The love of God is eternal, supernatural, overflowing, abounding, powerful, everlasting, inseparable, without fear, beyond knowledge, a mystery. Why we are afraid of God is a mystery to me.

We suffer from tunnel vision when it comes to our faults. We see only the bad things we do. We forget all that we have done that is righteous and holy. Retired people and seniors are especially prone to this.

It is easy to forget 40 or 50 years of active service in job and family life when we are faced with inactivity, even if this is health related. Sometimes it is God who has sidelined us, put us on the bench. “They also serve who only stand and wait,” Milton.

As for our faults? God created us even though he knew we would fall. He wants to share eternity with us. After we messed up, God sent a Saviour to put us back on track.

We can be washed in the blood of Christ by turning to him, like Dismas on the cross who said, “Remember me when you come into your Kingdom”. And Jesus will already be with us, in our hearts.

Through our Baptism we share in the life and mission of Christ. In the Creed we talk of our beliefs in the final things: “the communion of Saints, the forgiveness of sins, the Resurrection of the body and life everlasting”. The Communion of Saints, a concept that most Christians accept, gives us great consolation.

We are united in Christ’s body, which is made up of the Saints in heaven, the faithful on earth and those who have died who still need healing. By being in communion with them, we have great hope for reconciliation with and for those being born to eternal life.

In his article “The Communion of Saints” theologian Ron Rolheiser says: “To believe in the communion of saints is to believe that those who have died are still alive and are linked to us in such a way that we can continue to talk with them, that our relationship with them can continue to grow, and that the reconciliation that wasn’t possible before their deaths can now occur…death brings a peace, a clarity, and a charity, that were not possible before.”

Rolheiser continues, “There is still time after death, on both sides, for reconciliation and healing to happen because inside the communion of saints we have privileged access to each other, and there we can finally speak all of those words that we couldn’t speak before. We can reach across death’s divide…happily, there’s time still after death for this to happen for those of us…who end up dying with some bitterness, anger, wound, and frustration still gnawing away”.

This gives us great hope and purpose even when our body fails because of age or sickness. Our prayers and sufferings, united with Christ, are incense rising to God in atonement for sin.

KEN ROLHEISER
Guest Columnist