I have been sharing with you the 30 steps contained in Climacus’ Ladder of Divine Assent, interpreted for the needs of persons who are not monks. The sixth step, as I shared in the last issue, is the Remembrance of Death.

As one of the Christian virtues, remembrance of death is rooted in the knowledge that beyond death lies eternity. God   is eternal and so our relationship with Him is eternal. But what will this eternal relationship be like? Will it be eternal joy or eternal torment?

If we love God – if our life has been lived for Him – then God is our joy. If we do not want God, then His eternal presence and loving embrace are hell. How can sinners look upon the brilliant radiance and holiness of God? We think that meeting absolute goodness would be wonderful. This is like thinking of coming face-to-face with the sun as   being no different from lying on the beach on a hot summer’s day. God is absolute goodness, unbounded holiness, unrelenting love. And we have sinned against Him. We have wronged Him time and again. Thus the remembrance of death is a call to change of heart and mind.

It has been postulated by philosophers that we humans can only experience that which we are prepared to really   experience. If we reject the idea of God, there is no way that we can, just because we have died, experience Him.

The one wonderful thing about how God has created humankind is that He gives us multiple opportunities during this life and during eternity to come to know and love Him. Because we have free will, we are the only ones who can create hell for ourselves.

The remembrance of death means that we live with an awareness that we will die and that death is a transition to a different way of living. The way we live now influences our future life.