, and cure him. The son said that he wanted his father to be able to play baseball for another hundred years. And I thought: How awful that would be—to have to do this life all over again! That is something to look forward to? To do the same foolish and meaningless activities we did the first time?
How would anyone really want to repeat endlessly the same dull pattern of life? To repeat the same sorrows and sins, and mistakes and missteps of the first eighty years? I do not doubt that more than one time in his brilliant career—at the height of his power and fame—that Ted Williams must have said to himself, “There has got to be more to life than baseball!” And his son wants him to play it for another hundred years? And this is not just Ted Williams’s family.
Frozen to death
Actually freezing cadavers is probably old-school at this point. I saw an article—right around Easter time—in the journals—(and they always do this at Easter on purpose to get us to doubt the Resurrection) telling the story of some immensely rich computer people who have hired some immensely well-endowed laboratories to re-engineer our genes so that people will not wear out and die. Thinking that money and science will save them, they are looking for the “forever-gene.” They will just inject each other with this super DNA and never have to die. Of course, I am sure that that’s just for the rich ones. I don’t think they would want the rest of us to share the planet and the air with them. But this is the horror of modern life—this is what becomes of people who do not believe in Christ or the teachings of Christ and His Church.
This is the mental and personal and social tragedy of not being Catholic. Because there is a point to being Catholic you know—more than just the way we were brought up. These poor people who are not Catholic have no supernatural faith. They do not know about the Resurrection and they have no concept of eternal life—other than living on in some Frankenstein-type existence. These unfortunate moderns think that if they could just find the right combination of chemicals and electricity, that we could live forever—at just keeping our bodies alive. Happily enough, our Catholic Faith tells us that these modern Resurrection techniques cannot work.
First of all, because if a person is really dead, then by definition we know that the soul—which was the principle of life and personhood—has left the body, and has been brought already to his or her particular judgment before the Throne of God Himself. Once the body begins to reach room temperature—no more heart beat—no more breath—no more brain waves— and the process of decomposition has begun, no soul can be summoned back—not even by the best possible team of scientists. That soul—once it has left the body—will not be coming back until the End of the World at the Resurrection of the Dead. The soul now lives elsewhere—in heaven or hell or purgatory and is beyond our petty plans for its future. As well, there can be no way to manipulate and change our genes so that those genes will not die. Saint Paul says “through one man, Adam, death entered into the world.” And there is no cure for death. Death is part of the very structure of the Universe. Scientists call it entropy—but everything—the sun, the planets, the earth and humans and their cells are all winding down. They are not revving up—everything is dying.
All desire to live forever
Now I am not blaming these people who do not have faith and think that they can find some scientific way to live forever. We have been taught for many years that science is supreme—Science and Mathematics is Almighty— It can do anything and everything. And it seems the less we believe in God the more we believe in science—but science, too, is a false God—and can only lead us to a variety of dead-ends—including cryo-genics and super DNA. So we need to look elsewhere for eternal life—because it seems that the human hope that life somehow goes on has been built into every one of us. Go back to the earliest humans—and all throughout history—we want to live forever. From being absorbed into the ocean of Being in which the Buddhists believe to tumbling into the shadow worlds of Hades and Gehenna to being frozen in a tube waiting to be thawed, we hope for some sort of eternal life. But this is why we need to thank God for our Catholic Faith because it tells us that there is something out there— after death—that is much more beautiful than being poured out of some frozen stainless steel tube. Our faith tells us that there is more to eternal life than a serum of liquid genes that will let me do this life forever. And fortunate the person who has heard of Jesus and His Resurrection, for that person knows that there will be a next life—and that it will be a good life—a beautiful life—a new life—and not a tired, frightening repeat of this one.
Fortunate the person who is Catholic for they know that this life leads to the next life. The Catholic understands that life here is lived well, because it leads to life there. And that is the point of being Catholic—if we believe this and if we love all our brothers and sisters we should want them to know about eternal life—and to be comforted by that fact. Is it love to let the Williams family think that Stainless Steel tubes loaded with frozen cadavers is Eternal life? Is it love to let people think that they can find some magic DNA that will keep their bodies alive and miserable in this world? And that is why Jesus desires that there will be one fold and one shepherd. That is why He desires that everyone be Catholic—for that is what One Fold and one shepherd means. He loves even those not of His fold, and He wants them to know Him and to know that living forever means more than frozen bodies and re-engineered genes, it means a new life and a real life and a blessed life—forever—with Him in heaven.