Whatever has a beginning must surely have an end. The future is God’s divine secret while the past remain history. The time in our possession is only the present. Eternity includes salvation. This is God’s grace to each and every one who is open to the divine mercy of God. We live not to weep like those who have no faith and hope in the resurrection but to pray and reflect about life and the end to which we all are destined. We need to learn the value of life. An icon, hero and a colossus today can be a popper tomorrow because no condition is permanent. This calls for a thorough evaluation of our individual existence. No matter our present conditions, life is worth living because life on earth is a transition to the eternal home in heaven where we shall weep no more.
In art and science, the way the cosmos is to come to an end has enthralled the minds and hearts of artists and scientists. Some of the more pessimistic ecologists maintain that life on this planet will be destroyed by man’s heedlessness while others think that the end of the human world may come about as a result of nuclear war. Taking into account that the sun is a gigantic nuclear reactor, some scientists have tried to predict how much longer it would last. On these considerations, the biosphere of earth would continue for at least another 100 million years. Recent estimates indicated that in about 100 million years’ time, the earth’s climate will become uncomfortably hot as a result of changes in the structure of the sun. However, the end of the solar system as we know it, which could also be occasioned by some other cosmic catastrophe, would not be the end of the universe.
- Von Helmholtz explained that according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the universe was using up all its available energy. At a particular finite time within the future, the universe will arrive at a final state of maximum entropy. When this occurs the so called ‘Heat-Death’ will have been reached where the cosmos and all creatures living in it will ‘die’. More recent projections consider that if it contains enough matter, the cosmos will collapse into itself at the end under the force of gravity in what is commonly termed the ‘Big Crunch’. It would be fair to say that nearly all cosmologists now accept that we live in a universe that had a definite beginning in a big bang, and is now developing toward an uncertain end’.
We have read about the different hurricanes in different parts of America and Europe. We heard of earthquakes and different natural disasters that have claimed thousands of lives whereas Nigeria has no serious natural disasters but human “quake” that has killed more people than any volcanic eruption in the world. Life is being wasted because some people no longer have value for life. With the rate of death in Nigeria, is life still worth living? A Christian could assert that life is still worth living because he has been prepared for these human terror against fellow human beings by Jesus Christ who said: “You will hear of wars and rumors of wars; do not be alarmed, for this is something that must happen, but the end will not be yet. For nation will fight against nations, and kingdom against kingdoms. There will be famines and earthquakes here and there. All this is only the beginning of the birth pangs. (Matthew 24:4-8). “Immediately after the distress of those days the sun will be darkened, the moon will lose its brightness, the stars will fall from the sky and the powers of heaven will be shaken. And then the sign of the son of man will appear in heaven, then too all the peoples of the earth will beat their breasts; and they will see the son of man coming on the great clouds of heaven with power and great glory” (Matthew 24:29-31). In a discourse by Saint John Paul II, at a general audience on the 20th of August 1986, he said, “for the Christian the mystery of the beginning of the world is intimately linked with the mystery of the end in which the finality of all creation reaches its fulfillment.”
Science is unable to tell us anything about what happens after the end of the world. But it is a natural knowledge to each one of us that we must die one day. Jim Reeves says: This world is not my home; I am just passing through.” God has a divine purpose for creating the human person. In spite of all our reflections on death and the last day, life has a very serious value with an origin tending towards an end. This end we all pray will be a perfect rest in peace and not in pieces. In his book, Life is worth Living, the great Archbishop Fulton John Sheen says: “Life is monotonous if it has no goal or purpose. When we do not know why we are here or where we are going, then life is full of frustrations and unhappiness. When there is no goal or overall purpose, people generally concentrate on motion. Instead of working toward an ideal, they keep changing the ideal and calling it “progress”. They do not know where they are going but they are certainly on their way”. Many people waste their lives because of fear of the future. Why do we suffer and die wretched? The reasons for our pains can be given in the words of Cassius in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “Like a Colossus, and we petty men walk under his huge legs and peep about to find ourselves dishonorable graves. Men at some time are masters of their fates, the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
God did not create any one of us for destruction. God has a purpose for everybody even though we live in a country where some people struggle for power not to serve but to loot as if the world exist only for them. Some scientists carried out the experiment on the causes of greed using rats as a case study some time ago. The rats were kept in two cages: A and B. The rats in cage A were well fed. Whenever they were brought out to feed, they eat and go quietly to their cage. The rats in cage B were terribly starved. After terrible hunger they were brought out to eat, they rushed the food and still dragged the left over to the cage because they were not sure when the next meal will come. This is a replica of the Nigeria situation where some opportunists steal and save for the next generation because they are not sure that they may win another election to gain access to the treasury. In these terrible conditions, we must find a reason to live in a way and manner that we do not suffer in this world and still suffer hereafter. To live fully, let us take consolation in the words of Jesus: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God still, and trust in me. There are many rooms in my father’s house; if there were not, I should have told you. I am going to prepare a place for you, and after I have gone and prepared you a place, I shall return to take you with me; so that where I am you may be too” (John 14: 1-3).
Rev. Fr. Cornelius Omonokhua is the Executive Secretary of the Nigeria Inter-Religious Council (NIREC)
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