Death, as most of us readily admit, is one of the most fearsome things a human being can face.  Even if one believes firmly that death is the absolute end, one must still acknowledge that looking at the prospect of dying, of leaving this life forever, is a daunting one, a massive and indecipherable black hole.

     Not to be excessively morbid, but I thought about death often as I have been reading Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich's newly translated The Unwomanly Face of War.  Alexievich spent years traveling around her native Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine interviewing Russian women who served in World War II.  She listens, she records, and she shares with us, her readers.  No judgment is offered, no assessment made:  we witness the unvarnished memories and thoughts of women in war.
     Though I could share many, many episodes from the book, I share one that struck me with particular force.  As a nurse tended a dying man, she realized that she reminded him of a woman he had left back home.  He thought that she--his girl--had come to see him. He wanted to kiss her.  Overwhelmed, the nurse "bent down and kissed him."  A tear came to her eye, falling onto the soldier's dressing.
     Then, as she put it, "he died."  And he was gone.
      Even in the midst of horrific suffering, death, and dying, love reigns.  It's the marvel of the human being:  to our last breath, we want love.
     So does God.  Deeply does he love us, and so very deeply does he want us to love him in turn.  That's why he, in the person of Jesus, lived, and that's why he, in the person of Jesus, died.  For love.