From the bulletin for The Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Jul 28, 2024)
The Eschatological Adventure, Part 3: “It is appointed that human beings die once, and after this…”
[Note: So many saw through our author’s attempt at anonymity that we’ve decided to scrap the pseudonym. Now back to our thrilling adventure!]
Eager Louis’ soul had never been separated from his body before. The experience was… different.
Few appreciate just how much of “us” the body is. Somewhere St. Paul declares that “in this tent we groan, longing to be further clothed with our heavenly habitation so that by putting it on we may not be found naked.” Having put off his earthly tent, but not yet finding his heavenly habitation, Eager found himself very much naked.
With one snip of the mortal coil, his soul had been shorn of its whole material apparatus. The body with its limbs and power of movement; the senses, upon which man is utterly dependent for information, for connection with other creatures; the sensible soul, with its powers of imagination, estimation, and… dear Lord, memory! … gone. His whole person was suddenly confined to intellect and will in the present moment, nothing more. Intellect at the mercy of what a Light from beyond chose to shine upon it; will “stuck,” like the throttle of a speed boat, in the volitional commitments with which he breathed his last.
It was not what he would have imagined, could he still imagine. In life, Eager had always assumed that upon death he would find himself looking back on his cooling relics, as his soul, resembling very much a transparent copy of his body or perhaps a ball of light, began to float upwards towards the beckoning beyond, the eyes of the heart now open to all that is usually hidden from mortal gaze: angels and demons darting to and fro, rays of grace shimmering down from above, and human spirits headed upwards or downwards or remaining gloomily behind. None of that. Not even the memory of that expectation. He knew that he was, and he knew that he wasn’t much; that was about it.
Well, there was something else. Truth be told, Eager’s experience was not primarily of his own being. He was overwhelmingly aware of his being before a Presence.
It was Another: strangely familiar, and yet totally Other. Like one with whom he had been in dialogue his whole existence and yet was meeting for the first time. One who filled his deepest depths, and yet… there was yet a distance.
In that first instant, Eager’s soul was aware of the following truths, as tangible as a Carolyn Hall table and more so. First, that whatever he was, he was as nothing compared to this One who Is. Second, that his whole self had significance only in relation to that One, to whom Eager sensed that he owed everything, One Who owned everything. Third, and most consolingly, Eager knew himself to be loved by this Other: known by, connected to, willed, wanted. And fourth–and this he experienced as a tremendously undeserved and yet entirely comforting gift–he knew that he loved that Other, whom he understood was God.
In that “light”, in that Gaze, Eager “heard” his name spoken. It was a new name, ineffable, and spoken for the first time. How marvelous, how well it fit!
A part of Eager’s soul surged forward towards the One. “Here I am!” his being seemed to cry out in response. At the same time, however, a part resisted as if paralyzed, unwilling to draw closer. There was peace and desire, but also aversion and shame.
Eager Louis’ soul now lay naked in the light of the divine gaze Itself. His whole person–or rather, the core of it that remained–was shown for what it was. In life he had always been more or less self-deceived about his condition. Now there were no more masks, no pretensions, and no escape. For the first time, Eager knew himself even as he was fully known. Fully revealed.
No earthly comparison will really do. But it was as though his soul was a gemstone. Perhaps a tree. Its branches, or facets, were formed by the love he was habitually harboring when it left the body; its bulk (its brilliance?) was the result of a power not his own that seemed to abide and enliven from within. Intuitively, Eager understood that his whole being was a gift to be given back to its Giver. Whatever he had received, he was now the sum total of all his deliberate decisions. Each act of the will–some more than others, and the last most of all–had contributed to the “shape” he now exhibited, the array of “branches” that extended from the trunk of his being.
He had been more or less malleable during life, free to grow this way or that. But now the fruit had been picked. The stem clipped from the vine, cut from the root. He felt himself now…integrated… and in the hand of the Grower. A vase fresh from the kiln and now under the expert eye of the Potter, being seen.
It was… his particular judgment!
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