From the Heart of the Shepherd

From the bulletin for The Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time (2026 August 16)

20th Sunday - The Eschatological Adventure, Revisited: Epilogue

[Author’s note: during the summers of 2024 and 2025, respectively, this venerable publication ran parts 1 and 2 of the Eschatological Adventure, a fictional envisioning of the last things for the individual (Part 1) and for the cosmos as a whole (Part 2). Though those hoping for a Part 3 this summer were disappointed (all two of them!), during my travels I have been revising the text with the helpful input of some charitable parishioners who indulge their pastor’s authorial illusions. On the occasion of Our Lady’s Assumption, this epilogue, which otherwise has no business being run in the parish bulletin, serves to direct our thoughts onwards and upwards into heavenly glory.]

Twelve thousand and fifty two. For the interested reader, that is how many cycles it took from the dawning of the new creation for the saints known in time as Eager Louis and Jolianna to have their first heart-to-heart conversation in heaven. By “cycle” we mean the heavenly equivalent of what we now call “years.” For though there was no more sun or moon or the settings thereof, for the Lamb was the light of all the saints and around Him everything revolved, there was not, for that reason, any less regularity and recurrence in the progression of things. On the contrary, the complex of days and weeks, months and years that frames our life now is only a preparation for the supremely beautifully harmonious and ordered unfolding of the great pageant of the saints. The clockworklike revolutions of a Victorian-era ballroom suggests something of the reality, as a two-dimensional pencil sketch suggests the laugh of one’s beloved. Indeed, the heavenly processing into eternity was like a spiral, circling ever upward into the heights of elation and, at the same time, downward into the very depths of the divinity. The axis around which this cycle turned was, of course, God himself, who was both the focal point and conductor of the utterly unhurried waltz of the saints. And with each new turn, each “cycle” (our words, of course, fail miserably), the saints encountered Him as if for the first time as the Ever Ancient, Ever New, beholding some previously unseen aspect of His beauteous Being in the shared and yet uniquely-personal apprehension each had of His infinitude. 

The movement of the saints in paradise can be understood on analogy with the “dance” of the planets around the sun; it can also be understood as a rotation of one-on-one conversations – something like speed dating, but without any anxiety, desperation, or disappointment. If one can taste something in this life of the pleasure of a good conversation – a sharing of hearts, through which the participants come to know themselves, and each other, and their subject of conversation better as they delight in the good that each is and has and which they now share – how much more intense and pure and possible is this pleasure in heaven! Each saint sharing with the other his or her insight into God, and together arriving at new insights as their individual perspectives combine like colors or rather like light to produce new hues and deeper knowledge. Those perspectives, of course, are informed by previous conversations with other saints, whose insights each one has assimilated and personalized, as an artist integrates various influences into his or her own unique style and message. And, most delightfully, though each one’s perspective (or rather, the message that each one is about God, the “name” each one bears and shares and is about Him) is wholly distinctive and original, there was never any discord or disagreement. All is harmony; all is mutually illuminating and complementary. 

Twelve thousand cycles may seem like a long “time,” especially if one considers that a single saintly “conversation,” a sole movement in the heavenly dance, might be the equivalent of a first-creation century, a mortal lifetime, involving the full development of a person, the exhausting of what one has to say. But Jolianna and Eager, now known by their new and presently ineffable names, were hardly avoiding each other. Each was perfectly aware of the other by means of their knowledge of all things in God, their sharing in His very Knowledge. In fact, they had been peacefully anticipating the arrival of their first heavenly intercourse, even as they delighted to contemplate God’s masterwork in each of the millions of saints with whom they dialogued beforehand. 

What was it like when they finally “met”? Perhaps we could compare it to two old friends meeting on a park bench after many years. Except that they simply gaze, with great love and radiant faces, if not to say tears of joy (were they possible in heaven), into each other’s souls for an eon, before bidding each other farewell with a knowing look and a reverent nod. For heaven is not so much about saying as it is about seeing. They did not speak about how their mortal lives were intertwined in the plan of God (though that connection was far less tenuous than it may seem to us). For there “the former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.” Rather, they each beheld God in the other. They listened, with expert ear, to what the Word of God was uttering about Himself through the person of the other, the unique and harmonious note that both he and she contributed to the heavenly symphony, appreciating that note for what it was in itself and for how it enriched and fit into the whole. It was an act of worship, really, as well as contemplation and appreciation, revelling in and reverencing the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit revealed in the divine resemblance found in their children. And then, when that segment of the waltz was over, that movement of the symphony concluded, they parted ways, more united than ever, until the heavenly rotation should bring them face to face again, and again, unto ages unending, Amen.

From the Heart of the Shepherd: Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time