Birth of an angel: Inspirations

This is the end of a book that Manuel de leon wrote about his son Carlo and gives away for free to those he comes across in the Philippines, he has given us permission to reprint his story on MindBodySmile.com and we will publish weekly installments here. You can read all prior installments here.

Inspirations:

Every time I think of making a change to what I have already written, I hear a whisper that reminds me that these are not my thoughts. These are mysteries from heaven. My human intellect can’t fully comprehend them, but they are as holes of inspirations through which I am allowed a peep into heaven’s interior. Quite a lot of times I went through each line, each sentence, and each paragraph to simply appreciate and absorb its meaning as if it were a revelation to me. Every word and expression is meant to reinforce my outlook on some aspects of our existence here on earth and of the world afterward.

Later on in life, alone in my deathbed, these mysteries can help me prevail over my fears and load me with excitements and anticipations for my next journey. Instead of wallowing in grief and fearing the uncertainties of being lost along the way, I will no longer fear death because I have had a glimpse of eternity.

As I read the story over and over, my son rises on the pages of my manuscript. I can hear his voice, sense his breath, feel his warmth, and smell his scent— sometimes at an arms-length yet far from my embrace. I am comforted by visions of his physical presence, although even this gets weaker and lesser as time goes by. It seems that my grip on the memories he left behind is slowly slipping away. Soon I may slowly move out of these dark, overwhelming days and feel unaffected. I wish that this will soon happen but at the same time, I loathe its coming. Remembering him without a trace of pain is like him being taken away from me, creating a room in my heart for sins to dwell again. During some distracting moments of gladness my mind looses him, but while in pain, my heart remains occupied by him.

I want to believe that he went away for a while, and shortly, we will be reunited forever. I trust that he is now on that spaceship as he said, traveling hundreds of thousands of miles per second away from us, above the speed of light, towards what he described as a far, deep in space, to a very beautiful place.

He made me promise to come along with him and we shall travel together, but later he fully understood that I could not yet. He also assured his mother that he would bring her there along with him when her time comes.

My First Inspiration—Heaven In a Child’s Eyes

Nothing in Scriptures tells us about any space travel to heaven in a space ship. But such can be true in the creative mind of a child like my son Carlo. In a child’s mind, a wooden bench can be a horse-ride or being carried at my back can be an exhilarating airplane ride if I say so. Nothing in the simple mind of a child is impossible, the joys and the excitements will always be the same as if they were real. In a child’s mind it is probable that our God the Father would reward us after death with a thrilling ride on a spaceship on our way to paradise. Remember we will be called into the after life like little children.

Let us assume that my child Carlo is truly riding this spaceship. If I could calculate the rate of speed their ship is veering away from earth, by this time it could be very far out of our solar system. In 200 days, after July 13 when the ship tore out into space, it would have already crossed a distance of 3.2 trillion miles, and would still be racing at tremendous velocity. If the ship had to stop over, it would take them about a year of light speed travel to get there. By then that would have taken the ship about 5.8 trillion miles from us. .

To follow up this analogy, I would suggest that the place where the souls would stay for stop over would be somewhere in the lower regions of the heavens. There would be a reception area where the pure or repentant souls would pass through a blizzard of purifying fire before they could enter into the innermost recesses of the heavens where our Lord Jesus dwells.

If these were the case, the cleansing of the soul would be similar to a process of smelting ores in order to extract pure metals by the use of fire.

In the same manner, the soul would undergo a spray of gentle fire that would remove anything that is of matter and earthly fiber. Any trace of imperfection originating from the mortal body that tainted the soul would be purged clean. Even the memories of physical existence, except the good ones, would also be removed. The soul would then wake up to an entirely new awareness; and would open its eyes to eternal life, with recollections of only the good and beautiful experiences of the past existence.

How about if a degree of impurity would dictate the amount of time each soul would stay for cleansing? Some would then hang around for a short period of time, then immediately embark on another ship away to the inner core of heaven. These would be the souls of the little children and other righteous men and women. For others it could take years before they could be totally cleansed of earthly smears. But for the less fortunate souls, there would simply be deep and undisturbed sleep until judgment day.

