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I have been thinking about how because I was a pilgrim in a way after becoming a widow, I see the Church as my home and my dwellings as way-stations. But women who have lived in the same house for years and made it wonderful and beautiful for their families feel very differently.   Their homes are kind of cacoons!  One of my daughters had to move out of her 15 year home suddenly. I thought she now has to make the heart of Jesus her cacoon.  
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Jesus allegedly told me years ago that He likes to surprise me. A big surprise of this period of my life (81 years-old) is that my old enemy has become my friend. Here is the story. Having whined about the miseries of tech for 30 years, including having to confess screaming at the phone or computer, now my PC is giving me a huge gift. My whole family in distant parts is on a chat board every day. Now, I used to make fun of facebook saying who wants to know what every friend ate for breakfast? But, with this intimate family chat I find it is a way of virtually being together, especially because the younger techies put up tiny videos of themselves doing funny things. So now I am sending up praise-prayers of gratitude for tech.  On a totally different note, I always picture myself soaring into purgatory, ante-room of heaven. But the Holy Spirit gave me a different image - crawl into purgatory on your knees!  A Santa Claus Tie-in Probably even younger people than I remember the children’s song Santa Claus is Coming to Town. Now atheists, such as myself before my conversion at 21, like to say that believing in God is as stupid as believing in Santa Claus. (Of course, we never knew that Santa Claus, historically, is based on a real saint Nicholas.)  However, there is this line in the song that goes: he’s coming to see if you’ve been naughty or nice…with the implication that if you were naughty you don’t get glorious gifts from Santa Claus. Now, here’s the tie-in.   Some theologians seem to not only hope that no one goes to Hell, but even think that there is no one in Hell, contrary to the Catechism which says we shouldn’t think we, personally, can put others into Hell but that Hell, as a real destination, is confirmed in Scripture. So, in effect, such dissenters are making Jesus into a Super-Santa Claus figure who doesn’t even care if we are unrepentantly naughty, but brings us to heaven no matter what. And the reward is not little Christmas gifts but an eternity of blissful union with the Trinity. It is as if a human father would threaten a child with banishment but then say, “but, of course I’ll never do that.” So, my take is that even if everyone is saved in the end through God’s mercy and the purifications of purgatory, it is extremely presumptuous to make hell an empty threat. And we see the result of such dissent exhibits itself in some priests never talking even about praying for the souls of the dead. In their funeral homilies, such will only talk about whatever was good in the person who died as if heaven is the only destination. Jesus on the Cross, dying for our sins, has little resemblance to the Santa Claus of the department stores. P.S. After writing this, I had an uneasy feeling that there was something missing, which came to me after a long nap. The point is that a really naughty child doesn’t really get the full joy of Christmas even if they get gifts. Why? Because they are too greedily anticipating and playing with their gifts that they don’t experience the more important thing of the loving hearts of those who gave the gifts. Similarly, someone said, anyone who really hates God cannot be in heaven because heaven is the experience of God. Long ago, I got an inkling of this truth. I was waiting in a Church with my husband for some famous priest healer to bless him (my husband had terrible late onset asthma). As we waited, I realized I wanted a favorable outcome but didn’t really want that saintly priest to spend any time with me. Why not? I was comfortable with my own state of soul and didn’t want such a holy person to perhaps stretch me? So, purgatory purifies and expands our souls. We are not ready to go right from this life into heaven unless we are truly saints. As in the famous poem of Cardinal Newman (now blessed?) The Dream of Gerontius, where the dying soul catches a glimpse of God and prays “Take me away!” realizing he needs to be purified first. Of course, purgatory is not hell, but if we have ever in our lives felt repelled by the holiness of another, we can imagine how there could be someone who doesn’t at the time of death pray for mercy, but stands its ground in defiance.  In Purgatory, the remaining infestation of the beasts of iniquitous vice are expelled from the heart of the penitent soul. Dear readers of my new blog with the humorous name: Ruminations of a Demented Pseudo-Nun, Due to the hilarious graphics of Jim Ridley, it looks as if I wear a glorious nun’s habit. For those of you who never met me in person, that is not so. As a dedicated widow I wear simple blue outfits, many different ones because the Church’s practice is that only those in community can wear habits. I think the reason is that someone bogus could try to collect money as if she were a Sister!    I am sitting at the swimming pool of the apartment complex
I live in here in Corpus Christi. A little boy looks at this huge tough black father with a huge head of hair, beard, and braids and says: “Are you a girl?” The man grins and says: “No, braids are neater.” I smile and say: “In case you’re a Christian, I like to ask men why they want to waste good money on shaving cream and hair-cuts when they can look more like Jesus with long hair and beards.” The kid didn’t get it, of course, but the man smiled and said: “I never thought of that.” Having gotten over my gall bladder surgery, a huge success, and all packed with my 10 boxes of possessions for the move to Hot Springs, Arkansas to live with my granddaughter’s daily communicant family…and having finished writing my 65th book, I find myself a word-monger with nothing to write. I thought that word puzzles would do it, but it’s not the same! It seemed as if it wouldn’t hurt to write the next blog series in a comic vein. Probably my graphic artist’s web-master Jim Ridley’s outrageous comic illustrations have finally overcome all my efforts to write like a sage. My guardian angel seemed to joke with me: “Well, no one who reads you ever thought you were the 20th century St. Bernard you know.” My comic title: RUMINATIONS OF A DEMENTED PSEUDO-NUN  For those who might be new to that blog, the last reference is my being a dedicated widow. If you don’t know what that is, go to www.rondachervin.com and click on widow-options.
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