Recently, Sr. Sophia Grace sent me a link about Christian Varley, a man who just completed his 19th marathon in 19 days to raise money for Coronavirus relief. I read the article with interest and joy, as I (and my sister Sr. Agnes Therese) just marked the first anniversary of our run in the Cleveland Marathon last May. After I read the article, I sent a response to Sr. Sophia Grace – ‘”Wow, Sister, what a story! Once I get to Heaven and have my glorified body, I’ll totally be doing something like this.”
While I actually have no idea what I will do in Heaven with my glorified body (besides enjoy complete communion with the Trinity), and if that will include running marathons, I do know two things right now. First, that with my current body (pre-heavenly-glorification), there is no way that I can run 19 marathons successively (or over the course of my life). Second, despite this fact, there is still within me a deep desire simply to run.
It got me asking the Lord about it – what is this desire in me – why is it there – and what will become of it in Heaven? While I’m no theologian, I can’t help but think that somehow, in Heaven, our desires that make us uniquely us will remain, though completely purified and united with Christ’s desire, which is always to do the will of the Father. And if that’s the case, then something of this desire in me to run is already, now, helping me get to Heaven, where the desire will be perfected.
I received at least a partial answer to this while praying with the prayers for Mass for today’s solemnity of the Ascension of our Lord. The Prayer after Communion states: May the gifts we have received from your altar, Lord, kindle in our hearts a longing for the heavenly homeland and cause us to press forward, following the Savior’s footsteps, to the place where for our sake he entered before us.
I hear in this prayer a piece of that mysterious desire. For me, running is a concrete expression of the longing that we experience so deeply for union with our Lord. I have been loved, chosen and called to live with Him forever, and my life, even now, is to be an expression of that reality. However, it’s also not yet – there is still an element of incompleteness. And so I run – by His love and grace – toward the joy of that completion. I run as a response to the desire for Him that He planted in me and will – by His love and grace, and my abiding in that grace – someday experience in fullness. I run, then, as a prayer: help me, Jesus, to live in accordance with that desire.
“Our right to heaven has been given us, our place is ready; it is for us to live in such a way that we may occupy it someday.” (Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D.) May each of us, then, live according to the great dignity which is ours, the dignity of children loved into existence by our Heavenly Father and called back to His Heart through the Heart of Jesus His Son.
Sr. Anna Rose Ciarrone, T.O.R.