I pray incessantly for the soul of my son. It helps me to think that if he had arrived for stopover, it should take him very fast to get rid of his little imperfections and he could soon board another ship bound for the highest heaven to be with the Father.

I believe that the trip toward the center of heaven is not barren and lonely. It would be full of excitements, wonders, and indescribable experiences. Everywhere, my son would see beautiful shades of clouds and masses of matters in the universe reflecting the glowing spirits of the busy angels. All the spaces would be alive and full of activities. The density of lights would be so intense that it would blind the mortal eyes, but for a soul in its spiritual state of being, these magnificent spectacles would not be difficult to gaze at.

Angels would be all around the universe attending to their given tasks. Our sun, moon, and the planets would be tended by an angel. Everywhere in all corners of the cosmos, its stars, galaxies, and constellations would be perfectly guided in their paths, orbits, and revolutions. Each element in heaven would be precisely situated and charted. Their relations to the order of things in space would be carefully watched and maintained to avoid any cosmic catastrophe that may impair the earth.

I asked myself if this could really be what one would see and experience on the trip to heaven. A trip where each place would be basking in radiant colors and no corner would be vacant for darkness to dwell. Why not! The Scriptures tell us that heaven is not here on earth but up there somewhere. If it were so then outer space would be paradise—a place where there would be no space for darkness to hide.

My Second Inspiration—God’s Love

If only our mortal mind could speculate on the immense power of God! But God’s power is even greater than what we could possibly imagine. He is our God to whom nothing is impossible except to lie. Sin has no room for Him; it is the exact opposite of His virtue.

We have been forewarned about the grim prospects of the end of times. In the long chapters and verses in the Bible, we have learned about the obscurity of the afterlife away from God, of the terrible loneliness and eternal suffering with moaning and gnashing of teeth in the sea of endless fire. It is quite a long and detailed description of severe misfortunes and adversities awaiting those who will fall out of grace.

But our God is a loving God. He does not wish to scare us in order for us to believe in Him and love Him back. Punishment is just a grain of sand in the vast shore of His goodness. God wants us to know more about His love. He is the temple of love in the highest measure. His love must be the main focus of our lives, the most beautiful part of what God wants us to perceive by the many markers He placed along the path of our lives. In every step of the way huge warning signs stand with safety nets always ready to catch us in case we fall. He will not leave us alone even if we turned our backs and walk away. He knows we can not make it alone out there in the jungle of life. No matter how far and long we have strayed out, He sends an angel on our side to help us and guide us back. God waits for us patiently, He waits for us assuredly. Time will come when He knows we shall turn around and walk back to Him. That is how much God loves us; only faith is what He expects from us in return.

With this understanding, we are then comforted about the fate of those who have finished the race and kept their faith. We know where those men and women would go, especially the little ones whose spirits are devoid of the corruptions of time, and whose souls are free from the rusts of infidelities.

Every day thousands of people meet their ends. What happens to all of them who perish in faith and in grace? Surely God will make their travel a most exciting one. Heaven is perfect. There would be no hassles and no delays, and no soul would be lost. Everyone would be accounted for like precious gems.

God’s love is too awesome for man to comprehend. The width, length, height, and depth of his love are unimaginable and infinite. If we have God’s perspective the entire universe would fit the size of a dining table, and our galaxy, the Milky Way, would simply be a small dot on the table. Using God’s perspective how could we represent our solar system, if the whole galaxy were merely the size of an atom? Earth would be as nothing then, it would be invisible, and yet we know it is there because we exist and we are conscious.

Where would heaven be in that same table? It would be there, surely, somewhere within a few spans of our fingers. In the realm of the spirits no mortal being can exist and therefore it would be difficult to look at the universe from God’s perspective unless we’ve become immortal ourselves. Death is the great divide that separates man from the earthly dimension. Dying in grace is the only way to open our eyes and discover the splendor of heaven. In heaven, the soul is reborn with eyes that can not be blinded and ears that can not be plugged.

My Third Inspiration—The Omnipotence of God

In 1997, an outer space telescope captured a stellar explosion in a remote corner of the universe. Just in time its instruments recorded the light wave as it was passing by the vicinity of earth and the solar system.

