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There is a book out that has big advertisements in the New York Times. It is called something like “Five People You Will Meet in Heaven.” It is by the same man who wrote “Tuesdays With Morrie,” and evidently this new book, “Five People You Will Meet in Heaven,” is a big success. I have not read it but I love the title, “Five People You Will Meet in Heaven.” And, I thought, well, today’s gospel, the Epiphany, is about the Magi, the Wise Men from the East, meaning Gentiles, not Jewish men, Gentiles meeting God in the form of a Baby, but a human child, God. So, you had, first, God as a baby meets Jewish people, Our Lady, His mother, and Joseph and shepherds. And the Epiphany feast means now you and I, the Gentiles, come rushing in, in the shape of the Wise Men. Jesus, the Messiah for the world, meeting.

I personally love titles like that, “Five People You Will Meet in Heaven.” And I also thought maybe to tie it up with a refrain that a lady teacher (one of the three best teachers I ever had) kept using in class. Her name was Dr. Beverly Lipschutz, and I thought it is a worse name than mine, especially for a teacher, Lipschutz. She was a Jewish lady who taught at New York University, and she taught us teachers Psychology. She was one of the three best teachers I have ever had in my life. The first two were Bible scholars, Father Burke and Father Ray Brown. And this lady was terrific. If you saw the movie, “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” imagine she, the leading lady, the bride. That was Beverly Lipshutz. But you got to give her a Brooklyn accent and a lot of bracelets on her right arm. We took this course for four years. She was a great Psychology teacher, tough love. And she would talk like a real Brooklyn lady, and I was this good little Catholic priest, fully dressed as a priest, sitting in the front row. And every so often she would be talking about various problems in adolescent psych, and she would lean forward and say, “What do you think, Rev.?” And she meant it most graciously. She was very interested in the Catholic priest’s approach. (To tell you the truth, I found the Jewish people at New York University much friendlier than the Catholic people at Fordham, maybe because Fordham just sees too many priests.) Anyhow, she was great and she had a phrase, long way to get to the phrase that Beverly Lipschotz used all the time. She would present a problem that a high school or college student would be having, very realistic, and she would say, with her hand on her hip, “Go figure,” by which she meant, that night, we were to go home and come up with some suggestions to help or heal this kid who was hurting.

So, that is our refrain that I got from Lipschutz. “Go figure.” And here are five people to meet in Heaven. It is my list. Of course, you would have your own.

#1.) A person who has died whom you loved, and they died before you.... a parent, or maybe if you had the inexplicable misery of losing a child, or maybe just a pal, a friend. And they have died and then later you die and you meet them in Heaven, face to face. That is essential Catholic Christian teaching, from the lips of Jesus. We shall meet Him and these people in the face. We won’t be little globules tossed around in some ganglia, but face to face, the Resurrection, risen body. And what are you going to say; what am I going to say to this person, just one? There will be many, but just this one, maybe a married partner in some of your cases. And you might say, “ I am so sorry that for so long it seemed that I was taking you so much for granted. But I was absorbed by work and nerves and tension and exhaustion. And part of me was grateful that I could take your love for granted because it was so absolute. But now, seeing you face to face in Heaven I want to say at last fully how deeply I appreciated that love of yours.”

Before Our Lord died, and He repeats it in different words before the Ascension, Our Lord says to His apostles, “I am going back to the Father to prepare...” (This is Our Lord speaking. I have to emphasize that, maybe not for you. You believe. But I have to emphasize it for me. Our Lord is speaking to His friends.) He says, “I am going back to the Father to prepare a place for you. In My Father’s house, there are many mansions.” And then I imagine some of the apostles may have looked somewhat sceptical or ho-hum or who cares?..... But Our Lord follows it up in the gospels with “If it were not so, I would not have told you. I am going to prepare a place for you.... and you..... and you.” That is from the lips of Christ. So, this isn’t just fantasy! #1, someone who died that you loved and you will see the person in the face. It is a mystery, but.... “Go figure!”

