The Days are Coming

Lo, the day is coming, blazing like an oven,
when all the proud and all evildoers will be stubble,
and the day that is coming will set them on fire,
leaving them neither root nor branch,
says the LORD of hosts.

The air is full of the eschaton these days. Swirling leaves and quickening hours
The readings are full of the eschaton these days
The four last things
Death and Judgment, Heaven and Hell

Needless to say as a child I worried a lot about Hell
I wasn’t a particularly virtuous child
I was always getting into trouble
Christmas every year was a complete terror as I was usually naughty and never nice

My grandmother was constantly telling me that if I didn’t change my ways I would end up where the fire is never quenched and the worm dieth not
How I kept from becoming I serial killer I do not know

Perhaps we all fear hell, death, judgment
But a confessor in my younger years once told me that if you fear hell, you will not go there.
While I am not so sure of the soundness of the doctrine, frankly, I’m going with it.

These days …
I think about Heaven a lot.
I suppose we all do especially as we get a bit umm older
I wonder who goes to heaven and who doesn’t?

We all speculate

Not about the obvious people of course
St. Joseph
St. Francis
Mother Teresa
The Pope

Instead, I wonder about people like my Aunt Pearl

Aunt Pearl was my grandfather’s sister
When I was 8 years old, she was about 240 years old

Aunt Pearl was the bane of the cousins’ existence

First of all she always smelled like mothballs and that icky powder that old ladies wore
She applied this powder to her face very liberally and painted on her rosy cheeks and lips
She always wore the same coat, a molting mink that had been alive at some eon before the process of evolution got underway

She smelt and she shedded

And she was stingy
Every year for Christmas or our birthdays, she would send us the same present, a dime taped to an index card

And whenever she came over to the house, usually on Thanksgiving and Christmas she would gather us round and say.
Aunt Pearl has a treat for you
And she would produce from her ubiquitous patent leather pocketbook a stick of juicy fruit gum which she would then divide among her miniature mendicants

An eighth of a stick of gum and eleven dimes is the pearline legacy so …

Yes I wonder if Aunt Pearl got to heaven

Because when push comes to shove is that not what we are really longing for?
To escape Hell and find our way to heaven, perhaps with a pit stop in purgatory?

We live our lives in the anticipation that amid the swirling leaves, the biting winds, the darkening days, the decay of the year, there is HOPE.

Hope that the pain and anxiety which we hold so closely to our hearts will evaporate in the twinkling of an eye
Hope that all our woundedness, our past, our sins will vanish in the wind like the acrid smoke of waning days and burning leaves
Hope that we can rise above the tenacious aimlessness of this world, rise to power, self power, God-like power, the power of saints

Hope that there is a place where all doubts are removed
Where all hurts are healed
Where all victims are made complete
All sinners forgiven
All enveloped in the all in all

In these waning days of the year, in this season of the eschaton

We are reminded that we continue to take part in a cosmic drama
That surrounded by the mundane and the fading, we are nevertheless pressing on to Glory

Glory that crests the eastern sky with the bright transcendence of another dawn
Glory that caresses with calloused hands those jasper walls, those golden gates of promise
Glory that creates in us new visions, fresh dreams, fiery energy to press forward to serve the needs of all: By your perseverance you will secure your lives

And in that Glory, we shall be reunited with all those who have gone before
In that Glory, failure and portends of hell will be transmogrified into the blessed assurance of immortality

In that Glory we will see him face to face as we enter into the fulfillment of the Incarnation
It is the very glory that comes to us now at this altar
The glory of the Host transcending all trepidation, rising toward New Jerusalem now alive in us
In that Glory we shall be, we are surrounded by Francises and Teresas and Josephs and Johns and Pauls and all the saints arrayed in their wedding garments
They call out to us even now of that coming day

And on that day, on that day I hope to see old aunt pearl again, in a brand new coat

And on that day I hope that at last I can get a whole stick of gum


Lo, the day is coming, blazing like an oven,
when all the proud and all evildoers will be stubble,
and the day that is coming will set them on fire,
leaving them neither root nor branch,
says the LORD of hosts.
But for you who fear my name, there will arise
the sun of justice with its healing rays.