Into your hands

"Father, into your hands I commend my spirit"

Luke 23: 46

I prayed for this when my mother was in the hospital; she was placed in a certain spot in ICU where she could see what lied beyond the window, for with the trees and leaves, there was light.  I said to my mother, "Nanay, please focus on the light, focus on the light of Christ.  Entrust your life only to him."

This for me is what these last words mean, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit."

First, focus only on the Father

Let us focus on nowhere else but the Father, the author of life, the first beginning and the last end.  Let's focus on uniting ourselves with him, can calling him with utmost intensity, "Father".  No one, not even men nor evil forces can separate ourselves from him.  Jesus showed the way when he prayed this; for this prayer reflected the total union between Jesus' spirit and his Father; and so with us.

Secondly, entrust our spirit 

Jesus' spirit reflected the totality of his humanity.  Our spirit, as it nears its separation from the body, is destined to live forever, either  for eternal damnation or happiness in heaven.  This soul which marks everything in us - our joys and sorrows, the strength of our wills and and their weaknesses, the graces or sins that wrapped it; our soul is destined to be with God forever.  It is subject to healing, to forgiveness, to compassion, and finally, to eternal happiness.  This state of soul that no material thing can satisfy, is finally and definitively entrusted to the care of the one who created it, our loving Father, the great Creator, who is also our destination and our final happiness.

Let us now yearn for this final union with God as we conduct our lives with a new definition.  For entrusting comes not only in the afterlife, but here and now, as we offer each day to bring us closer to the real One who loves us eternally, God, our Father, in Jesus and the Holy Spirit.