We Do Not Lose Hope: A Reflection on the 2nd Reading for June 10th: Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

2 Corinthians 4:13 – 5:1
4 13Since we have the same spirit of faith as he had who wrote, "I believed, and so I spoke," we too believe, and so we speak,  14knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence.  15For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.  16So we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day.  17For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 18because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. 5 1For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

My late grandmother was in her early twenties when she set out on her first ocean voyage to visit her sister in New York City. On a February evening filled with excitement and promise, she and her good friend stood at the rail of the luxury liner, waving as they steamed away from the dock in fine weather. Within hours, however, the vessel was battling heavy seas and high winds that pushed it off course. In the pitch dark and the driving snow, no one could tell that the vessel was dangerously close to shore until it was impaled on the rocks. The hull, gashed wide open beyond repair, began to fill with sea water. Two-thirds of the passengers and crew were lost as the vessel quickly fell to pieces. Forty-four survivors remained on the wreck for the next twenty-four hours, waiting for rescue or death. My grandmother was one of them.

I have read that a direct and active encounter with imminent death can transform a person, liberating them from day-to-day anxieties and attachment to material goods, social status and other worldly concerns. I believe it transformed my grandmother in this grace-filled way. In an interview recorded late in her life, she said she never feared death while waiting for rescue, although she knew death was a possibility—her friend had been swept from the deck and into the sea. Instead she led her companions in praying the Rosary, comforted in knowing that her life was safe in God’s hands and that she would persevere because of God’s strength. 

My grandmother regarded this life as temporary, and she accepted with patience its mixture of joys and profound sorrows. At the end of the interview, she observed, “This is a hard, hard life,” not just in her case but in general. That she could say it calmly and philosophically is due to the power of her encounter with imminent death. She was made a new creation, one who could accept the inevitable struggles of life and still have every reason to hope. She never lost heart, and she endured to God’s glory. 

In his second letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul proclaims the same message: “[T]he one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus …. So we do not lose heart.” Through a series of contrasts, he distinguishes our temporary earthly life from the eternal life that awaits us after death: as our outer life wastes away, our inner life is renewed daily; we turn away from what is before our eyes here and focus on what can be seen in the eternal life; we do not grieve over the loss of our earthly tent because we have a building from God awaiting us in the heavens. Earthly losses are survivable. Even if they mean the end of this world, they are not the end of the world. The world for which we were created awaits us.

Donna Davis

"She was made a new creation, one who could accept the inevitable struggles of life and still have every reason to hope." - Donna Davis (Ora Reflections)