Ezekiel 2:2-5
Psalm 123:1-4
2 Corinthians 12:7-10
Mark 6:1-6

The Good Life

Last week, we considered the tens of millions of people who have reported the beginning of a journey into light. They have told of a joyfulness until you felt that your heart would burst! A button-popping happiness! But they did not continue that journey. One man told me that he could hear his son calling to him and weeping. "Dad, Dad!" He turned to look behind him, and the light died down, so he returned to the light, and it amplified again, and his happiness increased. But his son continued crying, and he told himself, "I'll just tell him that I'm alright and then I'll back here." It was then that the picture changed decisively: his grown son calling to him and medics on their knees compressing his chest with CPR. This man had died .... and then returned. Billions have experienced it, and a much smaller fraction have told their story in interviews, in writing books, or simply entering their account in a database of so-called "near death" or "after death" experiences. These have become quite common with the advent of CPR in 1960 and then mainstreaming with so many people being trained by 1970.

Each one of these stories remind us of something we seemed bent on forgetting: that there is only a process of life, for God, our Creator, is life. And what we call death, focusing as we do primarily on bodily remains, is no more than a gateway out of this life, which is bounded by time and space, and into eternity, with God.

Why is it that the most wonderful property of God's human creatures is the one thing we rarely discuss .... if at all? Human creatures are made in God's eternal Image; are "godlike in their apprehensions," says Hamlet; and were made to live forever. In a world that is constantly passing away like a puff of smoke and then vanishes, one species cannot be dimmed. For these God made to be close to Him, Who is the burning point of life.

Jesus did not go about healing per se. But rather the Kingdom of Heaven radiated out of Him, and those who drew near were bathed in that light and by that fact were healed. One woman suffering twelve years from a debilitating disease said, "If I could but touch the hem of His garment, I would be made whole." And she was.

We must remember that St. Paul suffered from a thorn in his side that the Lord chose not to remove. And disease must remain a mystery whose purposes are known only to God. No, Jesus did not come into the world to heal disease. It is the other way around: where the Kingdom of Heaven draws near, there can be no death or disease, for Heaven is only life and wholeness. Jesus' eyes were fixed on a higher ground. He was sent into a world of death and disease, which was an outcome of a great divorce: the parting of humankind from the only love that could ever count, which is God's. To heal this divorce was our Lord's only aim and to help us become unattached from the so-called life on this earth: He said,

What other animal could attain to holiness? Certainly, a single afternoon spent with any other creature would quickly dispel any Disney-fied illusions concerning the putative holiness of dogs or cats or cattle or pigs. I am a farmer living among wild boars who eat their young, who dig up their "brothers" and "sisters" and eat their rotting flesh. I am a man of the earth and mud who knows the ways of dogs. Animals attaining to goodness? No. The real nature of nature is a food-chain, a cruel mating game, and a brief and harsh life on earth.

What we call beauty on the earth — whether it be the nobility of humans beings; the many-colored splendor of birds; the gorgeous prospects of mountains, cataracts, and valleys seen from a mountain top; the crashing surf — these are the vestiges of paradise, which point to our world perfected, which is Heaven: to lay on a grassy sward at night and gaze upon the stars .... without ants crawling into your pants, without mosquitos biting your arms and legs, without nettles or stones afflicting your back. A perfect earth. And to know the divine course of moral life on earth, with its ever-upward road leading closer and closer to God? Only humans can experience the fullness of this.

It should not surprise us then as we move on to a most remarkable human attribute: No human creature can die. For each human was made to be permanent. "Wait!" you say. Have I not read the Last Four Things?! "Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell!" Yes, I have read them. And certainly I accept and believe them and have spent my entire adult life meditating upon them as I have all of the dogmatic teaching that I receive and cherish. But I understand this word Death to be a demarcation between the implied word on the left, which is "Life," and to the two words on the right "Heaven" or "Hell." No one will dispute that Heaven signifies eternal life. And I hope that no one suffers under the delusion that Hell signifies the hideous finitude of death. I have heard people say, "What does it matter? I will be dead and won't know anything." No. That is not the way it is. You see, our bodily remains are a brief illusion. Bodily remains are the ultimate example of dandruff: dead skin which has dropped off so that new life might have its place under a perfect sun, which never burns but only warms. Our remains (or cre-mains, these days) have nothing to do with death. Among the Last Four Things, "Death" is a threshold word, like "Judgment." The other key words are destinations. Life on earth is a temporary destination. Heaven and Hell are eternal destinations. Heaven signifies life spent eternally close to God in a state of light and goodness, for God alone is good. Hell signifies life spent eternally distant, even cut-off, from God in a state of darkness and without hope, for God alone is hope. Pope St. John Paul II, in his book Crossing the Threshold of Hope, defined Hell as "eternal separation from God." Period. When I hear people pray that they might have eternal life, I want to say, Redirect your prayers, my friend! For you already have eternal life. The question is, Where will you have it?

