I've waited here all night. For many nights, actually. Why has this night seemed different? Perhaps it's time to go home. But Hope keeps me here.
Now something, some faint sound of music alerts me. I look around me again. Wait! Can I believe what I see? The morning light slants over human figures suddenly drifting around me, rising up from their graves. I'm torn between terror and desire. The dead ARE beginning to rise, and they're crowding into the garden, then moving towards one white- robed figure which has just appeared, taking his hands, bowing before him, even going down on their knees.
Tears are running down my cheeks. I recognize so many faces - long-dead relatives and friends and parishioners. Some killed in car or motorcycle or ATV crashes. Some murdered, or suicides, or dead in war. Others felled by disease. They died at all ages, yet here everyone seems beautiful, but full-grown....and so alive, more alive than when I knew them. Their joy, their light-heartedness, is palpable as they embrace each other and embrace the white-robed figure who glows with unearthly, supernatural radiance.
I walk closer, disbelieving what I'm experiencing, as if I'm caught in some wild dream of happiness. Now they see me, all of them, and begin to crowd around me. I see scars on faces, on heads, on bodies, the scars of war wounds or accidents or surgery, yet the scars are not ugly now, not red or white or puckered. They glow, like badges of honor. One by one they embrace me now; I'm kissed, held close to warm, living flesh, hear dear voices I never expected to hear again. I call name after precious name, and they call mine. Underneath their voices I hear the rush of a brook and smell flowers; I realize the flowers have bloomed around me since I last looked. It's full, warm Summer in the garden now.
The figures around me are swirling in a dance, and now they carry me with them over to a rough-hewn cross, propped up against a stone garden wall. The cross is stained with dark, dried blood. I cringe from this instrument of torture and death. "Why is it here," I ask, in this place of joy and life?"
"He wants it here," someone answers. I smile - it's my long-dead grandfather speaking to me. "Go up to it with us, dear one. Today is the day we venerate the cross."
One by one, these brilliantly alive, resurrected ones approach the cross, kneeling to kiss it or touching it for a long moment. Suddenly I see long lines of figures, all smiling, all glowing, all eager to approach the beat-up, disreputable cross. My grandfather has me at the head of the line. "It's the cross of our salvation," he says solemnly. "Yours. Mine. Theirs." My fingers touch the wood, and I shiver. The wood seems alive, vibrating with supernatural energy.
I begin to look more closely at the line of figures, dressed in clothing from every time in history, of all skin hues, speaking a perfect Pentecost of languages. Some are playing instruments - lutes, mandolins, guitars, banjos, trumpets, trombones, sitars, konghous, flutes, wooden whistles, cymbals, bells, violins. Others have drums slung around their necks. Singing rises into the air, hymns to the Father, to Jesus, hymns to the Holy Spirit, hymns to the Blessed Mother... It seems a hundred different hymns in a hundred different languages rise into the air, and yet they make perfect harmony.
"It's really trillions of pieces of music and voices " my grandfather says, smiling. "But you can only hear a few because you're only visiting here."
I see a woman approaching, and somehow I know it's the mother of Jesus, both her hands held by those who are her family, Joseph walking with his arm around her shoulders. They come to the cross and stand before it, then kneel, tears coursing down their cheeks, smiles illuminating their faces.
"I'm here," someone behind me says softly. It's the luminous, white-robed figure. Jesus. Mary and Joseph and the rest of their family rush to embrace him, and they talk for awhile. Then I see the apostles, the disciples, the men and women who loved him while he walked deserts and streets, sailed with the fishermen. They, too, are embraced by him, one by one.
"Every year on this day it's the same," my grandfather murmurs. "We all remember how he loved us right up to and through his death. And then our Father raised him from the dead today - so we all can rise." I can see Jesus' wounds now - in his wrists, his ankles, his side, glowing, beautiful, the signs of his love for us.
Suddenly Jesus turns and sees me. He walks towards me. Awe-struck, I look up into his face. It's as if I look directly into the sun, and yet my eyes don't hurt. I want to fall at his feet, but he gently, strongly grasps my arms and holds me up, then gathers me into a warm embrace. "I don't deserve this," I weep. He kisses my forehead.
"Perhaps not yet. By the time you come here permanently, you will be ready. But I have to leave you now."
He turns to greet another crowd of people, and my heart twists with fear and loathing as I see them. Soldiers in Nazi uniforms. Men hidden in Klu Klux Klan robes. Even in the dreaded black robes and masks of ISIS. Some are from the Boko Haram, the Nigerian offshoot of ISIS. Some are the dreaded military murderers and drug lords from Latin America. The Borgias and Medicis of Italy. The Thuggees, the cult assassins of India. These men and women are murderers, rapists, thieves, torturers, slave traffickers, the worst of the worst. I step back, aghast. I also see my enemies there, the people who betrayed me, mocked me, lied about me, broke my heart. Yet they're all crowding around Jesus, and his wounded hands are touching them, comforting them, one by one, as they weep, and stumble over gasping words.
"All it takes," my grandfather says softly, "is repentance and the faith of a sincere heart in the last breath of life."
"I don't want to be anywhere near them!" I cry out, disturbed by Jesus' compassion and acceptance.
My grandfather smiles and his hand brushes my hair. "That's why you're not ready to come here yet. But you will be one day, I promise you. He wanted you to see them."
"I thought I was here to see you, all of you, everyone I miss so much. That's why I wanted to come here."
"No. You're here to see THEM. Remember his words, 'Father, forgive them, they don't know what they're doing." How can you understand the length and width and depth and breadth of his love and of Heaven unless you see THEM? They are the real miracle of grace, the proof that God, Love, is the most powerful, irresistible Force in this universe!"
Grandfather led me as I wandered around then, watching animals of all sorts frisk around peoples' heels, being petted, people meeting new people, painters painting, musicians composing, explorers dashing off to new universes, philosophers debating, cooks experimenting with new dishes. New life and new adventures and new growth and new creativity involved everyone. And nothing seemed to be work, only play, and I realized that here, in the perfection of love and joy, the two intermingled. Heaven could never be boring, only infinitely, delightfully, both comforting and challenging. It would take eternity to know and understand all the facets of God's life.
Heaven was fading, figures blurring into a rainbow. The air was growing chill.
"No," I wept. "I want to stay."
Jesus was there beside me once more; perhaps he'd heard the turbulence in my heart. He placed my hand on his heart, and then his hand on my heart.
"I am always in your heart," he murmured. "All who are here are my Body. I am one with my Body, so wherever I am, they also are. I - and all who are here, my Body, - are always in your heart. You are never alone. You are never without us. Be at peace."
My grandfather's voice drifted to me on a warm breeze.
"Believe. One day you will return."
I looked around. There was no transcendent sound, no reminders of what had been. Only tombs in a garden and green shoots coming up through the muddy earth.
But I had been there. Been to Heaven. And I could hold the memory, the promise of Hope, my Lord and my loved ones, close to me in my winter-battered heart.