We are made for Heaven; count on it.
And that means everybody; believe it.
Jesus said it. “I’m dying for you all. Where I am you will be, and all your family and friends. I’ll be there,” He said, “and we’ll have lunch together, when you get tired of all your traveling around creation.”
“It was great wasn’t it,” Jesus said, “what you saw. You thought that you’d been lucky just to go to Devils Lake for your wedding trip. Later, when you retired, imagine, you took a Caribbean cruise. That was nice, nothing but blue sky and emerald blue water. You didn’t get sick or anything. Maybe you didn’t drink the water.”
And the conversation with Jesus goes on. You can stay as long as you like at your table in Heaven. There’s real good service. No registering for an opening and then waiting.
Why do I think of this?
First, I’ve just got the list of my friends who went to Heaven this past year from only one Reservation, 81 of them. I was ordained in 1942; you do the math. I baptized some of them. I married others, and I had first Confession and gave first Communion to a lot. (The sisters took care of the preparation for Confirmation. They were better teachers of children than I was.)
Memories crowd on me. Listen to this one. It was 1944 or 45. Leon and Agnes were to be married. The families had chosen a Tuesday. Leon got a short furlough. He came home sharp and ready. We had our meeting and one “calling out” in church, as we used to say.
Monday night, there was a strong knock at the door. I opened it.
There stood Leon, blazing. Here’s a service man, used to taking orders and following them. He has a story. His chest is heaving. “We can’t get married tomorrow.”
“What? Why not?”
“The day I got home Agnes and I went and had our blood tested. The doctor said he’d send it to Fargo right away. Today I went to get the license. But I couldn’t get it. That @@##!! forgot to send it in. He forgot!!”
I held him, while he swore and cried, “Can we do it on Saturday? Help me get an extension. Agnes’ mother and my mother had all the food ready. Please I hope we can do it.”
Leon is on the list of deceased this past year. His wife, a wonderfully talented musician and dancer died in April 1999. Leon was one of the last Cree/Ojibwa Talkers.
Memories of men like that prompt me to take up with joy the preparation for my seeing them again. A homecoming and our re-union will be memorable.
See, I am 87. I’ve been writing for newspapers and have been on the radio for a long time. On radio I began my “slow down” months ago.
My voice, somehow damaged from pneumonia, was irritating even to me. It wasn’t any longer the right vehicle for sharing the Good News. Colleen, my partner, your hear her voice when you call Blue Cloud, did her best to mix and cover up the scratches, but at last it was just too much. A person should know his limits.
Not long after that I approached Brother Benet, the monk among us at Blue Cloud who assigns the task of reading for the community during our evening meal. St. Benedict had the same problem with readers years ago. He has a short few paragraphs about the table reader. “No one should presume to read who shall have merely taken up the book.” I knew how he’d feel about my laying down the book.
Do you remember one of our men that I wrote about earlier, Brother Peter Sperber, OSB? He took up ministry to the sick and dying at McKennan Hospital. When he approached the end of his life, he said, “Death is a series of little losses.”
Next I went to Father George Lyon, OSB, our prior, who assigns the daily Mass celebration. “Father, I feel that I should no longer try to take my turn at offering Mass for the community.” He agreed. So now I worship in silence.
Silence. It’s golden, they say, and powerful. I learned long ago from my dad that there’s a time for silence.
“Don’t interrupt. Wait your turn. Listen. You’ll learn some-thing.”
It’s what I heard, too, from Clem Wounded Knee in 1939, when, though fresh from years in Rome, I found I was junior to the elders at Crow Creek. I’ve done a lot of listening since then. I’m ready now to take it up full time.
Let’s sign up for the homecoming with Leon and Agnes and Eli and Gloria and.......can you finish the list?