Pope: death is 'a fact', 'a legacy', 'a memory'

"I am not the master of time", "repeating this helps", recommended Francis, because "it saves us from that illusion of the moment, of taking life as a chain of interlinking moments, which makes no sense".

Vatican City (AsiaNews) - "Death is a fact", it is "a legacy", it is "a memory" that saves us from the illusion of being masters of time, said Pope Francis at Mass this morning at Casa Santa Marta.  He was commenting on the passage from the First Book of Kings, on the death of David, stressing that "we are neither eternal nor ephemeral: we are men and women walking in time, time that begins and time that ends".

Francis invited everyone "to pray and ask for the grace of the sense of time" so as not to remain "imprisoned" by the present moment, "locked in ourselves". "Death is a fact that belongs to everyone". "Sooner or later, it arrives for us all". "But there is the temptation of the moment that takes hold of life and leads us wandering in this selfish labyrinth of the moment with no future, there is the departure and the destination, it’s a round trip, no? And the journey ends in death, we all know it. And for this reason the Church has always tried to make us reflect on this, our purpose: death ".

"I am not the master of time", "repeating this helps", repeating this helps", recommended Francis, because "it saves us from that illusion of the moment, of taking life as a chain of interlinking moments, which makes no sense". "I am on the journey and I have to look ahead", but also to consider that "death is a legacy", not a material inheritance, but of testimony. "And ask ourselves what would I leave behind as my legacy if God today called me? What will I leave as a testimony of life? It's a good question to ask. And so, we must all prepare, none of us will remain 'relic'. No, everyone will travel this path ".

Finally, death "is a memory", an "anticipated memory" to reflect upon: "When I die, what would I have liked to do today in this decision that I have to take today, in today's journey of life? It is an anticipated memory that illuminates today's moment. Enlighten the decisions that I must take every day with the fact of my death ". Knowing ourselves to be on the joruney to death, the Pope concluded, "will do us all good ".