In writing Quiet Love, writing for my blog, and posting on Facebook, I have been working out my beliefs on life after death and on love and marriage. I have been reading Sheldon Vanauken, C. S. Lewis, Cynthia Bourgeault, Tom Harper, various essays on the topics found by Google and reading quite a few poets and of course reading Pat’s poems and 48 years of her diaries. In the four months after Pat’s death I have healed somewhat because of this research and my writing about my feelings and developing beliefs and with the help of family and friends. What surprises me most is that Pat came to these same conclusions in her journals long before I ever thought of them. They were in her diaries and poems for me to find. Her REAL Presence was also guiding me to what she had found. Her Christianity was much further along than mine. At times, I felt her annoyance at my not “getting it” and she would snap an “of course I love you” at me or an “of course I’m here in your heart” at me.
Pat often went for walks where she wanted and needed to be alone. I just discovered from her 2016 diary that she usually prayed at the Canadiana Garden Park at Shephard School or the Women’s War Memorial garden in front of the armory. She always took a break there to think about herself and to pray for forgiveness for her sins and relief from her faults. Also from the 2016 diary, she was often up between 4 am and 5 am depressed at what she thought of as her short comings and sins and thinking and praying for forgiveness and solutions. Seems she was on an inner journey much like I have been since her death. There are, between 2007 and 2012, even passages in her diaries where she describes exactly the great grief I went though – am still at times experiencing. I believe it was these times of deep thought and prayer that she came to the conclusions I have been coming to about love, marriage, God and death. In diary entries after writing about her depression she often wrote about her insights. She also occasionally nuzzled me awake to talk about them.
So, what have Pat and I learnt in all this thought, prayer, reading and research? Pat and I believe Christ’s promise that there is a place in Heaven for each of us believers prepared by Christ himself. We also believe the New Testament passages promising we will recognize our loved ones even in their new eternal Christ-like body and that our loved ones will be waiting for us when we get to heaven to help our rebirth into the eternal resurrection body. I believe I saw the resurrected Pat after noon on Friday April 28, 2017 – she was beautiful and radiant.
Pat and I also believed very strongly in the sacrament of marriage. Our marriage in St. Stephen’s in the Fields Anglican Toronto lead into a full Mass. We believe that in marriage two entities are made one by God never to be separated even by death itself. Pat and I are still united – Pat dwelling in my heart and I dwelling in her in Heaven through Christ. In fact, we are made whole again by death. We also both believe that love continues after death and continues to grow every stronger. As described by Pat, though we are two individuals we are still united as we were on earth. We are a trinity – Pat, I and the person that our love is. The third person, Love, is the binding force just like the Holy Ghost in the divine Trinity. Christians have always believed that God is Love and that LOVE is what unites us all in the communion of Saints.
“For you must realize,” says Jacob Boehme, (Confessions) “that earth unfolds its properties and powers in union with Heaven aloft above us, and there is one Heart, one Being, one Will, one God, all in all.” On the Grief Journey, you eventually stop running and simply look in your own heart and are swallowed by the embrace of your loved one in her eternal resurrection body – you are united again in the love of Christ. You realize nothing has changed, you are whole again and nothing, no part of your love is taken away. You continue to grow in love forever. Enduring is part of Christian love, the love which brought Pat and I together in marriage. The end of the great journey is when you discover God has been calling you to become true man and wife united in one eternal resurrection body in Heaven. All you need is true love. I believe in our 48 years together we both dissolved and were born again in our marriage. We remained individuals – Pat’s two touching circles – but our marriage was the wholeness of the us, True Love.
According to the Pontifical Household preacher, Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, marriage does not come to a complete end at death but is transfigured, spiritualized, freed from the limits that mark life on earth, as also the ties between parents and children or between friends will not be forgotten. In a preface for the dead the liturgy proclaims: “Life is transformed, not taken away.” Even marriage, which is part of life, will be transfigured, not nullified. I take great comfort in this. Pat proved and I believe that LOVE is stronger than DEATH. Christ thoroughly defeated Death.