Now and Forever: A Regnum Christi Essay on an Approach to Living Life in Light of Eternity

Thirty-nine years old is too young for a heart attack. I’d done all the right things: healthy diet, regular exercise, no smoking. Heck, I had even run a half-marathon two months before. Yet there I was with 100% blockage in my right coronary artery, nurses bustling about the emergency room attaching wires and nodes to my chest, forcing nitroglycerin tablets under my tongue, asking my pain level, and everywhere beeping instruments warning of imminent end. It was surreal, like a strange, muddled, impossible bad dream. Only when Father Louis de Vaugelas approached my bedside and asked, "Father, do you want to receive absolution?" did the reality set in: I could be dead in a few minutes. "YES!!! I want absolution," I said, as tears trickled down my face.

If you want to learn how to live life, face death.

It comes for us all, sooner or later. At a day and a time that we cannot know now. My experience in the emergency room on the brink of FOREVER taught me lessons that are changing my life NOW. In the following pages, I’ll share some musings that might move something in you. I hope these reflections help you make life decisions leading to the happiness you were meant for, helping you to live life in light of eternity.