Will I See My Dog in Heaven? by Jack Wintz

Author:Jack Wintz [Wintz, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-55725-760-4
Publisher: Paraclete Press
Published: 2009-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Most Franciscans, I believe, have in one way or another embraced this vision. And you who desire to follow Francis in a closer understanding of the human relationship to creation may want to do this, as well. Whether conscious of it or not, we are inclined to see all created things as pieces of a beautiful puzzle that makes sense only when fitted into a larger framework—the image of Christ.

“There is nothing in this world that makes sense apart from Jesus Christ,” says Father Stephen Doyle, OFM, a well-known Franciscan Scripture scholar and popular preacher. “Whatever exists in this world was made for the sake of Jesus Christ.” A bit later he grows more poetic: “If we looked around and listened to the world about us, and if the singing birds could be formed into a chorus and the rustling breeze and tinkling rain could have a voice, and the roar of the ocean could be put into words, they would all have one thing to say: ‘We were made for the sake of Jesus Christ.’”13

Father Stephen also offers a good solution to the riddle: how can Christ, who came after Adam and Eve, come before them in the mind of God? How can the incarnate Word of God be first and last at the same time? In providing an answer, he borrows from a popular explanation given by St. Francis de Sales in his Treatise on the Love of God:

If you wanted to make wine, what would you do? First of all, you would have to plant a vineyard. Then you would have to fertilize the vines. You would have to trim them. Eventually, you would harvest the grapes, press them, and let them ferment. Finally, you would get some wine.

What was the first thing on your mind? The wine.

What was the last thing you got? The wine.

In the same way, notes Father Stephen, Jesus’ arriving late on the scene does not contradict his holding first place in God’s mind at the creation of the universe. Christ is the first and the last, the Alpha and the Omega.

In the ongoing process of creation and in human history itself, there are many elements: minerals, plants, animals, human characters. In the Christian view, as St. Paul expresses it so well, all these elements and characters come to a culmination in Jesus Christ. God’s plan, as we know, is “to sum up all things in Christ, in heaven and on earth” (see Ephesians 1:10). I don’t think we should separate Christ’s story from our own story. Nor can we separate our human story from that of the minerals, plants, and other nonhuman creatures that have participated in shaping our story.

As Scripture professor Father Michael Guinan, OFM, of the Franciscan School of Theology in Berkeley, California, recently related to me, “Modern science is showing so clearly how we—in our whole bodies—are tightly bound to the ‘stuff of the universe.’ We are literally made of stardust!”

Consider the metaphor of a stage play, where what happens on that stage is a shadowy image of what happens in our real lives.

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