The Catholic Writers Guild

I call heaven and earth today to witness against you: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the LORD, your God, obeying his voice, and holding fast to him… (Dt 30:19; cf Dt 30:15-20, Dt 11:26-32, Jer 21:1-10)

Both Judas and Peter ate with Jesus at the Last Supper. It was while they were eating that Jesus announced Judas’ coming betrayal. Jesus predicted Peter’s denial as well. Both of them ate, both of them betrayed, and both of them regretted. Their stories end quite differently, though. Judas fell and Peter rose. Judas hanged himself, and it was better for him that he’d never been born. Peter stretched out his arms and was led away to be crucified, and it was on that rock that Jesus built the Church.

Both ate the same meal. One ate to life, one to death.

I find that this echoes often in our stories. The Bard gave us excellent examples, including, for instance, Hamlet and Macbeth. Both characters face madness, violence, and the occult. Both die in the end. Hamlet, however, dies righting a wrong and exposes the murder of his father. Macbeth dies a murderer himself, a failed king. He believed every word of false prophecy he was given; he embraced it, regardless of what sins he’d have to commit.

Over one’s body we hear, “Hail, king! for so thou art: behold, where stands the usurper’s cursed head: the time is free…”. Over the other: “Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince:
and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!”

Consider, too, the characters of Theoden and Denethor, in the Lord of the Rings. “They move in opposite directions, like the syllables of their names,” as Dr. Kreeft once pointed out. Both receive false prophecy, from a seeing stone or a wicked man. Denethor believes the lies he sees in the palantir, to his despair and, then, destruction. Theoden rebukes the lies, accepts help, and rises to rally the army to victory. Both die in the end, but one to suicide and the end of his line, the other “over death, over dread, over doom lifted out of loss, out of life, unto long glory.”

In our own lives, and in the lives of our characters, we face choices day after day. C. S. Lewis put in beautifully in the end of his “golden sermon”, the Weight of Glory:

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.”

Often, what is before us, in the most mundane of disguises, is life and death, good and evil, right and wrong. It is that conflict that makes a good story, after all – our story, and His story.

A Prayer

Even the mundane and ordinary prayer is life and death in disguise. How often do we stop and think about the danger and power in these words:

Our Father, who art in Heaven,
hallowed by They Name.

Thy Kingdom come.
Thy will be done
on earth, as it is in Heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.