Today is a Lost and Found, a sorry and happy day!

A few years ago I was on a flight into New York City. We were preparing for landing and looking out the window I wondered at just how many graves there were down below. I began imagining the day of the resurrection of all those bones and bodies. I said to myself, “No that’s never going to happen.” Just then the plane banked sharply to the left and I then said to myself again, “Okay! Save such thoughts until I am safely inside the airport.” Not a good thing to question God while in the fragility of an airplane I suppose.

A few minutes ago I wrote an email to a dear friend of my very good Jesuit friend who died eight years ago. Today would be his birthday. So many good memories which somehow keep him alive within us both. Of course there are questions about his passing when he was so alive, active, helpful to so many. Now in the safety of my land-bound room I have such questions. Where is he? Can he see me, hear me? What is heaven like and what does this very active man do all the eternal-time? What is heaven like? How much like earth is it like?

What are your questions?

I looked for help with my questions within today’s Gospel from John Chapter six. Where’s the comfort? Where’s the encouragement? “That I should not lose anything of what He gave me….” Earlier in this same chapter, Jesus has the left-over fragments collected so that nothing be “wasted”. After the Resurrection of Jesus, He went around collecting those who were lost to themselves . We take courage and hope, because God created us, chose us, not individually only, but as this whole human family. God saw humanity, in Genesis, as “very good”, even when we don’t see this within and around us. God’s goodness is who we are and God cannot distance Himself from Himself, His Goodness.

One more reflection please! We have all been to wake and funerals and have listened to the “goodness” as lived in each of the departed. Often I think to myself, “Too bad she/he wasn’t here to receive such affirmations.” Such “goodness” lived in such human containers! That “goodness”, that gift was shared through him/her with both those present at this funeral, but in so many ways through this person’s life. We were created by God once and then so many other times through that same “Goodness”. This “Goodness” continues in our lives in God’s “Goodness” within us and it cannot be lost, but collected for further distribution.

I am not sure what we’ll do “there” all the “time” or for eternity. I do know that, because of the lives of the faithful departed in my life, their “goodness” will not be “wasted” in my few remaining days. God continues creating through the lives of “God’s Goodness” in our lives and then our time here is spent in God’s creating more “Goodness” through such as we. God! Grant us all a safe landing.