What will your legacy be? We just celebrated All Souls Day, a day when we pause to pray for the souls of the faithful departed. It is a great opportunity to reflect on our life, how we live, and what’s truly important. Because we know that our time on this earth is short.
St. John Henry Newman reminds us in one of his sermons, “Each of us must come to the evening of life. Each of us must enter on eternity. Each of us must come to that quiet, awful time when we will appear before the Lord and answer for the deeds done, whether they be good or bad…It will be that dread moment of expectation when your fate for eternity is in the balance.”
Fr. Larry Richards is much more direct. The first sentence in his book Be A Man says, “You are going to die.” To which I add, and you will leave a legacy. So again, what will your legacy be?
Can it be a life lived in accord with God’s will? We know from John 6:40 that God’s will is for everyone who believes in His son Jesus to have eternal life. Can our life be one of faithfulness to His commandments, growth in virtue, perseverance in prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, repentance, frequent participation in the sacraments, and doing the works of mercy?
Because living this way, believing in Jesus, having faith in His overwhelmingly gracious saving act of dying on the cross, is our way emulate His life. It shows our love of God above all else and our love for our neighbor as ourselves. Living this way creates a legacy that honors God just as Jesus and the saints did.
Photo Credit: Robert Davis
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