The Sacred Heart in the clouds

Once upon a time, a 5-year-old girl was looking out the window watching cloud

formations. Cloud-watching was a game her mother had taught her earlier on.  Their house, situated on the highest point of the street, afforded them a good view of the town and the city beyond, and, of course, of the huge expanse of the skies above. Mother and daughter would—on late afternoons before sunset—scan the skies for cloud formations that resembled creatures on earth. Her mother would say, “Look for an elephant!” and the little girl who had never been to a zoo would look for the animal as she had seen it in a coloring book.  Happy that the girl would quickly find the elephant, the mother would snap, “Very good! Now, look for the bear!” and the little girl would find it fast, too, for she had seen a bear in the flash cards of her teacher-aunt.

Now, that particular afternoon she was cloud-watching alone, the clouds were sparse and the sky was a beautiful blue. There were no “animals” but still, the little girl saw in it a sea, as the clouds looked like foamy waves coming up the shore. She hoped, though, that clouds would thicken and swell so that even a few rabbits would appear, but they did not. Her eyes were getting tired and her eyelids heavy from the long wait, but the little girl did not give up. Then, she noticed images slowly forming from nothing and then moving in the blue sky, as though a movie was playing before her. One of two images was herself, the five-year old girl, wearing a long white tunic, sitting on the lap of Jesus, playing with His beard!

The little girl could identify Jesus from the many “stampitas” her grandmother kept as markers in her bible, and from the calendars from the lumber store tacked ubiquitously on the walls of their house. This Jesus moving in the sky was the one whose heart was exposed, but his heart was as big as a dinner plate, and the little girl was playfully poking it with her finger.  She noticed that it felt and looked like a giant pin cushion, being soft and made of red satin.

“Why is your heart very big?” she asked Jesus. Came His reply, “Because it has to have room for everyone.” The little girl, still touching and exploring Jesus’ heart, remarked, “It is very soft…like a pillow”.  Then, Jesus hugged her tight and she hugged Him, too, while complaining that he was too big for her arms to hug tight.

When Jesus let go, the little girl noticed that her own heart was outside of her chest, too, just like His pin-cushion heart, though not as big. She was surprised, however, that hers was bleeding although she felt no pain. Jesus read her mind and said, “When you hugged me, your heart was pressed against mine and got wounded by the thorns around my heart.”

The little girl looked at Jesus’ heart which was no longer a big pin cushion but already a real heart outside of his chest, ringed with thorns and bleeding, like the one  in “stampitas” and calendars. She glanced at her heart, too, and noticed that the blood was coming from two little wounds, but still she felt no pain. A smiling Jesus continued, “Now you see why you are wounded but you do not feel the pain because I am the one bearing all the pain— because I love you.”

The images slowly faded away and the little girl’s attention returned to her cloud-watching. Did she fall asleep, she wondered, for what transpired was similar to dreaming. No, she was merely watching, and in fact she noticed that everything seemed to happen in a wink, because the clouds that looked like foamy waves had not shifted at all! But the little girl had no doubt that the movie-like story she saw was real, not a dream. However, she did not feel an urge to tell anyone about it.

Many many many years later, when the little girl had grown into a woman who was to go through trials and tribulations in life, this particular cloud-watching episode would worm its way into her consciousness.  She would come to realize that it was the Sacred Heart of Jesus she met in the clouds.  Just as the heart has its own memory, it also has its own reason beyond reason, and now, the woman whose heart as a little girl received two wounds from the thorns around His Heart knows and believes: Jesus is wounded by the errors of both those who claim or even vow to love Him, and those who mock and spurn Him.

Knowing His heart is wounded causes her heart to bleed, too, but now she would feel His pain as well, but instead of crippling her in her efforts to love others, she would remember the huge heart of Jesus she saw in her cloud-watching—the tender heart the size of a dinner plate.  Jesus asks that her heart have room for everyone, too, to love sinners and saints alike.  Because in her heart that cloud-watching child is still very much alive, she does as He says, grateful for the lesson she was taught in the clouds.  And that's the truth.

Together forever and forever, (Conclusion)

As a Catholic I agree, absolutely, with the Church’s teaching that the ashes of our dear departed must be interred in an appropriate place like a cemetery or a church, but I’m pretty much tolerant of other people’s beliefs when it came to such, whether or not they’re Catholics.  Having lived in other lands and met or known people of divergent cultures and beliefs I’ve come to empathize with those who don’t share my thinking.  It's a live and let live world, after all.  

