After Death

Quae enim vita vestra? Vapor est ad modicum apparens et deinceps exterminabitur.    Non ait quae est vita nostra, sed quae, inquit, vita vestra? Quia justi tunc verius vivere incipiunt, cum ad hjus vitae finem pervenerunt. Inimici autem Domini mox cum honorificati et exaltati fuerint, deficientes ut fumus deficient. Non autem putandam est hanc eadem sententiam esse quam apud se impii in libro Sapientiae dixisse perhibentur: Quia ex nihilo nati sumus, et post haec erimus tanquam non fuerimus. Quoniam fumus afflatus in naribus et sermo scintillae ad commovendum cor nostrum. Qua exstincta cinis erit corpus, et spiritus diffundetur tanquam mollis aer. Haec enim illis ratiocinabatur, qui nullam vitam, nisi istam esse credebant, dicentes cum Epicuro: Post mortem nihil est, et mors ipsa nihil est. Illud autem beatus Jacobus intulit, ut doceat quia vita pravorum bravis est praesenti, quam tamen in futuro mors sequitur aeterna, juxta illud beati Job: Ducunt in bonis dies suos, et in puncto ad inferna descendunt. Sanctus Beda, Super Divi Jacobi Epistolam, Caput IV Source: Migne PL 93 35b-c

What is your life? It is a mist appearing for a moment and in the next disappearing. 1 He does not say 'our life' but 'what is your life'. Because the righteous truly begin to live when they come to the end of this life. 'The enemies of the Lord were quickly honoured and exalted and they passed away like smoke passes away.' 2 It should not be thought that this has the same meaning as what the impious say concerning themselves in the book of Wisdom: 'Because from nothing we are born, and after we shall be as if we were not. Because smoke is blown out our nostrils and reason is a spark caused by the beating of the heart, which ceasing the body becomes ash and the spirit passes away into the air. 3 These things indeed they think to themselves, who believe that they have no life but this one, saying with Epicurus: 'After death there is nothing and death itself is nothing.' Which the blessed James brings forth that he teach that the life of the depraved is brief in the present, which yet in the future shall receive eternal death, according to which the blessed Job says, 'They spent their days among good things, and in a moment they fell into hell.' 4 Saint Bede, from the Commentary on the Letter of Saint James, Chapter 4   1Jam 4.14 2 Ps 36.20 3 Wis 2.3,2 4 Job 21.13