#2.) Having met a dead friend, now we meet a dead foe, an enemy, a “jerk.” And that person died ahead of you and you get to Heaven and you see her/him in the face. You’re here? Uh-huh. And, it will be time then for explanations. Won’t it? Our Lord says also, “All things will be revealed.” So you look at this person who hurt you, from whom you were estranged, alienated, wall came down between you, and the person will get a chance to explain about all the genetic, chromosomal mess-ups in their background, about the jealousy and the stupidity and the lust and the greed that messed them up and made them lose your friendship, and they will get it all out. All will be revealed. And in Paradise, looking at each other face to face, you will be able to say, “OK. I get it.... But you couldn’t have expected me down on Planet Earth to have been a mind-reader and figured out all the complexities of your problem!” “No, but are we friends now?” ....”Yes.”

Monday night, of this past week, I had a dream that I died. (I always have to apologize for all this personal stuff, but I can’t do it any other way.) I dreamed that I died. And I woke up and I kicked the terrier off of the bed. And I said, “Wait a minute. Is there anyone from whom I am estranged?” I was so fascinated by this title, “Five People You Meet in Heaven.” And there was one. Let’s call him by the pseudonym I assign to these people. Let’s call him “Igor.” And I thought, “I am not young anymore and I dreamt that I died. If I died without making some attempt to have a rapprochement with this jerk then it is my fault.” It was a matter of money. We had been friends for twenty-seven years and laughter and sharing life, and then a matter of money and then dead silence for seven and a half years.

So I picked up the phone. I don’t know how my insensate pride was being swallowed. It was what we call the grace of God, bopping me on the noggin, “Call him!” Doesn’t matter if he responds, friendly or unfriendly. Doesn’t matter.... Anyhow, I did and I got the answering service. (Ha! Ha! Ha!) I said, “Igor, this is Father Michael Dibble and I miss the friendship and laughter we had for twenty-seven years. And I do want to wish you a serene new year and a year filled with the presence of Christ.” Now, I can say something like that without sounding supercilious. I am a priest, and I did mean it. And then I hung up and took the dog for a walk. When I got back, the little light (on the phone) was on. Anyhow, he called back. They don’t always. It doesn’t matter. Our Lord never said, “Forgive and forget.” Never. You can’t find “forget.” You can’t forget some things. Blessed are the doormats, the dishrags, and the dopes who forget injury. No, that is just shallow and stupid to forget. You can’t. But to forgive, make the effort. Anyhow, it wasn’t my virtue. It was the Spirit saying, “Call him.” Now, we exchange e-mail like two frenetic fiends! If there is one person at Mass in this New Year who is thinking, “Well, maybe....,” send a card. Or maybe you will be lucky too and just get the answering machine.

When Thomas More was standing there in sixteenth century London, about to have his head lopped off.... Remember Thomas More, married man, a big politician in Tudor England with a family and responsibilities? And King Henry VIII says, ”I am now the head of the Church of England.” And Thomas More, the Chancellor of England said, “No, you are not. The Pope is the head of the Church in England, in Ireland, and all over the world. Not you.” And Henry VIII said, “Cut off his head.” And Thomas More was standing there, and there was a big mob in that London street to see him get his head lopped off. And this secretary was there, hired by the king, to write down anything More might say. And More’s last words were, (And he shouted it so anyone in the back of the crowd could hear.) “I want to say from my heart that I hope all of us shall meet one day merrily in Heaven.” And he meant it. He was about to die. He wasn’t conning them. Isn’t that a great adjective? “Merrily,” all of us meet in heaven! ... Go figure.

#3.) I want some answers. I hope there is some big arcangel to greet me. My number 3 person is an arcangel. And you know angels don’t have wings and all that stuff. They are preternatural highly intelligent stages in God’s creation, and they are on our side. And I think each of us will get an angel. I’ll get an arcangel. (My name is Michael!) I have a lot of questions, and so do you. For some reason, even Our Lord chose not to give glib answers.

