The Fountain of Youth was once elusive. This legend of restorative waters has flowed throughout human history, capturing the collective imagination from age to age. Although many explorers searched for this Fountain, their failure has left the desire for eternal youth unquenched . . . that is, until now.
Botox. Fillers. Peptide Injections: the modern Fountain of Youth. Everywhere we look, this Fountain advertises quick fixes to avoid our inevitable geriatric fate. The Fountain promises: “if you yearn to reverse the clock on worry lines, I can do that. If you disdain your sagging jowls for exposing your Social Security eligibility, I can fix that too. If you want to put on muscle, order a Pumpkin Spice Latte, now pumped full of 18 grams of protein per beverage!” It whispers “if you look young, then you can stay young; you can live forever”.
Since the explorers of yore never found the Fountain, we have decided to craft our own. Who can blame us? To remain pain-free while playing with the kids, to have energy at home after a day’s work, to enjoy an active retirement—these are all good things. Medical advancements are a marvel of modern science we should embrace, both for ourselves and those we love.
But unnecessary treatments for skin-deep “longevity” have become our culture’s new mode of “laying up for ourselves treasures on earth” (See Matt 6:19). We cry, “‘Give me this water, that I may not thirst’”(Jn 4:15), yearning for restored youth and craving a renewal of our lost vim and vigor.
We know deep inside that “‘Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again’” (Jn 4:13), and yet we continue to stumble back to the fountain of bodily preservatives, propelled by the quiet lie that its artificial stream could grant our innermost desire: eternal life.
Our obsession with cosmetic procedures is a symptom of a deeper ailment: We fear death. In the beginning, God made man with a unified body and a soul, a being that would not experience corruption. Now, because of our sinful state, we experience a progressive breaking down of our bodies and, at the moment of death, we will have our souls torn from our bodies. This gruesome mangling of our humanity should render us frightened.
Earlier this week, we celebrated our heavenly brethren on the feast of All Saints and remembered the faithful departed on All Souls Day. Primarily, these feasts are moments for saintly intercession and prayers for the dead. Yet these days should also refocus our gaze on our own mortality. No amount of wealth, notoriety, philanthropy, or even age-defying surgeries will erase our fast-approaching death date.
Death may be rushing towards us, but there is hope. As Christians we accept death as a necessary component of our journey towards sanctification. Instead of ignoring death through interventions to our decaying facades, God desires to give us a deeper “surgery” of the soul. He promises to remove our “heart of stone and give [us] a heart of flesh” (Ez 36:26), and the final earthly act of this procedure must take place in the anesthetic slumber of death. Rather than being the end of life, our death is the necessary passage to eternal life with Christ.
There is good news: unlike the long-dead explorers, we have access to an everlasting fountain of youth. Instead of the man-made fountain promised to us, we ought to embrace death and cling to Christ who offers “a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (Jn 4:14). We can cry “Come thou fount of every blessing” because Jesus himself is our fountain. He will quench our thirst and, at the end of the age, restore our lost youth in the resurrection, where we find new life with him forever.
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