I was giving a talk this past week about St. Teresa of Avila’s near-death experience at St. Teresa of Avila parish. St. Teresa of Avila was dead for four days. They had coated her eyes in wax. They had celebrated her funeral Mass. They had opened her tomb. And yet, Don Alonso, her father, would not give up her body for burial.
After the talk, this random (not random) YouTube video found me:
Jesus showed St. Teresa of Avila a cascade of souls falling out of the sky. It’s a cascade of souls falling into Hell. “As snow falls in winter.”
Shocked, St. Teresa cries out, “My God, who are they? They must be pagans who never knew you.”
But Jesus replied, “No, Teresa, they are Christians like you.”
“But,” St. Teresa pleads — the truth slowly wrapping its fingers around her heart — “Then they must have neglected the faith and abandoned the sacraments.”
Again Jesus answered, “No, Teresa. They practiced the faith.”
“But,” St. Teresa pleads. “Surely they must have never confessed, not even at the moment of death.”
Again, Jesus answers, breaking her heart with the final answer. “They confessed even before they died.”
St. Teresa trembling asks one final question: “Then why are they condemned?”
Jesus gives her a mission that now echoes through the centuries to us. “Because they confessed badly.” Jesus then commands St. Teresa: “Go, tell everyone.”
St. Thomas: “It is better for 1,000 people to die, then for one, baptized Christian to commit one mortal sin.”
We must be gripped with a sense of urgency.
Souls are falling out of the sky, cascading into Hell, all around us. If we’re not gripped with this reality, this mission, to get everyone of them to Jesus and the Sacrament of Confession, we are just standing idly by.
“Go, tell everyone.”
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