Last week, I reflected upon those who have fixed their eyes upon God every day, who love God every day, and, then, who come to God at the end of their days. What could be more simple? And what could be more .... good? As a hospital chaplain at a Catholic medical center, I actually watched people leave this life and enter the gate of Heaven. One woman stirred from there three-day "coma," sat up in bed, and with tears of joy streaming down her face, saw her predeceased husband waiting for her at the gate. She held out her hand, said, "Robert!" and took her leave from this world.

I flinch to report (and I don't discuss it often) that I have also personally witnessed people leaving this world thrashing and screaming. One, an ordained minister, was quite evidently being dragged off to Hell by demons before my very eyes and the eyes of everyone else in that room. These first-hand witnesses had no doubt as to what they were seeing. He had entered a hospice with an air of (dare I say) importance and anticipated that his "death scene" would be a splendid performance. But what awaited him was something that was beyond him, something he could not control, for his whole life had led to it, and the work of a lifetime could not be undone in one instant. God desired his goodness, but God was to be refused, denied, and, in the end, rejected.

All of us are surrounded by these many scenes of departure. We spend our lifetimes reflecting on them. And I am always left with the simplicity of God's plan. He made us to be good and rewards our goodness, even favoring us with glimpses of Heaven. He marks the path for us and guides our every step and then receives us like beloved children returning home at the end. We need only follow the well-lighted path before us. Yes, our freedom grants us unparalleled opportunities to explore and discover and achieve ... all within the bounds of goodness.

He also clearly marks the path that we call straying. For which couple would ever know AIDS or the several other incurable STDs if they had followed the course of goodness? Which marriage would not be happy if the bride and groom had been steadfast in loving and cherishing and protecting each other? Which child does not grow up to be a splendid young man or woman who has been reared in a secure home of goodness, kindness, and enlightened moral example? I recently read a Roman Catholic cardinal who observed that among the many men at the center of these mass shootings in the U.S., not a single shooter had been brought up by a father. Not one. Which life does not succeed in balance and happiness and peace which is spent within the wonderful garden God has fashioned for each of us? That garden is called goodness. And I tell you that if this pleasant place is kept, if it is cherished and reverenced, if its sturdy walls are not breached, then the lives that grow and develop there, will be good lives, even lives that inspire others.

I spent much of my life living in the world's most broken places: in the slums of Baltimore, where I worked closely with young men and young women living in circumstances of depravity; in the aftermath of lives reared in the ghettoes of Newark, where my mother grew up and where my father's family all came from; and all of us at the Hermitage spent many years serving the Catholic Apostolate in prostrate Haiti. Do you know the desperate life that is lived and carried out at the bottom of the world's food-chain? Yet, in each one of these places, I have also seen the sovereign space of goodness that has been formed when one draws a line around one's life, a circle that cannot be transgressed. "I will not let a dog-pack mentality rob me of my integrity," the good man says. "I will not permit this depraved life to demean me and drag me down to its level," says the good woman. "I may languish in poverty, but my soul will not languish in Hell." And I have been on my knees in Haitian churches observing tears of joy streaming down the faces of the poor while the priest elevates the Host high above his head, ..... holding it there for a very long time. I recall one priest who would support his right hand with this left conveying the awesome weight that he held there. For these are the moments of life — sweet, sweet life.

Here at the Hermitage, I am surrounded by goodness thanks to the sisters: charitableness, kindness, patience, moral virtue, devout life, selflessness, thoughtfulness, mindfulness of God. I know the Good Life first-hand ... by the grace of Almighty God.

May I commend it to you. As the bumper sticker says, "Just do it." For no matter where we are, no matter what may surround us or hold us down, God holds out this only-important gift, and He ensures that it is well within our reach. In today's Gospel, Jesus marveled at their unbelief. Receive this gift from God, which is His love and care! Hold on to it! Grapple it your soul with hoops of steel! And never, never, ever let it go!

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.