Number one, how come Adam and Eve had this big moral crackup and car crash and WE are limping all through history? We limp because they messed up?

Number two, how come the Catholic Church has survived persecutions and Nero and Hitler and Stalin and all kinds of horrible, horrible persecutions and sufferings? Why are we wasting all of our spiritual energy sniping at ourselves? I keep saying this because it hurts at my age. Liberals and conservatives...”How dare you?”....”You’re not really a good Catholic!” ....Outside they don’t care about anything. They don’t care about Our Lord. They don’t care about the Eucharist. They don’t care about scripture. They’re yawning. And here we believe intensely in Christ and the Mass and the Sacraments and some of us just spend our whole lives fighting each other. There is not enough spiritual energy left!

So, speaking of answers, last year I was pushing a book (I don’t get royalties. I don’t.) called “More Than a Carpenter,” about Jesus. You see, without Jesus, the whole thing doesn’t make any difference. But if Jesus really was what He said He was and did what He said he did and we are going to rise from the dead, and He set up the Church, while the rest of the world goes out and Ho-hum who cares....Well now I have a second book. And even if there is just one of you who picks it up.... or you have a kid in college who says, “Oh, the whole thing about Jesus is made up, and who cares?....” This one is called, “The Case for Christ.” It has a journalist’s hard-hitting but first-rate, scholarly approach. Did Christ live? What’s the evidence? Did He do what He said He was going to do? Did He rise from the dead?..... It’s readable! And if you have a kid in college, mail it to him. Maybe he won’t read it but it will be on the shelf. He’ll know there is a book with the case for Christ. He lived. He did what He said He was going to do. He rose, physically, from the dead. Without Christ, forget about it. With Christ, we can survive even ourselves. And the little card (with the name of the book) is on the bulletin board out there. The title is “A Nibble from Dibble.” I want answers from arcangels when I get to heaven, but right now, I will have to settle for people and books like this.

#4.) This is someone I want to meet in heaven, someone I had the most agonizing, lacerating, lasting crush on many years ago.... Well, it is MY list! i cannot, as one who worked in the field for so long, dismiss young love as puppy love and ephemeral and evanescent and..... OK, there are all of those pejorative adjectives, but there are some of us who had a crush that was so painful and left such scars that we remember it to this day. And our lives went on and other things happened but we never said it, “I am crazy about you! I love you!” And now that I am in heaven, I can tell you to your face, and you can’t run away!

St. Paul, writing from jail, used this phrase in the New Testament, “All things work together for good for those who go on loving God.” That is not just airy poetry. He is in the slammer, and he is being beaten. He writes to fellow Christians, “ALL things work together for good if you go on loving God,” including crushes that you never expressed and there is still pain! I was at a Chinese restaurant yesterday with a married couple, not Catholics. You would be heartened to find out how many non-Catholics are still fascinated by the Church. And they drive by this place on Sunday and they see it is packed. All the bad headlines don’t matter to them. They still think there is something Catholics have that is good. Anyhow, the wife said to me, “What are you talking about tomorrow?” ...”Oh, I am talking about five people I want to meet in Heaven.” ...”Who are they?” ....a natural sequence of questions. And I got to #4 and I tried to say it so fast, as if I were munching on a fortune cookie. She said, “Well instead of doing a person upon whom you had this lasting unrequited crush, why don’t you make the #4 person one who had a crush on you?”.... A long wait...... And the disgruntled clergyman muttered, “Pass the soy sauce.”

Don’t waste any kind of love, even if it seems silly. Don’t let it go to waste. Make it part of your prayer, and seek that person out when you get to Paradise. Say to that person, “I was crazy about you..... Go figure!”

