In a culture that likes to pretend death does not exist, there are some vocations which don’t have the luxury of ignoring the most unavoidable aspect of human existence. People who work in law enforcement, medicine, ministry, and mortuary services experience death as a regular, if not constant, companion. Of those four, it is the minister and the mortician who are most often called only after a person has died. We show up when the

Our life in Christ is a life of freedom and love; and because it is, we must choose this life. Not just once, but continually. This Gospel is so simple and straight forward that it becomes problematic. The Author of life encounters death and the outcome is exactly what we expect. We understand immediately what the Church is trying to teach us. We see a prefiguring of Pascha. We see that death has been overthrown;