This morning I read a lovely post on Instagram by @capuchinswest. It was about Padre Pio who believed that we could pray for our ancestors.
According to the post, Padre Pio once told a doctor that he (Pio) could pray for his long dead great-grandfather to have a happy death. The doctor was surprised, but the saintly capuchin monk told him, “For God, the past does not exist; the future does not exist. Everything is an eternal present.”
St. Pio’s words make absolute sense and so we should all make praying for those who have gone before - no matter how long ago - part of our prayer lives.
Everything existing in an eternal now for God is a truly amazing thought. In this now He sees the Big Bang and the end of all life in the universe. If anything existed before the Big Bang, that is part of His now, too; He also sees the universe devoid of life once even the last black hole has evaporated, as well as its eventual end - if the universe will ever cease to exist. He sees all the love, all the hate, all the violence and wars, all the acts of kindness and compassion, the greatest and least deeds in one great eternal now.
Blimey.
I wonder what the saints in heaven know about the past, present, and future? I would assume that they remember their own lives but what knowledge might they have beyond that? Do they have access to the entire story of reality? I have a feeling that the answer would be no since it would be too large a story for any human - glorified or not - to bear but who knows; in heaven we will be the perfected version of the people that we are on earth so perhaps that will give us the ability to see all that was, is, and will be without going mad.
Madness, of course, won’t exist in heaven. On another note, if the saints remember their earthly lives, I wonder how exactly they’ll remember them. I would guess that their knowledge will, somehow, be purified so that the remembrance of past hurts and sins will no longer adversely affect them. The memories won’t be deleted but somehow made good.
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