Blessed are Those Who Have Not Seen & Have Believed

This past weekend as I was walking out of church I was asked by a fellow parishioner if I still had the “glow.” What he meant, of course, was if I still exhibited the glowing feeling after being baptized at Easter. I smiled and answered with a firm “yes.” I’m not sure whether my “glow” is actually visible to others, but I certainly still feel like I’m glowing from the inside out.

The account of Jesus’ baptism in the Bible is an extraordinarily vivid one. After John the Baptist dipped him into the waters of the Jordan, Jesus “came up from the water and behold, the heavens were opened for him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming upon him.” I like the concrete image of the dove because it impresses on one the reality that a divine and influential spirit truly does enter into you when you are baptized or when you decide to believe in some entity greater than yourself. For me, the result has been a feeling of constant companionship and assurance that someone is always watching out for and guiding me.

I recently finished reading the book “Heaven is For Real” and saw the movie in theaters. Both left me feeling the same way----that believe it or not, we are not alone in this world. 

For those unfamiliar, “Heaven is For Real” is a story based on the true account of a 4-year-old boy named Colton Burpo. He undergoes an emergency appendectomy and nearly dies. While on the operating table, Colton travels to Heaven and sees a number of amazing and unexplainable things. Over the course of several years, Colton relays the things he saw to his parents. Even Colton’s father, who is a minister, struggled at times to wrap his mind around the notion that his son visited Heaven and saw Jesus. But Colton described things that one couldn’t help but want to believe.

Colton explained that everyone in Heaven is young and has wings. All the colors in the rainbow are vibrantly present in Heaven. There are all kinds of animals and Jesus himself rides a horse. Colton met his grandfather who passed away years before Colton was born. He also met his sister who his mother lost in a miscarriage. 

I don’t think you have to be a believer in God or Heaven in order to be moved by Colton’s story. If nothing else, the story at least make you hopeful. Hopeful that someone is watching over us and that we will go to a second and even greater home once we pass out of this life. 

It wasn’t until after I read the book and was near the end of the movie that I was reminded of my very own heavenly experience several years ago. I couldn’t believe I had forgotten it, especially since I wrote a poem about it as part of my senior thesis in college. But once it reappeared in my mind, tears starting streaming down my face in the movie theater.

During the spring of my sophomore year of college, my grandfather passed away. He had not been doing well health wise for quite some time and my mom had been driving back and forth between Helena and Kalispell to visit him for weeks. The family came to realize that he did not have much time left. I planned to take a few days off school to go visit him and say my goodbyes. Unfortunately just a couple of days before I was to leave, he passed away. 

I was getting ready for school one morning in my dorm room when my phone rang. It was my dad. He told me that Grandpa Hank had passed away early that morning. I hung up the phone, sat down at my desk, and started crying. I didn’t cry because he was gone or that I hadn’t said goodbye. I cried because I had seen him and said goodbye just hours ahead of his death.

That very night before I had a dream that I was in the hospital where my grandpa was and walked into his room. He was sitting up and I went over and sat down on his bed next to him. We talked for a while, although I couldn’t recall after waking up exactly what it was we discussed. All I could really remember was holding his hand and telling him goodbye at the end of the dream. So imagine my shock and wonder when I woke up and learned just a few hours later that my grandfather passed away. 

I didn’t go to Heaven and see Jesus like Colton did in “Heaven is For Real,” but there is no doubt in my mind that I had an encounter with the divine. Either way, whether it was because I wanted to tell him goodbye or my grandfather wanted to see me one last time, God intervened and brought us together. For that I am eternally grateful. I know that my grandfather went to Heaven shortly after I saw him and I believe that someday I will see him again in youthful glory when my time comes.  

I think that God reaches out to each of us in His own way and time. Sometimes we need to hear stories like Colton’s in order to revive our trust in our beliefs. But we should strive to believe without always first needing to see.

“Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” (John 20:29)

~Let It Be~

In the past several months I have found myself being bombarded by a seemingly endless array of questions---questions from people in my life…..and questions asked within the confines of my own heart and mind. And all of them have left me down-trodden, tired, confused, and frustrated.

First, there’s the questions from people in my life. People always want to know when I’m getting married and why my boyfriend hasn’t proposed yet. When people, mainly non-Catholics, find out about my baptism they want to know what prompted that decision. People question if I will ever go to graduate school or secure a teaching degree. People want to know what exactly I plan on doing with my writing. And people wonder why I’m so nice to everyone, regardless of if those people are nice back.

I have answers to most of those questions; however, they aren’t always the simplest or easiest of answers to deliver back. And no matter what answer I give, people never seem to be satisfied.