The exploding star blazed so bright, its enormous light illuminated the dark corners of the universe, allowing man a glimpse of the immensity and density of space. Excitedly, the scientific community went to work, sifting through the gathered data. The result was astonishing, the celestial event revealed that it occurred somewhere 10 billions light years away from earth and exploded some 10 billion years ago. Our planet must not be the planet as we know it at the time of explosion. There was no earth yet, its constructive elements were still scattered as dusts and particles in the bosom of the galaxy. In human calculations of its age, the earth was created 6 billion earth-years later after that explosion.

The space between the earth and the origin of that cosmic blast is likewise inconceivable. To cross the gap, the light traveled for 10 billion years at the speed of 186,000 miles per second. The vast expanse in between the earth and that event is about 5.8 trillion multiplied by 10 billion, in miles. The seemingly endless stretch of distance that the light traveled toward earth is only half of the ripples of its glow. On the opposite direction, sideways, over and below, that the light traveled with the same speed and covering the same 10 billion light years is another story revealing the eternity of space.

It was also an incredible reckoning of time for man, unfathomable to the mortal mind. Light speed, a measure of time in space, is truly a mystery to man. But to God, from one corner of His eye, such enormous distance is merely a space in-between His fingertips. Time is encapsulated and compressed without numerical value. To Him what truly happened was that, He simply switched on the light and the dark room, which is that small portion of the universe ignited, and it was instantly bathed with light.

In God’s mighty eyes a billion light years in distance and a billion years on earth is simply like a short walk in the park and a minute of rest under the shade of a tree. Up there looking down to earth, the joy of the birth of our Lord Jesus, His sorrowful agonies and death on the cross, His glorious resurrection, of more than 2,000 years ago, remains alive and fresh today as if it just happened only two days ago. The promise of His second coming to this world can just be some hours away from now.

If we remove from our minds the 2,000 years in-between which separate Jesus from us today, as if He died only two days ago, then we can believe and love Him more afresh in our hearts. Doing so is really not too difficult if we trust Him when He said, “A day is like a thousand year, and a thousand year is like a day.” He could have said in ‘billions of years’ if the trend is similar today when we count populations and wealth in terms of billions.

My Fourth Inspiration—The Children of God

As adults, we can not really unravel how the mind of a child works. Oftentimes, we dismiss their words, and their wisdoms are set aside and treated as trivial, if not preposterous. Children may be no match to the adults; however, if we open our hearts and fathom the depths of their minds, we will learn that their meekness and simplicity makes them wiser than the wisest among the old and wise. Since their minds are not yet lost in the complexities of the environment, in too much exercise of freewill, and in the dizzying crisscrossing of acquired knowledge.

Logic is the needle-head that weave long and intricate webs of suspicions, pretensions, fantasies, and doubts in the mind. Most often the aged and the learned are victims of their own material inclinations and thoughts, missing by many breaths and lengths the fundamental values of life which leads to the most important aspiration—the gift of eternal life.

Children are the ones who can perceive the spirit and the works of the divine since they don’t have splint in their eyes. A rainbow can captivate their hearts, causing their eyes to twinkle; they can embrace the wind and play with it, they can conquer the depths of the seas by cupping water in their tiny hands. In an instant, they can create artful meanings on the world around them, eyeing without seeing any air of ugliness. Their understandings of things in sight and of the events transpiring around them are more in their hearts and lesser in their minds. Small victories can drive them to roars of contagious laughter.

They accept defeat in silence and face their destiny courageously. Even the claws of death cause them no fear. They admit the blessed guidance of the Holy Spirit without question, in full faith and trust.

Like a child, pure and simple in hearts and minds, is what God wants us to be. They are the “little ones” in the Scriptures, protected and preserved by our Lord Jesus, each one with a guardian angel always by their sides who see the face of the Father.

