Spirituality: “It is finished!” by Andrew M. Greeley

There comes a time when we must let go. We must give up being a baby to become a kid. We must abandon being a kid so that we might be a teen. We must relinquish high school so that we can go to college. We must some day eventually stop being a student and get a job. We must give up the freedom of the single state to marry, to adjust to a spouse, and then adjust to children. We must some day permit the children to be free so that they can be adults on their terms, not ours. We must give up health and perhaps independence as we grow older. Eventually we must give up life itself.

At each of these times of surrender in our lives we must trust. We must trust God, other human beings, and ourselves. Dying is not only the end of living; it is part of living. Each new yielding opens up the possibility of something new that is both frightening and appealing. We have no choice in the matter. Every day we must yield our spirit to grace. We can do so stubbornly, reluctantly, with protests and complaints. We can curse the dimming of the light. Or we can go gracefully into the night as Jesus did, firm in the knowledge that it is safe to say, “It is finished!”

Echoes from Calvary: Meditations on Franz Joseph Haydn’s The Seven Last Words of Christ, Richard Young, ed., page 137.