Love You Forever

It is intimidating to think how much God loves us. "In Him we live and move and have our being." That is what God’s love means. We can pretend it isn't true but that changes nothing. Even though we know the truth, sometimes we say to ourselves, "If only I could see Him, then I would believe!"

But we can see him! He has given us others to be His visible self in our lives. And we ourselves are called to show God's love in the world. As we walk "through the shadow of death" we need others, and others need us.

We are blessed if we are able to accompany someone as they approach the moment when they will be able to see God face to face. Don't miss the chance to be close to Heaven's door. Don't miss the chance to love someone into God's arms.

By Laura Weston, deacon Michael's widow

IF YOU LIKE, READ ALONG AS YOU LISTEN:

Have you ever been watching television and what's on television aggravates you enough that you start talking or yelling at the television?

One of the great changes in the world in my lifetime is, it used to be if something like that came up with one of my parents, instead of getting the channel changer they'd say, "Michael, go change it to a different channel." (Back when there were no remotes.)

That's really made a profound change in the world.

I was remembering one time I was reading a book. Now this is embarrassing enough, but I was talking to the book! I go, "You almost have it! You almost have it!" It was very frustrating.

And people were looking at me… my wife… seeing me talking to a book going, "What's wrong with you?"

It's a very fundamental issue that we have. A very important fundamental issue. I talk about it: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit flows from the relationship of the Father and Son. The Father and Son, by definition of the very words, are in relationship.

Jesus comes to the world and brings us into relationship with God. He dies for us, his friends. He uses all these wonderful words.

We get into the wonder of matrimony. We get into the wonder of all life. I was talking yesterday with Mayve about seeing a grandchild for the first time. And believe me that they’re smiling. And everybody else, the smart people, not like you and me, believe they’re are just burping. No.

There is an aspect that our society tends to ignore. No, I take that back. Goes to an incredible length to ignore. And it is such a loss to our society. It is such a loss to the world that we try so hard to avoid this relationship. And it is the relationship between one person and another person when that other person is sick and/or dying. We don't want to deal with that aspect of the world.

It's icky! It's uncomfortable! It is something that is unpleasant!

Betty, we have a friend of yours, she's at the hospital, she's dying. She's got tubes with chemotherapy. Her face is bloated. She's uncomfortable. She's crying. She's afraid. Do you want to go visit her?

We're afraid of that relationship. Robert, Margene, their spouses were dying. They participated in that relationship. It wasn't easy. It's hard. It is a very difficult relationship with which to deal.

It is wonderful to be married to a young, beautiful woman. Ah, the relationship, and the wonderful existential feeling of the relationship of love coming from God through your spouse. Oh, what a wonderful thing.

But that person gets old. That person many times dies after suffering. At that's what we lose in our society right now.

Jeff gets old, so we put him off in a warehouse for old people. His children don't come and visit him. I'm presuming Mayve is gone by then. He's in a warehouse. No one visits him.

But what do we lose? What do we lose in this relationship? We lose the transcendental nature of God, because God is a participant in everything that we experience. And how can anything be more transcending to experience than the process of dying?

We Catholics believe in the communion of saints. We believe that there is a relationship that continues among the living and the dead, except in the instances where when that person was alive and he or she lived such a horrible life that he or she cut himself off from the communion of saints and from God and is in Hell forever.

Other than that, the communion of saints continues to exist.

I will guarantee to you that Margene, every single day of her life, and Robert every day of his life, are in communication with Dick and Fran.

And they go, "I loved her so much when she was here. But I love her so much now. She's not with me physically but I know she is there. I know that I participated in the transcendental relationship she had with God when she was dying and suffering.

When she changed her nature and went over. She died. The relationship did not end.

Robert, I've talked to him about it. He prays for her and he asks her to help him. That's the communion of saints.

I'm picking on Betty again. Once saved, always saved. When you're dead, it's over. You're saved. That's it. Then why is it when I go to a Protestant funeral, or I see someone that's a Protestant and I they lost a loved one and I say, "I will pray for your mother." I've never heard one say, "Nope, that's not necessary. Don't bother. She's already with God...don't bother."?

No. That's because we continue to be in this transcendental relationship, and that is a major fallacy of Protestantism. That's one reason I want you to be Catholic (speaking to Betty, who became Catholic soon after Michael died).

It is this relationship. I talk about the issue that everything that we do and experience, is part of God's gift to us. St. Matthew He talks about the separating of the sheep and the goats. Do we take care of the separating of the sheep and goats?

But there is something else. It is in this relationship represented by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in which we reach the transcendent in our lives and after our death.

We keep in the transcendence the love that we have in our lives which continues. And it is reflective of God's life in us that we love others.

And by allowing ourselves to block... to block ourselves from this important, crucial aspect of our human life, the transcending from life to death, that we allow ourselves to block is a great tragedy.

This is a Western society tragedy. It is an enormous tragedy that we're experiencing because we are losing at the most fundamental level that exists, a relationship with God.

Where can it be any more fundamental than when you are dying and you are coming forward to God and you see the face of God and not die.

And we deprive ourselves of that relationship. It's tragic.

This book that I was yelling at, it's called Tuesdays with Morey. Morey was a devout Jew and he discussed what was going on in his life as he was dying. And this man was writing about it and contemplating about it. And he got this close. He was almost there.

He was going, "What is the meaning of all this?" And the answer is simple. Jesus Christ, and He crucified.

And so, when we look at it from that perspective, when we allow ourselves to be separated from the suffering, of those we love especially, if we allow ourselves to be separated from death, we are losing the transcendent relationship that brings us face to face with God through His Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ.

And this is a tragedy of Western society. And you can trace many things to this lack of participation on our part in the transcendent nature of God.

It is something to be embraced and to love and like I said before, Robert and Margene will be embracing it the rest of their lives through Fran and Dick.

And each one of us who have lost someone has the ability to do exactly the same thing.

So, I have gone off topic completely, but sometimes they just grab you. And you go, can you not see the absolute wonder of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the transcendent moment of our lives? It’s transcendent when we are conceived and born but it is ultimately transcendent when we die.

July 10, 2019 2