Memorial Mass
November 7, 2003
"Twenty years ago, when my godchild Luke was ten, he asked me what heaven was like. I told him I didn’t know. He was disappointed; at ten, he thought I had all the answers. He now knows otherwise.
But if Luke asked me now what heaven was like, I’d make a better attempt at answering his question than I did then. I haven’t learned much more about heaven in the intervening years, but I have learned much more about earth. And what I have learned about earth has given me insight into what heaven must be like.
So let’s go back twenty years, Luke, and walk along the beach as we did long ago. Go ahead and ask your question again.
“What’s heaven like?”
“Well, Luke, wet the very tip of your finger, bend down and touch just one small grain of sand. Make sure it sticks to your fingertip. Look at it carefully. Now imagine, and I know that you have a fabulous imagination, that all of the beaches in the world are brought together here for just a moment. Look as far as you can in all directions and see only sand. Sand here, sand there, sand everywhere! Can you imagine that?”
“Yes.”
“O.K. Now close your eyes and follow me. We’ll walk for a minute and spin around once or twice. When I say ‘now,’ flick that tiny speck of sand from your fingertip, open your eyes wide, and try to find your little speck of sand among all the other grains of sand on all the beaches of the world.”
“I can’t. It’s too small.”
“I know, Luke, it is too small. But, listen now, it would be easier to find your grain of sand among all the others in the world than it would be to find our earth among the stars in our Milky Way--the stretch of milky white we see up in the sky on a clear November night.
“So, Luke, if earth, as small as it is, is so marvelous, with its exploding sunsets and rushing waters, fields of endless flowers, birds without number, and faces as beautiful and different as the leaves in an autumn forest, what must heaven be like? If God can delight us endlessly with what he has given us here on this tiny bit of ground, what must be in store when he spreads the entire universe before us, and we have time to explore each piece of sand as though it were the only one? And having finished that, we begin again in yet another universe? That must be what eternity is like.
“Luke, those who have gone before us didn’t stop living when this earthly part of the journey ended. They continue to live and learn and grow, and will be far more of themselves when we meet again than they were when they left us here all too soon. They may marvel at how we have grown and changed, but we’ll marvel even more at how they have.”