Then there’s the answers I combat within myself. I wonder on a daily basis what I should do with my writing and how I can further myself as a writer. I question why it seems like the pieces are falling into place in everyone else’s life but mine. I wonder why it is so hard for me to find friends that are will stand by me through thick and thin. I question why people in my life are so inclined to forgive those around them….just not me. I question why I have to be so heavily judged all the time for everything that I do and am. 

I could go on and on with the kinds of questions I am asked and that I ask of myself. The list of answers to those questions, unfortunately, is considerably smaller. I’ve never been one to be terribly concerned with having my life planned out or knowing what’s coming next, but I wish the endless stream of questions could go away---at least for a while. 

I was resentfully brooding over all of the answerless questions constantly smothering me the other day when I started thinking about the Beatles song “Let It Be.” It just so happens that is one of my favorite songs, but one I rarely listen to. It occurred to me that I don’t even have the song on my iPod. So I went and purchased the song, slipped my ear phones in and listened. I probably listened to the song a dozen times trying to take in all of the lyrics. The phrase that stood out, and is still stuck in my mind, is “There will be an answer…..let it be.” 

After thinking about it, I realized that that phrase is the perfect answer to all of the unsolved questions of life. It is the answer I need to give others and the answer I need to give myself. I don’t have all the answers I want right now. Someday I will get some of them. And some I will search for over the course of a lifetime and never find. But just believing that there IS in fact an answer for everything, is all you really need to worry about.

One of the best things about the night I was baptized was that I felt this overwhelming sense of trust and assurance that everything that had happened in my life up until that night was part of a specific plan for me. There were no accidents or coincidences. It all had purpose. And now, I have assurance that all of the chapters and journeys left to unfold in my life will have purpose too. We just have to let things happen. And when the unfortunate and challenging things befall us, we need to just take a deep breath and say to ourselves, “there will be answer.” Because in the end, there really will be. Even if God alone knows it. We need to let it all be and trust that He will take care of us. 

Every Moment is a Graceful One

Last weekend I had the pleasure of traveling south to Tucson, Arizona to attend a friend’s wedding. I must admit that with the exception of an excuse to dress up and eat fancy cake, weddings don’t do a lot for me. But I was slightly more excited to attend this wedding because it was the first Catholic wedding I would get to attend as a fully initiated Catholic. It was also only the second Mass I’ve attended since being baptized.

The ceremony began and immediately lapsed into the traditional readings from 1^st Corinthians and such. I could feel my attention beginning to wane. But then the priest, who also happened to be the bride’s uncle, got up to deliver the homily. It wasn’t until he was well into his reflection that he finally said something that jolted me out of my stupor.

He said that every moment, whether it be filled with sadness, pain, happiness, love, etc., is a sacrament. It is a sacrament because every moment contains God’s presence and grace. Something about those words really struck me and have left me reflecting on them a week after hearing them. 

I had it explained to me once that a sacrament is “an outward sign of inward grace.” Having just been initiated into the Church through some of the most beautiful sacraments, I can certainly understand that definition. And there I was in the middle of a wedding ceremony, which is another beautiful sacrament to witness or participate in. But I have never thought of anything else as being sacramental outside of the traditional 7 sacraments at church. But upon hearing the priest’s words, it made total sense to me. Every moment in our lives truly is a sacrament. 

It is easy to feel God’s presence and grace in our lives during the good moments----when a child is born, when we land that dream job we’ve always wanted, when we meet someone we think might really be “the one”, when a song comes on the radio that seems to speak to our exact situation in that moment. Those are the easy moments to have faith and to feel like God is watching over you.

But I don’t believe those are the moments where we should most concern ourselves with and look for God’s presence in. 

When the priest was delivering his homily and listing off all of the types of moments that are sacramental, he mentioned those where we are suffering or are in pain. He turned slightly when  speaking as though gesturing to the crucifix behind the altar. Even in that most terrible moment of Christ’s crucifixion and death, God was present. For Christians, the crucifixion is undoubtedly a sacramental moment. And yet, when we are shouldered with our own crosses to bear in life, we often rage against God for allowing the bad things to happen. We question why. We fall into hopelessness and despair. But the priest’s words made me reconsider how to view such moments.

Grace is poured onto us during every moment of our lives----either in joyful ways to remind us of how blessed we are….or in painful, burdensome ways to test us and strengthen our souls. But good or bad, every moment deserves to be respected and treated as something sacred. We are never abandoned in this life----even in our loneliest times. If we could only learn to appreciate the bad moments more and try to feel the grace inside that they leave us with, we might learn to trust more in their purpose for us. 

Every moment is a sacrament…..because every moment is filled with grace.