It’s Not Preparation for Death, It’s Life Now

You work tirelessly to discipline your body and heal your flesh. You fight against vice and labor to grow virtue. You begin clearing the overgrowth in your inner garden, and slowly, light returns—light that had been hidden in darkness. It feels familiar. Like the garden of your youth: a natural goodness, a joyful seriousness, a quiet resistance to wrongdoing.

But the garden is wounded. Some flowers are trampled. Others are crushed. The soil is drying. You fight decay the way an aging man fights time in the gym. The effort is noble. The victories are real. But the battle, in the end, cannot be won by strength alone. The body will still age. The muscles will still fail. The weights will one day be too heavy.

So too with the soul.

No matter how carefully you prune the garden of your soul—no matter how much excess you strip away—if the soil itself is dry, life cannot remain. The garden may die cleanly. It may even die beautifully. But it will still die.

There is something admirable about a garden that dies tended rather than neglected. Yet even the cleanest garden, if cut off from life, withers. And when the sun shines fully upon what is nearly dead, it does not heal—it burns. There is a narrow space between being cleaned yet lifeless, and being alive enough to endure the light.

But there is good news.

There is fertile soil that gives life. That soil is the Body of Christ.

This soil is nourished by the endless Ocean of His Love. In it, the soul is not merely maintained—it is restored. We are no longer isolated plants struggling in dry ground, but branches grafted into the living Vine, fed without end.

Yes, we remain responsible for the dirt we allow to cling to us, and the pests we permit to linger. We must still fight, still guard, still tend. But now the work is no longer desperate. It is hopeful. As we remain in the Vine, healing deepens. Love grows. Life expands—now, and forever.

So do not fight only under the Law—against sin, against decay, against wrongdoing—by discipline alone. Enter into Life. Do the same labors, but let them be filled with Love drawn from the wellspring of eternal joy.

Broken though you are—still a branch marked by decay—when you are grafted into the Body of Christ, through true baptism, through entry into the Church, healing begins. You are no longer trapped in slow spiritual death. You enter growth without end.

Over time, your soul stretches upward, becoming able to receive more grace, more love—like a tree rising above the canopy toward the sun. The higher it grows, the more light it receives.

We do not understand God by nature alone. Rather, God uses nature to teach us about Himself.

Do not ask God to shrink Himself to fit inside your heart. Ask Him to enlarge your soul, so that you may receive more of Him.

And you will find that this enlargement begins in one place only: in the Church, through true baptism, in the living Body of Christ.

So come.

Enter into Life—now.

The promise is like this:

To the man who trains his whole life to delay decay, yet still grows old, Christ says—step into a new body. Not of flesh, but of the soul. A body where the damage of the past is healed. Where strength and love increase forever. Where death no longer has the final word.

Let those who can understand, understand.