On Your Journey To Heaven, What Should You Not Take?
[adapted from What You Take To Heaven]
Your uniqueness is your value and your value is your contribution on this earthly journey.
We work together with different gifts.
We are not light unless we love others. Do you work on this during Mass?
"While I was enveloped by the Light, I knew the answers to the questions that had formulated in my mind," said a woman named Elane Durham of Libertyville, Illinois who had beatific visions. "I knew the answers to the questions that I had formulated in my mind. Secrets from the beginning of time to infinity were clear to me. Myriads of things were understandable. I understood, for example, that when I left earth I would leave with whatever spiritual growth I had attained there, and I would take that spiritual growth with me into this new world."
The Lord wants us to return with the gifts He has given us -- the gifts He gives us all, the ones particular to us and our missions.
Has that for a hint of what your missions is? Look at your gifts.
We must be quiet and listen to receive them.
They are tainted by ego, self-righteousness, bitterness, and hyper-religiosity (at the cost of deep spirituality).
This emphasizes the importance not just of forgiving, but forgetting (or at least trying one's best).
Forgiving begins the healing; forgetting completes it. God just wants your authentically best effort. Always, be authentic. This is who you are.
Another man entered the eternal realm with a "board" on which his life and all he had done (and not done) were etched. Yet one more, a middle-aged woman, saw her life on a television. You are you and you are those you affected. You feel both. You will love the moments of kindness and compassion.
Kindness and compassion. This is how you were made.
Love purifies all.
The deepest love is not just making others feel good (though this is very often part of it) but often also challenging, correcting, and purging those around us: correcting when correction goes to the benefit of a soul (as opposed to causing discouragement, which is what an angry admonition most often does). It is not being high-handed; it is being concerned. It is cooperating instead of competing. It is using religion to benefit salvation -- not just as a "legal" precaution for the afterlife (though God does reward diligence; though He certainly notes obedience).
What do you not want in your "suitcase"?
Have you asked Christ to help you remove it?
Have you dedicated Communion to reparation?
Have you asked for an illumination of conscience (especially during Communion)?
(Our Blessed Mother also helps in this way!)
There are those who believe mankind will some day collectively experience such an "illumination." An event will occur that will allow people to see themselves "in the burning fire of Divine Truth," as one writer put it, as if standing before a mirror of veracity or looking at an "x-ray" of the soul. It will have to do, some believe, with an event in the sky. If a comet suddenly appeared in the noonday sky, with no idea where it would go, just hanging there, for all the networks to broadcast, and us to see, it would cause each of us to search inwardly! It reminds us of sun miracles such as those at Fatima. Might they be foreshadows?
A mystic in 1825 foresaw a "great light" that would come as a sign of reconciliation between man and God. Another said that "a great purification will come upon the world preceded by an 'illumination of conscience' in which everyone will see themselves as God sees them." Some prophesy a "miniature judgment" upon the world. It will be a sign, a grace, and a punishment, depending on one's state. It will last a short time. A warning. Perhaps, a series of warnings.
It will be like a revelation of our sins, seen both by believers and non-believers. We know for sure this happens after this life. "The sins of the reprobate shall be seen by all at a glance, as in a picture," Saint Basil once said of what we will encounter on the other side. Yet, things we don't commonly take to be failings will be shown along with the obvious ones.
[resources: special: What You Take To Heaven: use coupon code "30off" at checkout for special 30 percent discount]