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| My Spirit Rises to the world that is invisible and arriving there is embraced by amber light. By Dcn. Robert Lackney 2021 |
As Christians our greatest hope is the promise of our Lord,
Jesus Christ who said in the Gospel of St. John: “For God so loved the world
that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not
perish but might have eternal life.” (John 3:16b) Those of us who
have seriously considered that promise may instinctively simplify it thinking; “When
I die (or one whom I love dies), we will go to heaven and be with God forever.”
If we consider that concept “eternal life” or “live forever with God” we can easily
come to believe, especially for those of us who have had difficult lives financially
of physically, that this would not be something all that desirable. I recall Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical Spe
Salvi in which the Holy Father stated:
“But then the question arises: do we really want this—to
live eternally? Perhaps many people reject the faith today simply because they
do not find the prospect of eternal life attractive. What they desire is not
eternal life at all, but this present life, for which faith in eternal life
seems something of an impediment. To continue living for ever
—endlessly—appears more like a curse than a gift. Death, admittedly, one would
wish to postpone for as long as possible. But to live always, without end—this,
all things considered, can only be monotonous and ultimately unbearable.”[1]
He goes on to quote St. Ambrose who said at the funeral for his brother: “Death
was not part of nature; it became part of nature. God did not decree death from
the beginning; he prescribed it as a remedy. Human life, because of sin ...
began to experience the burden of wretchedness in unremitting labour and
unbearable sorrow. There had to be a limit to its evils; death had to restore
what life had forfeited. Without the assistance of grace, immortality is more
of a burden than a blessing” [2]
People of faith take for granted that we cannot know and
understand the mind and workings of God.
It has long been said that Eternal Life is not the same as our mortal existence. Life in heaven exists outside the physical
principles that govern our understanding of space-time. Because we have applied
our own earthly temporal world view when we consider those who have gone before
us, we cannot help but think of things like Eternal Life and purgatory in those
terms. Afterall, we pray for the souls
in purgatory and are told that our prayers help those in that purifying process
which implies there is a time sense or some kind of period of the sentence
souls receive in purgatory. We also pray
for the souls of those who have died that their souls make it to heaven, again
as if there was a transitory time associated with the spirit leaving the body
and arriving at the pearly gates.
While doing the Divine Office today, I was struck by the
non-biblical reading from St. Augustine’s letter to Proba. In speaking of our time in heaven he says: “There, the days do not come and go in succession,
and the beginning of one day does not mean the end of another; all days are
one, simultaneously and without end, and the life lived out in these days has
itself no end.” It is like being on a space craft going at the speed of
light. Time dilates until it stands
still and we are frozen in a state of ecstasy.
It is up to faith then to provide the leap that leads us to
hope in that promise. The best definition for faith comes from Scripture of
course and is found in the Hebrews
11:1 “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of
things not seen.” Ultimately that requires us to have faith that the soul, that
element of consciousness that makes us the unique independent entity that we
are, can exist without the physical, biological us that is tied to this plane
of existence. There is plenty of
scientific evidence to prove that there is such a metaphysical plane. A study done by Johns Hopkins University
found that 40% of individuals who were medically dead and then resuscitated had
what are known as “near death experiences.”
They described events they could not have known about – the deaf heard, the
blind saw. We have been told time and again in Sacred Scripture that the Savior
promised us a home with his Father. We
must grab onto our Savior’s promise and have the hope and peace our God has
wanted for us from the beginning of all things.
[1]
Spe Salvi 10.
[2] De
excessu fratris sui Satyri, II, 47: CSEL 73, 274.
Comment from David Faulkner, proofreader and colleague:
I am standing upon the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the ocean.
She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until at length
she hangs like a speck of white cloud
just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says: “There, she is gone!”
“Gone where?”
Gone from my sight. That is all.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her.
And just at the moment when someone at my side says:
“There, she is gone!”
there are other eyes watching her coming,
and other voices ready to take up the glad shout:
“Here she comes!”
And that is dying.
