Blessed Is The Kingdom

“I’m going to tell God to send me to hell,” she said.

I was shocked. I didn’t even remember telling her about Hell. She’s just at the age where she knows about God and Heaven, but I couldn’t think of a way to tell her about the place you go if you choose not to go to Heaven. Why would anyone want to do that?

“Ezra has nothing to do with God,” Rose tried to explain in her earnest, worried four-year-old way. “I just… I just hate red and blue!”

I understood, then. “The ambulance scared you. Are you afraid that Ezra will die… and go to hell?”

Rose cried in my arms without a word for a very long time. I didn’t know quite what to say. What can I say about death? I don’t understand death. I fear it, as everyone does. The Son of God Himself feared death. He wept tears of blood and wished there was another way. It was my fear He bore, and Rose’s fear, and here I was bearing fear with my daughter. Rose was in Gethsemane for the first time. There was nothing to do but suffer with her.

I don’t understand where people go, when they disappear from the earth. I’ve been parroting Catechism lessons about Heaven, Hell and purgatory since I was her age, but I haven’t understood. How can you understand what you’ve never seen? How can you understand what happens when people go away and you don’t see them again?

“It’s so scary to think that friends might die,” I said, praying empathy would serve in the place of an explanation. “Are you afraid Ezra will go to  Hell?”

“He has nothing to do with God. He’s a bad boy.”

I held her again.

The neighbor children think that Ezra is a bad boy; they can’t see anything but naughtiness in his disability. Their parents have told Ezra’s mother he’s not to play on their property anymore. I’ve tried to talk about him differently, but Rose had heard what they said.

“Rose,” I said, “Ezra will go to Heaven. We have hope that all the children will go to Heaven. God said to let the children come to Him. Especially children with… with Ezra’s difficulties. But he probably won’t go for a long time; he’ll grow up to be a man first. You’ll grow up to be a woman. Don’t be afraid. Please, don’t be afraid of Heaven.”

“He won’t like it in Heaven,” said Rose.

I prayed for words. “Rose… there’s a huge playground in Heaven. It’s bigger than you’ve ever seen. And there are balls to play with there, more than you’ve ever seen in one place. And when Ezra throws them on the roof, the angels will throw them down and not get angry with him. Children can play all day long, and the angels play with them, and nobody calls them bad or calls the police. Okay? That’s Heaven.”

Rose smiled.

She’s asked me about the park several times since then, and the angels who throw balls for children.

It was Ezra’s house that caught fire earlier this summer.  Ezra and his family are living somewhere else while the house is being cleaned out; they have to rip out the drywall and get rid of the drenched furniture. After that, I don’t know what they’ll do. The house was a rental that they hated anyway. The landlord sprayed roach poison where the children could get into it and put off repair projects until the porch nearly caved in. I don’t know if Ezra and his family will move back to that house.

I don’t know if I’ll see them again. They may disappear, as poor people do, leaving a pile of trash that the city won’t clean up in front of their house, and I’ll wonder if they’re homeless or what became of them.

It’s not that I’ve never been to Heaven; it’s only that I’m blind. I go to Heaven when I go to Divine Liturgy, but I can’t see it. I see shining gold and bright colors on wooden icons, and I know that it will be bright and glorious there. But I don’t know what glory means. I pray “Amen” when Father prays “Blessed is the kingdom of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and forever,” and in doing so I profess that the kingdom there is blessed, and it is blessed forever. But I don’t know what it means to be blessed. I don’t know what forever means. I’ve never seen forever.

I read about goodness, good deeds, souls who pour themselves out until nothing remains, and I know that in that country the souls are always pouring themselves into one another, but without suffering. But I can’t imagine what that’s like.

I can’t imagine a kingdom where the poor go and stay, where no one comes to take what they cannot pay for; where no misfortune will drive them away; where red and blue lights will not frighten them out of bed to stand on the sidewalk, watching, wondering who’s hurt. I can’t imagine a place worth staying in forever, let alone such a place given freely to hungry souls with no rent to pay and no fear of eviction.

I believe that children can play unbothered there, with no one to call them bad. I think spirits far more majestic than we are will show us that there is nothing more noble and glorious than rejoicing in children, and letting them play.

So, I believe I told my daughter the truth.

Someday, I will disappear from the earth, and you will not see where I go. Rose and Ezra will disappear as well, in their time. So will you. Pray with me that we will find the kingdom that is blessed forever, where the angels play with children, and there is no one to call them bad.

I’ve been there, but I couldn’t see.

(Image Via Pixabay)