Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

In Jerusalem you shall find your comfort

Detail from the Last Judgment, Fra Angelico

“Rejoice because your names are written in heaven.”

What is heaven then? It’s a question we all ask, because it’s a question about the end, the goal, the point. And the answer about the end, the goal, the point, is the most important answer of all.

Some say that’s a meaningless question: like everything else, we are just matter, and when our brain ceases to function and our body follows and we die, we become mere compost. One day this planet too, this galaxy, and eventually the whole universe will dissolve back into chaos, expanding and cooling to a point where no energy or matter can interact.

That is all that science can tell us, based on what we can see with our eyes. But what if there is a truth beyond what we can sense, something beyond matter, what we can only know with our minds, our “intellect”, as they used to say? A knowledge that tells us that, perhaps, our hopes and dreams for something beyond this life are not in vain?

Heaven is not something we can see: but that does not mean it is a childish dream, either. Rather, heaven is the revelation that makes sense of the hints and suggestions that our search for wisdom has pointed to, ever since human beings started asking the question, “why?”

Existence does not account for itself. Why is there something rather than nothing? There must be a First Cause, a Creator. God is that First Cause, the Creator of the universe. He is beyond all matter, energy, and time, and yet he is close to all things, holding them in being, giving them existence, putting them in time and motion. He is immortal, eternal, pure spirit. And if he can make all things, then he can transform all things. Just as he made the universe out of nothing, he can raise it beyond itself to share in a life infinitely beyond its own capacity.

Heaven then, is what we call that state where creation somehow, someway, enters into a life beyond what it could ever be capable of, on its own.

It’s hard to imagine how this might be so. To be sure, the Lord gives us hints and intimations, signs and foreshadowings of how this might be. But in the end, we find no handhold, no position to understand it ourselves. We can only get that viewpoint by revelation. It is only the word from beyond that can tell us what that beyond is like.

What has he told us then? What does Scripture say? Heaven is eternal life and light, perfect joy and peace, the wedding feast, the wine of the kingdom, the Father's house, the adoration of the Lamb, 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."

Note well: Scripture almost never speaks of us “going to heaven,” but rather of heaven coming to us. Heaven is not a place, far far away, but the transformation of reality. Better said, heaven is the entrance of creation into the very life of God.

What is heaven like? It is the fulfillment and possession of every good thing, everything promised and hoped for. As Scripture says: whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise—that is the foretaste of heaven. Heaven is that because heaven is God, the creator of all that is good and beautiful. Heaven is us and all of creation not just with God but in God, without limit.

We might be tempted to imagine heaven as some mystical, bodiless place, a nirvana. God has told us no such thing: rather, creation itself is groaning for redemption, awaiting with eager expectation the fulfillment of God’s promise, that all things will be redeemed and transformed into a new heavens and a new earth.

This is testified to in the Lord’s promise of Resurrection. At the end of time, our very bodies will be raised and made new again, to live a new bodily life in heaven—not like the life of old, in the passage of time, growing and dying, grasping and losing. Not just our bodies but everything that was a part of our life, all history and all time will be redeemed and made new.

“The Kingdom of God is at hand!” That, as Jesus instructs his disciples to announce on their first round as missionaries, is the good news we proclaim. “Rejoice because your names are written in heaven.” That is the end, the goal, the point: that God reigns, that his rule is victorious, that how he made us, to long for truth and goodness and beauty without end, is not vain, but an image and likeness, a promise that proclaims his faithfulness and generosity.

The First Reading tells us today that one day in Jerusalem we will find our comfort. The Second Reading tells us that the only thing that matters is whether we are a new creation.

Why does Scripture give us these cryptic answers, these hints and intimations, signs and foreshadowings? So that we would not be discouraged.

Scripture says: Consider it all joy when you encounter various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Blessed is the man who perseveres in trial, for when he has been proved he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.

We persevere when we have a clear, firm grasp of the end, the goal, the point: when we seek it with all our heart.

As Jesus says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” What misery it would be to miss the end, the goal, the point, to have those who were sent to announce this good news shake the dust off their feet against us.

Seek heaven then with all your heart, so as not to miss it. Or better said: seek HIM with all your heart, what he has promised to those who love him, who do his will, what we will see in that eternal light that today we glimpse by faith:

Then the angel showed me the river of life-giving water, sparkling like crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river grew the tree of life. Nothing accursed will be found there anymore. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will look upon his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. Night will be no more, nor will they need light from lamp or sun, for the Lord God shall give them light, and they shall reign forever.