Today is Holy Saturday, when we remember Jesus in the tomb; and when one prays the Rosary, Saturday is also one of the days when you pray the Joyful Mysteries, which recount (among other things) Jesus’ conception and birth. (I gather that there are different rules for praying the Rosary during Lent; but I haven’t learned them. I simply go on praying the same pattern of mysteries that I pray the rest of the year.) So today I’ve been pondering Jesus’ life from womb to tomb. And it occurred to me that Jesus’ death was necessary, if he was to a human like us in all things but sin, because the quality of a human life can only be seen in retrospect.

St. Paul compares our human lives to a race, a race that ends only with our deaths:

Do you not know that in a race all the runners compete, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. (1 Cor 9:24)

For I am already on the point of being sacrificed; the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. (2 Tim 4-7)

The letter to the Hebrews uses the same metaphor.

…let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us… (Heb 12:1)

Until you’ve finished the race, you don’t know where you stand in the rankings. How you run the race matters—”run that you may obtain it”—but clearly, finishing the race is essential. Jesus ran the whole race. Yesterday, on Good Friday, we remembered the moment He crossed the finish line. Tomorrow, we remember His entry into the Winner’s Circle.

We the living still have the race to finish. Thanks be to God! For in Christ’s victory we have the hope that we can not only finish it—any fool can do that, and will—but by His grace, can run so that we may obtain the prize.