#5 and last is Our Lord, of course. He is number one but you know what I mean. To see Christ in the face.... He promised we would, not a vague shadow, in the face. And when I see Him, and maybe some of you might be along with me on this, I will complain. I will. I will say, “How come that up until about 1992, after I was a priest all those decades, that in 1992 I go to this big refresher course on the Church...” (I told you about it many times, that sabbatical in Menlo Park, all these big shot theologians, not liberals, not conservatives, just solid Catholic scholars.) “...and I am listening to this for three and a half months, and all I am getting is Christ’s love, and the New Testament and the New Testament. I’m sitting there and ‘Jesus loves me, unconditional love. We are washed in the blood and the mercy of God. Even if we are all messed up with sin, and not just lust. There are other sins beside lust. Rage, and anger and revenge and greed. And maybe we don’t even want to get out of this sin, but Christ is pursuing us like a Hound of Heaven, deeply in love personally with us, not just because you are one of the Church.’ All this stuff I am getting from first rate Catholic minds. And I was getting madder and madder. NOW they are telling me all of this stuff! I grew up where instead of concentrating on Christ and His message of power and mercy and forgiveness, I pretty much grew up on legal niceties about sin. And I am not knocking the sisters and priests who taught me. They were great, but they were passing on the strictures they themselves had been given. Most of my spiritual life (I am 69.) for those years was about sin or the occasion of sin. Not much about Jesus, at least not on the East Coast.”

Quick examples: On Fridays, in those days, you couldn’t eat meat. It was a mortal sin to eat meat deliberately on a Friday. OK. A corn chowder soup... Let’s see, any beef stock? There is beef stock in a corn chowder soup? That’s meat! And you deliberately eat meat? You committed a mortal sin, and if you are run over by a herd of runaway rhinos, you will die and go to hell.

There was a movie called “The Outlaw,” 1948, with Jane Russell, a beauteous brunette whose blouse was cut somewhat dangerously low in the front. The movie, "The Outlaw," was condemned by the Legion of Decency. One day, a classmate found me circling the theatre, and he said, “Michael, are you planning on seeing The Outlaw? That has been condemned.” I said, “No. I am checking the credits. I am just checking...” He said, “Jane Russell’s blouse has been condemned by the Legion of Decency. The film has been condemned by the Legion of Decency, and you go up to that box office.....” (fill in the blank.) ....P. S. The last time I saw the reference to "The Outlaw" it was on the Disney Channel. I didn’t go, because I didn’t want to go straight to Hell.

My dad was a convert, passionately in love with the Church, as converts can be. One day I came home when I was in first year of college. “Where have you been, Michael?” “Oh, I had a swim.” ....”Where? It is winter.”.... “Oh, at the Y.” ... “What? The YMCA? The Young Men’s Christian Association? That is a heretical organization! Do you realize that you are condemned by the Church for going to these places? I bet even the chlorine was infected.” Well, maybe that is just one particular neurosis of mine, but to find out way back.... OK. I am complaining to Our Lord, and at four o’clock this morning I wrote down what Our Lord might say.

Here I am griping and grouchy that all these years I have been traveling under fear of sin, fear, fear, fear. And the new company line, the new party line, is cheer, cheer, cheer, God loves you! So, I am complaining to Our Lord and I think He might say to me, “OK. Don’t be grouchy. You are safe home now.” If you can’t understand why so much of this legal stuff about sin in the past, you have to realize that, in the past thirty years, in the Roman Catholic Church, there has been such a tremendous breakthrough of knowledge of Our Lord’s dialect, Aramaic, of Greek, of the translations of the Bible, that some of the Jewish explanations and metaphors that Jesus used are packed with the mercy of God. We don’t have to make it up. We don’t have to be woolly liberals. It is right in Christ’s words. That is why the Church has to emphasize the person of Christ, and mercy and love and forgiveness, and He is pursuing you even in the midst of your mess-ups and your sin. OK. I’m grouchy again and He says, “All right, all right, but you are home now. You are safe in God’s mercy which you had all your life if you had only known it. So would you please enjoy it, be embraced by it? We have all eternity to ..... go figure.”