Sexagesima Sunday 7.2.10 Vision of heaven
As one saint said, It is only a foolish traveller who would forget his destination and stop instead to idle his time in some pleasant field along the way.
On most trips we undertake we would remember where we are going and we would arrive there, yet the most important trip we are all on is the one that takes us to heaven and not everyone, it seems, does arrive there.
It is possible and all too easy to be distracted and fall somewhere along the wayside. The parable of the sower and the seed describes at least three ways in which the traveller can be diverted from his path.
He may not even get started. He may give up because the path gets too difficult. Or he may give up because he finds other pleasant things along the way and just forgets where he is trying to reach.
To keep the vision of heaven foremost in our minds is quite a challenge, yet it is essential we do this if we want to guarantee we will arrive there.
St Paul had a vision of heaven, which he alludes to in the epistle today. He cannot tell us much about it because there are no words for such things. We have words only for everyday things and visions of heaven are too rare for words to be developed.
So we have something of a problem here. We have this place, Heaven, which is so marvellous that it is beyond our powers to describe or even to imagine, and because it is so far outside our normal experience we find it difficult to think about or to focus on. We are then inclined to fall back on more familiar things, and this is where we can become derailed.
We are inclined to limit our quest for happiness to the things of this world and let the next life wait until it comes... Heaven can wait, as the saying goes.
But if we are too immersed in the things of this world we may miss out on heaven altogether, because we will become distorted in our values and desires. We will find false gods to replace the true God.
We will make all sorts of compromises trying to make this life as easy and comfortable as possible, avoiding anything which seems too hard, and seeking pleasures without worrying whether they are permitted or not.
It may seem the promises of heaven are too vague and too distant to be compelling; that we need something more tangible, more here-and-now.
Heaven is not vague, however. It is a very real place. Just because we have trouble saying much about it does not lessen its beauty. The reason we cannot say much about it is that it is so good it is beyond our limited experience.
It is not too good to be true; it is too good to describe, but it is true all the same. It is truer than a lot of things we find on earth!
We need to nurture our belief in heaven and our hope of arriving there. The virtue of hope is a confidence that we can arrive in heaven, assisted by the mercy and grace of God. If we keep on course on a daily basis, trusting in God’s providence, we will arrive on time, whatever time He has decreed for each one of us.
We experience glimpses of heaven in this life, in certain ecstatic moments, in foretastes of the glory of God through His creation here; in experiences of love and joy. These are enough to drive us on to seek the fullness that can only be known in Heaven.
Anything short of that is not enough, and we must not settle for it.
This is not our true home.
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