Sunday after Ascension 5.6.11 Heaven
We mention heaven a lot in our prayers and speaking of our faith. We hope to go to heaven. We talk of people being in heaven. How much do we really know about it?
First of all we know it does exist; there is such a place. It is true we are vague about some of the details of what it is like, but that is only because we have not yet experienced it.
It is also because it is a place of such beauty that it is beyond ordinary words to describe it. Just as when the saints have a mystical experience of God they cannot tell us what happened because it is beyond words (cf St Paul and his being shown heaven 2 Cor 12,2-4). At times we experience something of the beauty of creation when we contemplate say a large mountain range, or the breadth of the sea, or the vastness of the stars in the sky.
These things are beautiful but they are only a taste of far greater beauty beyond.
Cartoonists always portray heaven as people floating about on clouds and playing harps. This conveys what many would fear – that heaven is a vague and shadowy sort of place, lacking in the reality that we have here on earth. In fact Heaven would be more substantial and more physical than earth. (As CS Lewis wrote in his book ‘The Great Divorce’... people new to heaven cannot walk on heavenly grass at first because it is too hard). If the earth, riddled with sin as it is, can still display so much beauty what must heaven be like, which has seen no trace of sin?
So there is great physical beauty in heaven. But better than this we will find there a moral beauty: namely, that in heaven the will of God is done by all without exception. There is no trace of malice, nastiness, coldness, selfishness, insults, bullying, violence and all similar things that we take for granted in this life.
This is harder to imagine than the physical dimension. We have never experienced such peace and harmony, yet we know that it is theoretically possible and certainly desirable. Heaven is the place where we will see it, if we don’t ever achieve it here.
And this is the place to which Jesus has ascended, paving the way for us to follow! Can we dare to hope that we can reach such a place? We are not used to being that lucky. In this life some things go our way, and some not. We get used to a kind of mixture of good and bad outcomes. We are not used to thinking about being totally happy all the time. But this is what our faith tells us. It is true even if we can’t grasp it.
Heaven is trivialized not just by cartoonists but whenever people speak of it as just a place where people go when they die – the great bowling green in the sky etc.
This trivializes heaven in two ways: one by greatly understating its true grandeur and two, by assuming that everyone has automatic entry.
We can enter there, but only if we live and die in union with Our Lord. Only if we do His will on earth and/or are truly repentant for offending Him.
We live in hope, not just a wishful thinking, but a real certain hope that we will experience this place, a certainty that increases every time we call upon the power and love of God to forgive and strengthen us.
So there is such a place and we are nearly in it. By God’s grace we will get there, our true home.
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