Look up

Look up

Many of us who attended Bishop Henry’s Confirmation Mass, may have had the chance to hear the parable of the eaglet. The parable below is an attempt to tell the parable as Bishop Henry did.

An eagle egg fell into a chicken nest. The chicken believing that it was her egg incubated it. When the eaglet hatched, it believed that its family was the chickens it was surrounded by. Thus, the eaglet ate like a chicken, scratched the ground for insects and worms like a chicken, rose up early in the morning like a chicken, attempted to cluck like a chicken, and so on. The eaglet grew and continued doing what the others around it did.

One day the eaglet rose its head heavenward and saw a majestic bird flying up high. It asked the other chickens what that was.

One of them replied, “Oh! That is an eagle. It is the king of the sky” The eaglet said, “I want to fly like an eagle.” To this, the other chicken replied, “Remember, you are a chicken, you belong to the earth. The one up high is the king of the sky and belongs to the sky. You better get used to being here below, for you belong here.”

By Christ’s Ascension to heaven, we Christians belong to heaven. We no longer belong to this earth. Our bodies, our mortal bodies, belong here, and to the finite world; however, our soul, our eternal soul, belongs to heaven.

Thus, while we are on our journey on earth, let us dare to look up to heaven, and know that we belong there, where Our Lord Jesus has preceded us.