Daily Inspiration

“If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed than with two hands to go into Gehenna, into the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life crippled than with two feet to be thrown into Gehenna. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. Better for you to enter into the Kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into Gehenna, where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.” -Mark 9:43-48
 
Each time I’ve been shown the next world, I come back with the sense that God’s spiritual world is more real than His physical world. When I read this passage today, I realized that Jesus alludes to the same notion. If one is to enter something, they must not already be in it. Christ repeatedly tells us what we must do to enter life; therefore, we must not be in life now.
 
Jesus explains that it is better to drastically change ourselves in this place outside of life than to miss the chance to enter into life later. He repeatedly mentions life is yet to come. He also affirms that death in the lake of fire is the alternative to life with the Father. In my ‘worldly travels’, I have been crushed under the weight of the lake of fire and swum in the ocean of Christ’s mercy, and each was more real than anything I’ve ever experienced in this place.
 
In my ‘travels’ I have learned these facts. God holds our soul from the moment of conception, when He places it in our bodies, to the moment we leave this world, and never lets go. In God’s touch, our soul is tethered to the spiritual world, while our bodies reside in this place. His world is more essential to life, more real than this one. Knowing those truths, we should focus our desires on His world rather than on this fallen world. Better to cut ourselves off from the enemy's temptations rather than risk losing our eternal life.
 
Saint Gabriel Possenti, pray for us.
 
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Jesus, I trust in you.