If you could talk to a dead person…
Who would you most want to contact?
Let me make myself clear: I am not recommending that anyone try to contact the dearly departed. Despite what some mediums and psychics (and characters on television shows) claim to be able to do, no one can converse back and forth with the dead. It is potentially dangerous to try because it is possible to make oneself vulnerable to demonic activity.
However, I am encouraging you to imagine what your deceased friends and relatives would say to you if they had cell phone reception where they are now. Think about both types of people: those who were devout Christians (or perhaps practicing members of another faith) and those who were atheists or agnostics.
Do you really think you would hear the same reports from both groups? Can you honestly claim that there is no way you would be surprised by what these people would tell you?
Now that I have lost several relatives and close friends, I often wonder what they would say. My first choice is my favorite grandmother who taught me by example that Christianity is not a philosophy; it is a way of life. Imagining her as a non-Christian is impossible. She was comfortable financially (she worked hard and earned every cent), and she gave generously to the church and to the poor. She was the most joyful, vibrant, optimistic, loving person I have ever known.
I would love to ask her, “What is like?” “What surprised you the most?”
My second choice would be a close friend who was an atheist, or at least he claimed to be. I would ask him if he has any regrets.
I think about him every time this Gospel is read at Holy Mass:
“There was a rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, full of sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table; moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.
The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried; and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes, and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus in his bosom.
And he called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy upon me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in anguish in this flame.’
But Abraham said, ‘Son, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.’
And he said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.’
But Abraham said ‘They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.’
And he said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’
He said to them, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead’” (Luke 16:19–31).
Maybe there are people who would not even believe Jesus was who he said he was even if he personally appeared to them right this minute. They have hardened their hearts and chosen to believe that nothing matters or that there is no truth.
I have a friend who swears she thinks life has no meaning or purpose and that she is an accident of biology. For me, that conclusion flies in the face of everything we see in the universe as well as everything we know about the longings of the human heart.
C.S. Lewis theorized in Mere Christianity that humans don’t long for anything that doesn’t exist. Why would we? He points out babies are hungry; food exists. They may not be fed, but food exists to satisfy that longing.
St. Augustine’s famous quote from his Confessions is one of the best: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
What I wonder most is why anyone would risk facing an eternity of regret.
I can’t imagine what would cause a person to take an enormous chance of being wrong, denying God’s existence, refusing to pray and seek God honestly, thereby gambling with his or her future.
They are missing out on so much joy and hope and love in this life right now as well as their future destiny.
God continues to reach out to each of us in thousands of ways, and all we have to do is open our eyes and our hearts and minds to the truth.
