The essence of the struggle of the natural man against the influence of the Spirit can be summed up by the refrain, “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” We may try to dress it up with all kinds of seemingly complicated reasons, but at the heart of every single rebellion is the belief that what we want right now is more important than anything else and that is because there is the very real possibility that everything we care about, including and especially our own life, could be gone tomorrow. Every time we sin, we do so because we know that we will surely die. That’s why we sin in the first place. We’re so sure that we are going to die, and to die before any of the consequences of our actions will catch up to us, that we don’t care what the consequences will be, because we won’t be around to have to deal with them. This kind of fatalistic attitude warps our perceptions of reality. It transforms hunger into gluttony, desire into lust, anger into hatred and murder. We have to squeeze every bit of energy and fun out of every moment because we have so few of them left. It is true that any of us could die at any moment. But this should only scare us if death means the end of our existence. It does not. Because of Christ’s infinite atoning sacrifice and the glorious power of His resurrection, death is not the end. We do not have to live as if there will be no tomorrow. We can greet each day not as our last opportunity to draw breath, but as yet another step on our journey towards eternal life. Instead of eating, drinking and being merry, knowing that tomorrow we die, we can instead eat and drink the bread and water of the sacrament and sincerely repent of our errors and be joyful that tomorrow we shall live. We don’t need to greedily cling to each and every second, fearing that it will be our last. Thanks to our Savior Jesus Christ, we will have an infinite number of seconds, each one better than the last. When we choose to repent, it is because we believe that tomorrow, we will live again, tomorrow, we will make better choices, tomorrow, we will be stronger and wiser and smarter and faster than we were today.
