Dying For Life: How Jesus' Passion Reframes Life & Death as Dying & Rebirth

By J Stephen Mitchinson MD

What if, rather than dread or denial, Christ calls us to embrace death as a journey in stages, through growth in the womb of this life toward our rebirth into the next? Dr. Steve Mitchinson compares this proposition with his own observations as a palliative care physician, teaching readers to be midwives for those about to emerge into their full humanity.

Mitchinson asks, "Have we truly understood how life is intended to be a preparation for our physical death? What if death is something to be embraced, not avoided, a journey where we practice dying in stages until we are reborn from the womb of this life in which we grow?"

Through his Incarnation and Passion, Jesus reveals that to be fully human necessarily includes death. Through his physical death, he reveals himself as God, the ultimate kenosis, completing the work of creation with his final breath: "It is finished!" It is this "image of God" in which we are created.

We are invited into this death by "putting on" Christ through the sacrament of baptism-to "take up our cross" and embrace the martyr's life-to fully live and be reborn. This book explores concepts of a "good life" and a "good death" in the context of the Passion of Christ and what a union with the source of all life through the Cross might mean. Death is defeated and transformed from a terminal destination into the birth canal to true humanity.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0BZ2R6F4B
• ISBN13: 9798386720827
• Release Date: March 2023
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 136 Pages
• Weight: 0.42 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"