Maybe Hell is where we are now and when we die we go to Heaven, perhaps we turn into another star in the sky and shine down on all who are in Hell.
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Maybe Hell is where we are now and when we die we go to Heaven, perhaps we turn into another star in the sky and shine down on all who are in Hell.
Your mom, and the flowers.... God picks the flowers (our young ones, lost too soon)...
Did she say something about stars as souls, too?
"Maybe hell is where we are now" - it makes sense to me!
Your mom, burying how many children - she'd understand this:
“Offering it up”: Is that still a thing?
“Penance” has received a bad name over the last thirty or forty years, largely because it was taught to many in the language of punishment rather than in the language of virtue, offering, and peace.
So, why not penance? Why not take some of one’s suffering and — rather than popping a pill — endure it for a bit; live with it and in it, and do something with it; make it worthwhile instead of meaningless.
If we are told to “offer it up” at all today, it is usually in a tone of sarcasm or very weak irony. To moderns, the concept has come to be regarded — like formerly common practices as prayerful ejaculations or a solemn breast-beat — as a quaint throwback to a time when notions of sin and reparation seemed to consume entirely too much of the Catholic sensibility.
(Thanks for reading and commenting!)
Oops, the quote indents got lost up there.
Well, you could probably guess whatever is under the hyperlink is a block quote. :)
I was surprised to see that you remembered what my mom told me when one of my brothers passed.sometimes God reaches down and picks the flowers I will never forget her saying that and now He has picked the most beautiful flower, her.
My mom was raised Catholic but later I think she was more Baptist or Pentecostal.
I like this part the best But “offering it up” can speed this salvific action horizontally. Any such offering, even if it is initiated by a feeling of resigned helplessness, has the potential to unleash an expansive love upon the world. It cannot be otherwise. To offer one’s aches and pains, one’s disappointments for the sake of others is always love-in-action, a redemptive act. There is a particularly true and hardy love that springs from an offering made for the intentions of another.
You highlighted the same passage that caught my eye - offering it up can "unleash an expansive love upon the world. It cannot be otherwise."
You wrote so eloquently of your mom - and your brothers! -
and I hope no more "flowers" will be picked until they have bloomed and gone to seed and passed their prime.
Be well!