There is death which is separation of body and soul – physical death. But there is also a death which is separation between man and God. This is spiritual death. Spiritual death befalls a person who deliberately chooses to live as if God did not exist . . . This spiritual life, sometimes called supernatural life, more often called grace – God wants to give to us all. He wants to give us that life, whereby here and now, we can enjoy friendship with him and ultimately be guaranteed the vision of God which alone . . . can satisfy our deepest aspirations. He wants to give us life; and he wants to renew that gesture whereby he restored life to the son of the widow of Naim, to the daughter of Jairus, to his friend Lazarus. To them, he restored physical life; to us, by a like gesture, he restores spiritual life . . . If we choose to reject it, then dearest brethren, we live ‘dead,’ we live a life which is fundamentally meaningless because it is bound by horizons of this present world, destined ultimately to frustration, to misery. To live separated from God is indeed to live ‘dead.’
-Cardinal Basil Hume
