Jesus once compared Solomon’s splendor with the lilies of the field and concluded that the lilies were superior in their clothing. ‘Consider the lilies of the world, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these’ (Mt 6:28-29). The Lord was speaking about ‘the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven’ (Mt 6: 30). If Solomon was found not worthy to be compared with the lilies, how could we boast of anything in this passing world?
Elsewhere the Scripture equates man with grass. ‘As for mortals, their days are like grass; they flourish like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more’ (Ps 103: 15-16). ‘Like grass that is renewed in the morning; in the morning it flourishes and is renewed; in the evening it fades and withers’ (Ps 90: 5). The momentary nature of human life is best captured in Psalm 39. ‘Surely everyone goes about like a shadow’ (Ps 39:6). James compares human life to mist ‘ that appears for a little while and then vanishes’ (James 4:14).
God wants to remind us of the transience of human life. This is to help us escape the fate that befell the rich fool who pulled down his barns and built larger ones, to store all his grain and his goods hoping for a carefree life with enough to relax, eat, drink and merrymaking, not knowing that God was planning to demand his life back the very night (Lk 12: 13-21).
So the best meditation is one that focuses on death. This is why Carthusian monks often meditated with human skulls in their hands. It was to remind themselves of something important; ‘Memento Mori’ (remember your death). Similarly Trappist monks spent much time meditating on their death and there is a common myth that they greeted each other by saying, “Brother, we must all die”, though this actually is the contribution of another little known French order of Monks.
We meditate on everything but death. But God advises us to reorient our thoughts to one single point, and it is death. ‘In all you do, remember the end of your life, and then you will never sin’ (Sir 7:36). Taken seriously, this will help us in leading a spiritually fruitful life. ‘If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s’(Rom 14:8). Then we will experience the most beautiful of transitions; the transition from this transient world to the glory of eternal life.
(www.v-catholic.com)
