“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”.

Today we are reminded once again that we should keep our salvation uppermost in our minds at all time. The reality is that no one knows when their time on earth will expire and when they will be confronted with the kingdom of God. Unfortunately, almost all of us when we think about death and dying accept this as happening to us at some time in the future, whenever that may be, but most certainly it will not be happening yet. The “Oh not yet” as St Augustine put it.

Somehow we think that we will all live to a ripe old age. That we can sow our wild oats when we are young, that we can live without God for most of our life and when we reach the ripeness of old-age we can begin to think about salvation in the next world. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work out like that.

The greatest weapon that the devil has is that he will encourage us in our belief that we have plenty of time to change our ways when we get old and we can live our lives as we want rather than as we should. So we lull ourselves into a sense of perpetual “not yet”. We think that there is always time for repentance tomorrow, or next week, next month or next year. No one wants to willingly give up the silk garments of affluence and the pursuit of self and pleasure for the garment of camel’s hair of repentance so we delay for as long as possible. Thus in our desire for the good life the devil has an ally. Thus by always telling us that there is plenty of time to repent we go through life unrepentant.

Let us remember our own baptisms. Let us remember how are we were washed anew in Christ. As we say, “as many as have been baptized in Christ, have put on Christ hallelujah”. If by baptism we belong to Christ then we should accept that our death is only one breath away. If we accept that then the “not yet” disappears and then we realise that we need to repent for the kingdom of heaven is well and truly at hand.