I’ve been to a non-Catholic home in Metromanila that has a collection of urns containing ancestors’ ashes in the living room, which the homeowners display with as much pride as Filipino parents have who fill their walls with diplomas of their children.  I’ve been to a truly special garden restaurant in Quezon Province where a unique four-poster shed stands, with some flowers and a lighted candle in the middle.  Not seeing the candle’s reason for being in such a place, I asked our guide.  He said the shed was actually a shrine, and he pointed at an earthen jar on top of a post, next to the ceiling, saying it contained the ashes of the owner’s mother, a Catholic.  Apparently the restaurant owner was so close to his mother in life that he wants to maintain that closeness even in death. 

Abroad, I met a middle aged lady who didn’t know what to do with her mother’s ashes in her house.  Long before “eco-cemeteries” existed, they scattered her father’s ashes in a public park, around a flowering hedge.  The park was the family’s favorite summer picnic destination when they were kids—and her mother’s wish was for her ashes to be joined with her father’s when her turn came.  When her turn came, the family went back to the park to honor her wish.  But she returned home still carrying her mother’s ashes.  As they were to learn then, a fire years ago had razed to the ground a considerable area of the park, making it now impossible to locate the exact spot of her father’s “burial”.

Some of the weirdest things people do to be together forever with their loved ones reflect a somewhast self-centered sentimentality that makes detachment difficult.  The parents of an apparently well-loved high school student in the US who died in a car accident reportedly gave little scoops of the boy’s ashes to his closest friends.  Some put theirs in lockets to wear around the neck; some glued the ashes to the picture of the deceased and hung it up their study wall; and a few had the ashes ground superfine, mixed it with tattoo ink, and had themselves tattooed with it.  Still, a few snorted the pulverized remains mixed with illegal drugs for a different kind of high--the ultimate high for some, plain morbid for others.    

An immigrant family I know have for years kept the ashes of their parents in cardboard boxes in their basement, waiting for the time they’ll retire in the Philippines after decades of toil for dollars in the Land of the Free: “We wouldn’t want to leave our parents here alone; we want to be all together in the place of our birth.”  They are Catholics, and want to remain a closely knit family until they hear the blare of the resurrection trumpets. 

A lady friend in her late 30s—she’s Catholic by birth, New Age-ish by inclination—keeps her mother’s inurned ashes on her night table, in open defiance of her siblings who wanted to bury them in their father’s grave which was their mother’s wish.  Whatever people do with the cremains of their dearly departed often seems to be a matter of purely personal considerations, and show an utter lack (especially among Catholics) of knowledge or concern for the Church’s stand on the matter.  I have observed that among many Protestants, it’s just a matter of choice since they say the bible has no specific teaching on cremation.  But we Catholics do, so why do we behave as though we owned our loved ones’ ashes?

I myself would tolerate others’ practices, even among Catholics I know, but recently I realized I would put my foot firmly down (that the Church’s rule on this be followed) if it came to my own family.  I never thought I’d be “tested” on this until it was time to bury our daughter-in-law.  Since her demise at age 50 was inevitable due to terminal lung cancer, the families from both sides had agreed to follow her wishes: wear white, three nights wake, burial in their family plot in her birth place Bataan, etc.

As preparations were under way, everything was smooth sailing, until our family was informed that the ashes, after the three-night wake in Bataan, would be transported to Manila to wait until the 40^th day to be buried.  This was not among her wishes, nor our family’s desire, so where did the idea come from?  (And where would the urn be kept in Manila?  Certainly not in our home). We never did find out who really introduced the changes since it was her siblings in Bataan who were overseeing everything, and I was careful not to offend her sibling who had left the Church to become a fervent member of a Christian sect.  But I did my homework.  I burned the midnight oil reading up Vatican documents not only on the Church’s stand on cremation but more specifically on the treatment of the cremated remains. Our daughter in law was a devoted Catholic, and so should be buried accordingly.  I wanted to be sure that my feet were planted on solid ground.

During the last night of the wake, there was still nothing final on the proposed 40-day wait in Manila, as no one had raised the issue.  Fortunately, a young priest came to bless the body—I took the opportunity to ask him about his opinion on the contentious plan, and sought his affirmation of my readings.  Not only was he grateful “for reminding me of the Church teaching”—he also gave an animated talk to the congregation which included what we Catholics should and should not do with our beloved’s ashes. “The remains of the dead do not belong to the family.  They belong to God.  After the Mass and cremation, straight to the cemetery, the final resting place, no distributing of ashes, no scattering in the sea or in the mountains, no wearing the ashes around your neck, no 9-day or 40-day wait.”  I believe that kind of talk should be given at each and every Catholic burial, and I hope that one day our Lady Vice President would be around to listen.  And that’s the truth.

(Cartoon courtesy of Mad Magazine)