To Christina The Astonishing

When you died of a seizure at 22, the Lord gave you a choice: stay in heaven or return to her life and do penance for the souls in purgatory.

I want to stop the story right here because, Christina, love, one of your choices was heaven. You know? Heaven? Eternal happiness? Figs on silver dishes and harps both small and large and beautiful faces. You were done. The gates open. All you had to do was say yes.

Was it vanity? You would have the power to save souls and that seemed more attractive than heaven. Was it a sense of obligation? Or a fear? Perhaps you knew that your father languished in purgatory and maybe one of your acts would redeem him. Because what would heaven be without your father?

So you come back to your life in Belgium and renounce all physical comfort: a home, money, regular food, friends. You threw yourself on hot furnaces and walked away without a burn. In the winter, you spend hours in the icy river, cries of agony heard downstream and yet every night, you walked away. You’d run through thorny thickets naked and emerge without a scratch. Your skin as smooth as a new leaf.

You tucked yourself into ovens when the smell of human sin became more than you could bear. The stink of lies, the rancid scent of coveting a neighbor’s new horse, the acrid odor left hanging in the air after someone utters “Good God!” The faint decay of the person losing faith. You’d cover your mouth and nose, think about the smell of bread, of rain, the air in heaven. So clean.

For this, they call you “The Astonishing.” Not “The Amazing.” Not “The Pious” or “The Devoted” or “The Wondrous.” Astonishing. Dumbfounded. You emerge again and again from the oven, the river, the forest and return to the town. You are either mad or holy. The town cannot agree. But they watch you carefully, wondering if what you have done today has saved one of their own dead.