CHAPTER 5

A sense of the Communion of Saints has been developing in my heart as well. Again this is a knowing. It is not there all the time yet, but every so often I sense that my prayer is not private. As I become more aware that my communication with the Father is part of Jesus’ prayer, I sense that it is the prayer of everyone else as well.

I am beginning to experience the knowing that when I stand in the presence of Jesus facing the Father, I am surrounded by all my brothers and sisters of the whole human race. We are all there together. My salvation is bound up with all of theirs. I cannot know peace until they also have come home into the joy of the Trinity. That is a daunting thought and would be too much for me to accept if it did not arise from closer contact with the burning heart of Christ. There I find absolute determination and sureness that it will be accomplished.

Here I am puzzled by all the teaching about Hell in the Scriptures and teaching of the Church. I don’t know how to synthesise my sense of Christ’s burning desire that all human beings come home into the Trinity, and the dreadful possibility that some will be eternally dammed. I just hear Christ’s words ‘With God all things are possible’ (Matthew 19, 26).

I also find the Church’s teaching about Purgatory extremely powerful. Is it possible that the personal judgment, which each of us will face, will be such a clear vision of the utter beauty of God’s love that even those with the most hideous sins will respond positively? I deeply hope that it is. I pray daily for them. I pray also that others will pray for me when I die. I find today that people tend to stress their appreciation when somebody dies. That is good because people mostly live lives of quite goodness which should be celebrated, but, compared with the glory intended for us, that goodness is in need of enormous development in Purgatory under the shelter of the wings of Christ.



But it is all my brothers and sister living now that I am more aware of. (More of this to come)