Addendum 4...The Afterlife
and the chasing thereof...almost a year and half since last post, and really cannot add anything to the subject of the interior life and union with God not said far better by cited authors, nor can I add anything to the nature of the problems and solutions to what goes on in this always passing away world.
But, we can have some fun with highly speculative talk as to the nature of eternity, and our place in it, whether for good or bad.
The bad news first, as somewhat mentioned prior, is that if we cut ourselves off in this life from the love of the creator who upholds all of creation every nano-second through love for it and us, then we doom ourselves to an eternity cut off from God and creation, and exist in eternity same as this life, utterly fixated on self and its defects for all eternity, hating perfection since it is NOT us, and self-consuming for all eternity, and those are the happier aspects.
We have from scripture that the self-sacrifice of the Christ is ever present before the Father....all the ancient Churches also hold that we participate in that sacrifice by the re-presenting of it through the priest and the bread and wine. This is possible as all things are ever present before God who exists in an eternal NOW of all times, spaces, places, possibilities, the list is infinite for the infinite God.
When we return that infinite love to the best of our finite ability in this life, we are united in that shared love, and true love is sharing ALL, all of us to God, all of God to us (or as much of God as we can handle), including eternity. We shall never taste that ALL and utter total union in this life due to our own imperfections and weaknesses, our own clinging, BUT to the degree we are purified of rust or stain through that practiced returned love, we CAN get glimpses of what awaits...and it is wonderful beyond words or concepts. Given our fallen natural weaknesses, you can virtually guarantee that when those glimpses come, they will be wrecked by self/words/concepts intruding...while after death and total purification, that union will be complete and eternal, and where once you have tasted God, death loses its sting, and what fear remains is mainly due to clinging, or, as wittier folk have always said, "It's not what comes after which bothers, it's the dying part."
With these glimpses, it can be seen that, despite appearances to a definitely limited person, that creation is unfolding exactly the way it was meant, in stunning beauty and love beyond description. In the same way that the blind made to see, the deaf made to hear, and the cripple made to walk DO experience an entirely new creation when they are healed, so is creation made anew as each person finds their way to God, and I cannot help but feel this is part of what Paul was meaning when he talked of all creation groaning for that liberation....
Where, when all who will, of past/present/future, are united to that God of infinite possibilities, and of those possibilities, that everything is ordered to the perfection always intended from the very beginning....where we know as we are known, where united to God we know all the others united to God with us in the manner that God knows them, and forgive and love them the way God forgives and loves, with that understanding and nothing hidden....which, as an aside, might explain the words of Jesus discussing marriage not existing in heaven, as marriage is as close as two humans can come on earth in knowing each other intimately, while united to God we will all know one another far more intimately with no secrets at all, including from ourselves...
And as for sufferings of humanity through all of time, the death of a child, the death of a mother or father, where THIS life goes on in sadness without them, and all the might-have-beens resonate through time.....to be united to that God of all times and possibilities where they all exist for God in one eternal NOW, and all things shared, nothing missed or hidden.....think about it.....
