"We must do the works of Martha, but in the spirit of Mary. Both of us would agree to that. "
"What is the spirit of Mary?" I asked.
"Silence. Interior silence – and exterior silence, too. Your culture cannot hear the voice of God because its ears are too full of noise. For lack of silence you are going mad. God made you with two ears and only one tongue, so that you could listen twice as much as you speak. Then, when words come out of the silence, they will have power. "
~ from "Ecumenism and the Culture War" by Peter Kreeft
The only way to avoid death is not to be born in the first place. In death there is union with the Beloved. The real skill is to reach the secret of death before dying.
We prepare for death, or rather eternity, by consciously adjusting the focus of our life so that it is not upon our personality and the flowing world that spawns upon it, but instead upon our individuality and the Great Fullness with which we are one. This process of focusing our attention is called meditation. In meditation we die to the personality and are reborn as something much greater. That rebirth is not a sudden or one-time event, but is a gradual process in which we become ever more focused on who and what we really are behind the mask of personality ... the process of dying to death by being reborn to reality.
