Fall out: The Soldier Bishop Exits | Page 53

to heaven -- heck, don’t we all know that? No, when these pastors preach they explain the scriptures, then they make you examine your life as it is, before your neighbours and before God. The student choir rises to sing and dance and I’m like, now this is church! My last Sunday in Nairobi was uniquely memorable. It was the turn of the senior choir to sing. I walked through the gate 30 minutes before Mass and stumbled into a familiar song at the rehearsals hall. Angus Dei, Lamb of God in the Misa Luba, the only Latin I know that’s accompanied by the African drums and shakers. I peeped in the door. The choirmaster turned his head just at that moment. His face lit up. He started to signal vigorously that I come in. The soloist part in the song was coming up. He pointed to me and a miracle happened. I opened my mouth and bellowed out the solo part, pitch perfect, without practice! Turned out the conductor, James Mburu, was an old colleague at the Muungano National Choir where I was a Tenor soloist for many years. Jemo, as we called him, insisted that I join the choir at Mass. I didn’t know what I had gotten myself into. Lord Have Mercy. Glory to God. Sanctus. Lamb of God. They left me alone to do the entire solo lines! At first, I started shaking inside like a leaf, even if no one saw it. Then, slowly, I began to get into the groove, falling into rhythm with the pulsating drum, eyes fixed on the conductor. Damn, it felt good! I was back home! How did I do? When you feel good inside, people around you tend to feel good, too. As I walked toward the door at the end of Mass, two beaming faces behind the choir signalled for me to come over. The ladies looked like twins. The nearest to me cupped one side of her mouth and whispered, “My friend wants to know if you’re single!” I think I died. The Kingdom that God has prepared for us By Fr Joe Babendreier T here is a place where Jesus Christ now lives, which we call heaven. We believe that the Blessed Virgin Mary lives there with him. One day all saints will rise from the dead. Our Lady has already been taken up— body and soul—to be with her Son and enjoy the glory of the resurrection. Jesus used several different names for heaven. He told the Good Thief, “Today you will be with me in paradise” (Lk 23:43). He called it “my Father’s house” (Jn 14:2) and spoke of the “many rooms” we will find there. And he often spoke of “heaven” and the “kingdom of heaven”. You will probably say, “Well, of course he called it heaven!” But it is by no means obvious that our Lord would use that word to speak of the place where the saints will live in eternity. In the Old Testament, heaven is the name used to talk about the place where God rules all creation from his holy throne. There the angels adore him day and night. It was sometimes called the “heaven of heavens” (Neh 9:6). This means that God dwells entirely above the “heavens”, that is, beyond the realm of the stars and planets—beyond the universe in which we live. He lives in “inaccessible light”. The Chosen People never thought of men and women entering heaven. Even angels “hide their faces” from God when appearing in his presence (Is 6:2). It was unthinkable that a man would call God his Father, as Jesus did. It was unthinkable that Jesus would promise us that we could become like him and become children of this same Father. Even though many Jews believed in the resurrection long before Jesus began speaking about it, it was unthinkable to the Jews that men and women might one day enter into heaven. What does Jesus reveal to us by using the word “heaven” to define the resting place of the saints? We will enter into God’s presence. As the apostles explained in various letters of the New Testament, we will “see God face to face” (1 Cor 13:12), and “we shall become like God because we shall see him as he really is” (1 Jn 3:2). The Church calls this experience beatific vision. We will see God not through the medium of physical eyesight; instead, we will see him directly. We will see him deep within our soul, seeing God as he sees himself. The beatific vision will be the greatest of all our joys in heaven. The beauty and the immensity of all that God created has the power to dazzle us, to the point of being “blinded by the light”. What will we do when we see the one who Kodi Barth is a journalist and an entreprenuer THE SEED - VOL 25, No. 8, AUGUST 2013 53