Imagine

Some decades ago, a popular music composer opened a song with these words:

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

The naiveté is tragic: “people living for today”, without hope for heaven or fear of hell, include the decadent, the irresponsible, suicidal spree killers, and the list goes on and on.

The composer himself would be shot dead on a sidewalk by a “fan.”

May God have mercy on all our souls.

Saint Paul gives us a very different roadmap in today’s second reading (Romans 8:9, 11-13):

For if you live according to the flesh,
you will die,
but if by the Spirit
you put to death the deeds of the body,
you will live.

Imagine all the people
living for ever
because they live today in Christ
because they do today what is truly good