Hearts go to heaven 1st!
Soul Snack 9/185 ... A heaven sent heart!
Death is man's best friend when it is the vestibule to paradise.
Dominique Voillaume was diagnosed at 54 with inoperable cancer. This sage who lead a small band of youthful monks was no seeker of honor nor personal agrandisment.
On learning of His death sentence he resigned from his small spiritual community and took a factory job in Paris as a night-watchman. This then enabled him to live out his final days blessing the lost, the least, the last and the lonely.
He deliberately rented very sparse accommodation across from a park where he would serve those he loved and whom he lived for. Daily he shared a dilapidated bench and simply affirmed never condemning these ner-do-wells.
In serene and selfless devotion he lived his final days in ignominy, unnoticed by the masses but loved by ''the losers.''
One morning he failed to appear at his customary park bench.
Below are recorded his final communications within this world, to out of this world.. They were entered in his personal devotional diary just hours before he died.
"All that is not the love of God has no meaning for me. I can truthfully say that I have no interest in anything but the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. If God wants it to, my life will be useful through my word and my witness. If He wants it to, my life will bear fruit through my prayers and sacrifices. But the usefulness of my life is His concern, not mine. It would be indecent of me to worry about that." *
... and then He died alone -priorites so correctly in place at still a tender age. His heart was in heaven before his soul. He had already sent his heart to heaven.
He was later found in his near empty hovel located in an obscure Parisian slum.
To conclude:
"Any spirituality that does not lead from a self-centered existence to an other-centred mode of existence is bankrupt." *
''He who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.'' Lk 14:33
* these quotes and adapted story are from Brennan Manning - The signature of Jesus pp 98-99( ps ... more than 7000 gathered from all over Europe for his funeral)