What if you died, and nobody mentioned it?  Would it make a difference in eternity?  Such trivialities don’t affect people who are extremely happy, who have achieved the goal of their lives.

A friend of mine who was omitted from the alumni obituary must be having a good laugh about it.  He lived an exemplary life, did a lot of good as a dentist, and was probably rewarded to the maximum.  He’s not even thinking about earthly irritations.  I say onward to the green, flowery pastures!

He presented the Euclidian theorems of plane geometry with what we figured was a French-Canadian accent, but he grew up in Massachusetts, and  became a  teacher in the Marist Brothers of the Schools.  He taught in Manhasset–that’s how I came to know him.

If he taught you in geometry, wait ‘til he taught you in physics and the laws of Bernoulli, Newton, and Borg came to light in your brain.  All his expertise was underlined with his simple attendance at daily mass and his docile following of the Rule of the Marist Order.

I don’t know why he didn’t go on to teach at Marist College; I presume the Lord had high schoolers like me in mind.  His name was Brother Augustine.

How big the universe?  We have telescopes that can see back to the origins, 13.8 billion years ago.  Now universal distance is measured in light-years.  To reach us from the origins, light would have to travel 13.8 billion years. We can’t see any farther, so as far as we’re concerned, that’s it.

What about the light that went in the other direction?  There’s no way of finding out.  For us, the universe is 13.8 billion light-years long.  Tell me, is that big enough for you?     

At this very moment, migrants are pressing up against the Polish border and are being chased by Polish troops into neighboring Belarus.  How hypocritical.  I remember that around 1941 Polish troops, fighting for the French, were pressed by the Germans up against the fiercely guarded Swiss border and fled into Switzerland.

I stood on the edge of the Solothurnerlandstrasse and watched as the Polish troops marched to a Swiss encampment where they would get their first night’s sleep and first good meal.  Are there no Poles left alive who remember that reception?

True, we are human, and don’t remember the good that was done for us.  How about you?

When I was young, I committed myself at least twice to the Lord, but even though in my blundering human way, things did not work out as planned, the Lord kept to his word and returned my investment to me a hundredfold.  That’s it.  I feel the Lord has returned to me a hundredfold whatever I gave him.

I see him in the sunrise, the sunset, my granddaughter’s eyes and my newfound daughter’s smile.  And I have already told how he saved my son with a four-fold blood transfusion.  Believe me, I am grateful.

Just count your blessings; it is easy to arrive at one hundred.  You may never have committed yourself twice.  Isn’t it great to have a Father like that?