Father John often used to say that our life is a preparation for that moment of death. What we are like at the moment of death is of great importance. Our daily meditation is an experience of letting go, an experience of dying to our acquisitiveness, our competitiveness, our prejudices, our self-centredness and egotism. It is a preparation for that moment of total encounter with reality, that moment of total liberation. What we learn from our daily meditation is to “keep death constantly before our eyes”. That is how St Benedict described it to his monks. We might say it is to be able to face the impermanence of life, the fact that things are always passing away – we have no abiding city.
(Aspects of Love 1 by Laurence Freeman OSB )
