À Dieu la vie! ¡A Díos la vida! A Dio la vita! French, Spanish, and Italian offer a fantastic play on words for this issue's theme, Death and the Afterlife. It is not an easy subject to tackle - one might even say it is hushed. Catechetical activities and even some funeral homilies do not always feature this topic in a way that sheds light on it for us mortals (pardon the pun).

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We believe in a God of revelation: a God who desires to be known. It is part of who we are as spiritual beings to pay attention, receive, and experience this revelation as fully as we can. Perhaps there is no time more challenging to do this than when we face our own death or the death of a loved one. We may face within ourselves all kinds of questions: existential questions about who we are and whether our life has meaning and also whose we are, whom we are connected to and loved by. One of these foundational connections is our relationship with God.

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In 1997, I wrote an article that was published in Liturgie, foi et culture, which I called "Eschatologie et liturgie chrétienne: Le retour vers le futur,"² inspired by the 1995 film Back to the Future. In it I explored some of the eschatological connections between Christian liturgy and the sacraments of initiation, those of reconciliation, the liturgical year, and, pre-eminently, the Eucharist. Within the entire liturgical life of theChurch,which is summarized most succinctly in the Eucharistic memorial/anamnesis, we are actually remembering what has yet to come. In other words, paradoxically, we look back, as it were, to the future.

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