ROME 22/10 – Day 18: NEQUE HIC VIVUS.  NEQUE ILLIC MORTUUS.

At 07:24 the sun rose and it will set soon at 18:26, not too long before the Ave Maria at 18:45.  It is the Feast of St. Luke the Evangelist.

It is important to reflect on the Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell.   Along with the simple giving glory and worship to God, this four-fold complex is the motive for all we do.  We go to Mass because we want to fulfill the virtue of Religion and give God what is His due, which is glory, honor and worship.  However, we go to Mass, and perform works of mercy, strive to live our vocations because we are going to die.  One day we shall go before our Just Judge, the King of Fearful Majesty.  Having the Last Things in our minds every day, even for just a few minutes, is salutary in the deepest sense of the word.  It ought to be a sobering remedy for those who have drifted into the slobbering acquiescence to the other side, the World, the Flesh and the Devil.

Here is a sobering monument in Santa Maria del Popolo.  Above, the image of the man as alive.  Below an image after death.  Above, it says: NEQUE HIC VIVUS.  Below, it says, NEQUE ILLIC MORTUUS.

This is Giovan Battista Gisleni, architect and musician who died in 1672.  “I am neither alive, here, nor am I dead, there.”   The idea is that in this life, we are not yet fully alive, fully whom we are intended to be.  We have to pass through death to get to that.  However, once “there” we are hardly dead, we are alive in the presence of God.”

GO TO CONFESSION!

White to move.  Another end game puzzle.

Interested in learning?  Try THIS.

3:16 isn’t just in John.