Heaven is a "tough teaching"? Really? Topics we have covered before like hell, and some of the controversial life issues, are perhaps easier to see why I labeled them as "tough teaching". But heaven is wonderful and perfect, how can that be a "tough teaching" we might ask?
Well, I think it is, and let me list the reasons why based on what is presented in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. (For everyone's information, the topic of heaven is discussed in Part One, Article 12, paragraphs 1023-1032.) Again, as I stated last post, any emphasis is mine, and let’s assume that will be the case for any future post, too.
1) According
to paragraph 1023, Those who die in God's
grace and friendship and are
perfectly purified live for ever with Christ. They are like God for ever, for
they "see him as he is," face to face. This is important language. We cannot
earn heaven on our own. We need the
grace of God. This is bad news for
anyone who thinks he or she can, by being a good person, or working hard, get
to heaven. Therefore, this is not good
news for people who think just because Johnny or Suzy was a “good person” that
he or she is in heaven, and therefore, we can celebrate their funeral Mass like
a canonization rite. No, grace is
absolutely necessary to get into heaven.
If we don’t acknowledge that, if we don’t ask for it, if we don’t seek
to remove sin from our lives which can block grace, heaven will indeed be a
very difficult place to get into.
2) Likewise,
we need to be friends with God in
order to get into heaven. What are some
crucial elements of a friend? We know
them, and they know us. Do we know
God? Would he recognize us (lest we
think it automatic that He would, remember the Gospel line (Luke 13:27) where Jesus
says to someone who tries to enter heaven who has not lived a good life, “'I
don't know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!'” Friends do things for one another. Have we allowed God to do things for us? Have we done things for God? We may have done
things for ourselves, our family, our friends, our work, etc., and that is all
well and good, but have we done things for God?
WE must be able to answer yes to this question to even have a chance of
entering heaven.
3) Paragraph
1024 states: This perfect life with the Most Holy Trinity - this communion of
life and love with the Trinity, with the
Virgin Mary, the angels and all
the blessed - is called "heaven." Heaven is the ultimate end and
fulfillment of the deepest human longings, the state of supreme, definitive
happiness. God is Three Persons, the
Trinity. It is a mystery. If we spend
our lives denying the divinity of Jesus, or dismissing the power of the Holy
Spirit, heaven may not be such a nice place for us, and we may have to therefore
spend eternity somewhere else. The same
holds true if we have spent our life ignoring or devaluing the Mother of God,
or have consistently ignored or denied the reality of angels.
4) Paragraph
1025 states: To live in heaven is "to be with
Christ." The elect live
"in Christ,"600 but they retain, or rather find, their true identity,
their own name. Notice it doesn’t
say “everyone”, “all”, or even “many”.
It says the “elect”, which means just a select few. Our Lord himself said in Matthew 7:14, “But
small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find
it.” Ponder that reality.
5) Paragraph
1026 states: By his death and Resurrection, Jesus Christ
has "opened" heaven to us. The life of the blessed consists in the
full and perfect possession of the fruits of the redemption accomplished by
Christ. He makes partners in his heavenly glorification those who have believed in him and remained faithful to his will. Heaven
is the blessed community of all who are perfectly incorporated into Christ. We already touched on the need to believe
in Jesus in order to get into heaven. Here, something else is added. We need to “remain faithful to his will”. We need to remain faithful. It does not
matter if we are faithful now, are we faithful to the end? That will be the
question. Faithful to what? Faithful to his will, not ours. Will we?
That is not an easy question, but we will be called to give an answer to
that before we can possibly enter heaven.
6) Paragraph
1027 states: This mystery of blessed
communion with God and all who are in Christ is beyond all understanding and description. Scripture speaks of it in
images: life, light, peace, wedding feast, wine of the kingdom, the Father's
house, the heavenly Jerusalem, paradise: "no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love
him." There is nothing really necessarily
“tough” here; in fact this is a pretty beautiful, glorious passage. However, I would say this: a lot of us try to
envision what heaven is like. This passage
states that is an impossible task. Now
it is indeed good to think about it once in a while, but sometimes you hear
people say things like “Well, when I get to the pearly gates, I will…” Besides the presumption clearly evident in
that phrase, the other thing wrong with it is that it gives the idea that once
we get into heaven, we can continue to do what we want. Well, that is true
to a degree, but only because in heaven, our will will be aligned with God’s
perfectly, and what we want to do will be what God wants us to do. Rather than try to speculate what heaven is
like on our own, we should rather rest in the Lord, and be joyful in the
reality that heaven will be beyond what any of us can possibly imagine.
7) Paragraph
1028 states: Because of his transcendence, God cannot be seen as he is, unless he himself opens up his mystery to
man's immediate contemplation and gives him the capacity for it. The Church
calls this contemplation of God in his heavenly glory "the beatific vision”. In
Exodus 33:20, we read: “But," (God) said, "you cannot
see my face, for no one may see me and live." If we saw God as He is, in all His
glory, our finite selves would not be able to stand it. If we think we are in control, if we think we
have all the power, if we think we are arbiters of everything, we will have a
strong rebuke coming. We are in for a
big surprise. So, we have to humble
ourselves, realize we are nowhere near God’s majesty, and ask Him to give us
the capacity to see Him. Only if we do
that do we have a chance of entering heaven and experiencing the beatific vision,
perfect happiness.
8) Finally,
paragraph 1029 states: In the glory of
heaven the blessed continue joyfully to fulfill God's will in relation to other men and to all creation. Already they reign
with Christ; with him "they shall reign for ever and ever." We will still have to deal with other people
in heaven! That’s “tough”! OK, that’s kind of a joke there, but it is
still something we definitely need to consider. When we get to heaven, there will be two
surprises, among others. First off, there will be people we though would be
there who will not be (either they are in hell, or they are still being
purified in purgatory). Second, there
will be people there we never thought had a chance of being there. Are we ready for that?
So while Church teaching on heaven is indeed beautiful, as you can see here by the words from the Catechism, it is not an easy teaching by any stretch of the imagination. Let’s be humble now until the end, let’s do good for God now until the end, let’s love Jesus, Mary, the Holy Spirit, the saints, and the angels, now until the end, and above all, let’s be faithful now until the end. If we do all those, we can be confident God will give us the necessary graces to enter heaven, and we will hear these blessed words. “Well done, good and faithful servant…enter into the joy of your master’s house.” (Matthew 25:23).
Joseph most faithful, pray for us.
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