Friday, June 27, 2025
Solemnity of Most Sacred Heart of Jesus
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Heaven’s balcony
I tell you, in just the same way
there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents
than over ninety-nine righteous people
who have no need of repentance.
On Father’s Day ten or so years ago, Margaret and our kids chipped in to buy a Ron DiCianni painting for my counseling office. Ron Herron had recently remodeled our office and waiting room, and the green colors of couch, rug and walls were echoed in the matte that surrounded the painting of four angels with trumpets and big bright wings looking down from “Heaven’s Balcony.” The text of the verse above from Luke 15 is etched around the edge.
I notice this verse reappearing in scenes of my life, as for example last week in the Indy art museum when Margaret and I had lost each other for an hour and I felt panicky and then, when we sighted each other at last, there was “joy in heaven.” In my confusion and fear I prayed, and Margaret prayed, and when the moment came when we were found we felt great joy and could even imagine the trumpets of the angels. “Here they come! See how they come together again. Look at their relief, their joy, and their love. Let’s rejoice and blow our trumpets for them!”
Jesus (and DiCianni) was describing angels as they rejoiced over a repentant man or woman, who recognizes at last that he is not in charge of his own life. As the first commandment so aptly states, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Especially, I’ll add, your own darn self. This “god” is impossible to avoid for long and certainly impossible to throw out with the trash. I am, after all, me.
I don’t purposely worship my achievements or muscles or ministry or smile, but over and over I forget to give thanks and offer those gifts up as a living sacrifice to God, who gave them to me and gives them over and over, again and again. And in my most recent hour of fear and helplessness, I forgot at first, and then remembered, to give up my control and pray.
So I know those angels are cheering me on, too.
And because of that painting across from my office couch I have watched more than once the scene from Green Pastures (1936 film), when Gabriel points out to Jehovah that several of his angels are looking out over heaven’s balcony down toward heaven, watching Jesus carry his cry and then die on it. Da Lord understood in a moment how Jesus brought mercy to the world he’d created, mercy God himself could only receive through suffering.
In a book that anthologizes Flannery O’Connor’s spiritual writings, Richard Giannone contrasts her writing with that of self-styled Christian authors “who not only confused the inner world with the outer, but also falsified the stumbling blocks in the path of faith and trivialized the pain of drawing close to God.” This pain, so closely akin to joy, marks every significant step I take away from sin and up toward God, toward becoming the person God made me to be. And always, there is joy in heaven.
(Ezekiel 34, Psalm 23, Romans 5, Matthew 11, John 10, Luke 15)
(posted at davesandel.net)
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