Virtual Eternity (the Serialized Novel) Episode 48 - The Elysian Fields Part Two: Babies

This is Episode 48 of the serialized version of the novel, Virtual Eternity: An Epic 90s Retro Florida Techo-Pro-Life Love Story and Conversion Journey. These 52 episodes are presented here free for you every Friday. You can buy the paperback version []  from Mike Church’s Crusade Channel Store or at Amazon.

Or you can start reading at the Table of Contents: here

The Elysian Fields Part Two: Babies

Do these souls feel these breezes and hear them rustle the blades? Do they smell the flowery patches up from the wind? Do they see the egrets perching on the trees and the kestrels cavorting through the turquoise sky?

“Yes, Jonathan, we do,” Dante said. “But this Beauty is magnified thousands of times over your perception. It too is indescribable, even for a poet. If you are sent here for eternity, your perceptions will transform.”

Two specks fluttered up near me.

“Hello,” one luster whispered. They showed themselves. They were much smaller than infants. White cloths wrapped them. Their faces were barely formed.

“Cherubs speak to me? I am honored.”

“We are not angels, as you think,” one baby said as it smiled. “I am your sibling. I am honored that you sought me.”

“My sister? You?”

“The name given to me by Our Lord is Mary Gianna,” she said. “You properly recognized me as having a soul, and a name before God.”

“Did you die so that I could exist and seek you to journey here?”

“Perhaps, dear brother,” the soul said. “Perhaps the devil took my life. I remember very little in life outside our mother, except hours of pain and sleep and deep scalding cold, ending with sharp slicings into my body by an even colder knife.”

“Horrible, my dear soul, my dear sister, Mary Gianna. Did you direct me here?”

“I did not cause your journey,” Mary Gianna said. “The Holy Trinity did, enabled by your courage and openness. But during your stay on earth, I watch you and pray for you in ways you cannot comprehend.”

“Your death showed me the randomness of the gift of life. It compelled me to use that gift, and try to find excellence on earth.”

The baby then glowed brighter than the other souls. “Wonderful. I thank you, brother.”

“And who is this baby?” I asked the other speck.

“I am your daughter. My mother was Meredith. Our Lord gave me the name Mary Agnes.”

I burst into tears. The nearby souls comforted me with light and words.

“Jonathan, you must not be sad,” the duke said, smiling. “You had no part in the baby’s lost earthly life.”

“Yes, please understand,” Mary Agnes said. “I am with my mother, Mary, forever. My earthly life was martyred, and now I am near supreme bliss, near the Holy Trinity.”

“I am very sorry, my little baby, Mary Agnes. If only I had been able to save you. I wish I could have taught you and lived my earthly days with you. I am disappointed we never had that opportunity.”

“Listen to me, father. You are not to blame. And I pray someday we will share joys that we could have never known on earth.”

“You are right, little Mary Agnes. But to my heart, a lost life on earth is still a tragedy. If only I had cared for your earthly mother! If only I had shown her that I could raise her child! If only I had known how I strayed from loving. Am I a sinner, and do I deserve this bliss?”

“That mystery defines earthly existence, Jonathan,” my grandfather said.

“Indeed,” Dante said. “No man ever realizes his blunders until the end because no living man has complete insight into right and wrong. The soul is the part of you that tries to act as such. But even one who has died cannot see the entire Truth on the Good Life, the life full of holy love. But all humans implicitly know this: There is one. Come, allow me to show you more.”

Most of the spirits emitted their farewells and floated away into the grand light over the trees.

“Goodbye, friends,” I said. “Pray I will be with you soon.”

“Goodbye, dear father,” Mary Agnes said. “Remember, our bliss is unfathomable. I thank you. I see that you love me. Your love has great strength. And I will help steer your babies’ earthly life.”

“As I did for you,” Mary Gianna said.

Dante and I glided into the blue dome above, slowly back from my daughter and wounded but blissful sister.

“Do you still think these are hallucinations from your technology, my friend?” Dante asked.

“Fabricated images could not provide such ecstasy and grief. Dante, I am still perplexed. Why would God, the mover and source of all energy and matter, concern himself with humans? Why would He create those strings, or whatever, to develop the matter supporting us? Is He merely a spectator of a colossal game?”

Dante smiled. “No, but no one will ever fully determine His purpose for us. You have identified the subject of most of our discussions. The nature of His intention may forever remain concealed, even to souls. But it is irrelevant. The Almighty chose the species and the planet with some intention. If not, He would not send us His holy love to work through men on earth, and we would not share in His peace here. Individuals, as you know, will often reject the Holy Trinity like a virus. Mankind tends to crave material abundance instead. In the entire human history, few could reflect on the Holy Trinity, until Christ was born.”

“It is sometimes easy to understand why men have rarely opened their hearts to It,” I said. “Few can see It or understand It.”

“Yes, few understand It, for no one could exhibit It correctly. It did manifest itself in an entire race, who learned Its nature: One God, concerned about perfect Goodness in the universe, all powerful, all-just, personal and loving, judging and forgiving.

“God wants to share His divinity and love with all mankind. The history of that one nation revealed a God that promised human salvation from our human imperfection. He promised to provide us the way to fulfill what lay dormant in us: to become wedded to God in perfect love. “So, that race produced the Christ. Through His overwhelming and incomprehensible love, God sent the Son of God to earth. The Word of God, who existed always, came and lived among us. The ultimate Truth, the Way, was so far removed from mankind that God had to implant Himself into our earthly lives. The way of God, the way of holy love and the ability to re-join God, was not a mere idea, merely innate in us like a Socratic truth that only requires a midwife, a great teacher. It required a Redeemer, the Word, God, from the beginning, God Himself that ‘pitched his tent among us.’ The real existence of Christ on earth was the only way God could have prepared us to be the type of person that He wants to be with Him. He could allow this opening if, and only if, He became a Man to walk the earth and agonize.

“This was the greatest divine intervention. The Almighty’s light filled a virgin and begot a material man on earth. God becoming incarnate is how He accomplished His desire for us to return. And will we ever know why?”

Next week: Episode 49 - Hell

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