Love Can Not Die

            
             Last year, I witnessed the death of my older-brother's baby, named Quynh, who died of congenital heart disease when she was in six months old. Her family paid a lot of money for treatment and did their utmost, but finally the baby went away forever. Her death left the parents and our family in a great pain and sorrow. It raised a question in my mind: why did the baby suffer the disease and have such a short life? What is the meaning of life for her and the family? Besides, I read a report concerning the Jesuits who were killed in East Timor in the last decade. I was moved by their sacrifice. They spent their time, talents, and even lives for others. Their sacrifices can best be understood as acts of love, expressed through the whole of their lives. .
             Two weeks ago, I also got the news about the death of an Italian Jesuit, who worked and served in Vietnam before 1975. He died last Ash Wednesday. He devoted his life to others generously, especially to Vietnamese, with a great heart, even though he lived outside of Vietnam after 1975. He died when his works were still left unfinished and his dreams were not fulfilled. He passed away quietly without family or relatives, except for the presence of his Jesuit fellows. During the time he was teaching in Vietnam two years ago, he left a good impression on me of the Jesuits that I will never forget. With his death, I wonder myself why he chose to live that way instead of choosing another way of life. . All of these events have raised questions, which lead me to seek a meaning in life for myself, a process that has been helped through what I have learned from my course in the Philosophy of Human Person.
             For Marcel, "to exist is to co-exist, to participate in the life of the other." I exist in an embodied subjectivity and I exist with other beings outside of me through my body. "To live," Husserl said, "is always to live-in-certainty-of-the-world being constantly and directly "conscious" of the world and of oneself as living in the world, actually experiencing and actually affecting the ontic certainty of the world.