They are similar to the “little ones” my son and I encountered as we searched for opportunities to show kindness: the “grease man” who revealed his meekness, his loss of mental capacity was that of a child, yet astonishingly he survived hunger, harsh environment and a vehicular accident. The sick, young Muslim boy who despite his miserable condition, was working hard to support his widowed mother and little siblings; the abandoned boy who planted and sold vegetables to help his old grandmother and feed his two little sisters; my young son, who in his last dying breath, held tightly onto the hands of God, refusing the whispers and promises of the evil ones. God was with them and shall always be with them all through out their lives and lives thereafter.

Heaven will surely be filled with sounds of laughter of the “little ones, the children of God,’ young and simple, persistent and brave, to forever live and enjoy the blissful company of God and the divine.

My Fifth Inspiration—Toward God’s Pardon

In our lifetime, we are fortunate if we can realize the gravity of our sins and are given the chance to correct and atone for it. We should not tarry long and postpone repentance; we must grab the opportunity immediately while we still have time, for we really do not know the day and the hour we will die. Death will end all and beyond the grave we can only stand for judgment without any more possibility of atoning for our sins and changing our destiny.

Our son, by his death opened my eyes as well as his mother to the most serious of many sins we have committed. His birthday which was May 13 and death which was June 4, reminded us about Hebrews 13:4, “Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and the sexually immoral.”

From the time we realized the meaning of his numbers and the admonition in Hebrews 13:4, our minds went into dizzying array of bothering thoughts. How can something good, the enlightening life of my son, be borne out of inequity? We can never explain the workings of it all except that our sins are not his sins, that he can not inherit our indiscretions much more pay for it. He is now there in heaven rewarded with the gift of eternal salvation. This was confirmed by the divine manifestations and signs he left with us.

His mother and I both knew that we are living in a sinful state of affair. Knowing is only a small part of understanding, restitution completes the circle of atonement. We comforted ourselves in the past to live together with the Lord in our hearts and minds thinking that we might be forgiven or exempted from the laws of heaven. But the Word is the law and anyone who breaks the law breaks the Word and is doomed. A thief even if he does not kill is meted with punishment just the same as if he had killed. No one is exempted from the penalties of sins on judgment day.

My son loves us so much, both me and his mother, that he reminded us clearly about the admonishing verse in the Scriptures. He urges us to restore ourselves to God and to live our remaining lives away from sins. What good will our promise to him to be together in the afterlife if we shall continue to live in this sinful union? It will just be an empty promise with a terrifying, horrible consequence for me and his mother.

All of us were born into the bondage of the original sin of our ancestors and as a consequence inherited the imperfections brought by their fall to the temptation of the devil. However each and every one of us were healed through our baptism and delivered by the precious blood of Christ from the cross.

We are now assured of eternal salvation and enjoy complete freedom from the claws of the darkness provided we live in accordance with His commandments and under the grace of God. Outside His grace no one can enter the gate of salvation and will be left out in eternal damnation.

His short but meaningful life is a beautiful lesson for us to share to others. To those who are in similar situation of having extended family like us. We now become a living example to them who are right at this moment being tempted into the trap of infidelity and immorality. Knowing fully well now the meaning of his birth and death in our lives, we have to untangle the intricate web of consequences woven out of that particular indiscretion. The path to righteousness will be very difficult, painful, and lonely but by the purity of our intention to change, by the mighty hand of God who will lead us along the way and in memory of our son Carlo, we are willing to tread the path to a new life.

We are truly sorry that we have allowed ourselves to fall into the snare of darkness laid down on me and his mother. We feel very grateful that our son pointed out to us that particular passage in the Bible while we are still capable of doing something about it. We promised ourselves to seek and find the necessary means and available ways for us to change, correct, and atone for our sins. God help us in our entire search for forgiveness by reparations, through prayers and by works of mercy.

Carlo, our youngest son reminded us truly that we made a promise to each other and he meant to fulfill his part of the promise by leaving us with proofs that he is alive enjoying a blissful state of life in the wonderful world beyond. He wants to share with us the pleasing experience by urging us to also fulfill our promise to him and to our God by living in morality while we still have the time.

I am making this public, to push myself towards my promise to go to him where he went, and to deliver his mother to the Lord so that he can fetch her when her time comes.

This is how beautiful, the short but meaningful life of our son Carlo has opened our eyes and changed the courses of our lives.
-Manuel de leon