Eyes on the Prize: The Beauty of Heaven
The seasons of Advent and Lent call us to special spiritual discipline. But to think that their only purpose is to help us prepare for the feasts of Christmas and Easter is a bit shortsighted. Of course, they do help us prepare for the feasts. But ultimately the entire Liturgical Year is crafted to remind us that we should always be exercising spiritual discipline – with the ultimate goal of getting to Heaven. So to fully understand Advent, we need to enter more deeply into the mystery of Heaven.
What Heaven Is Not
We tend to think of Heaven as a paradise that God uses to reward “good” people after they die. We actually get this idea from pagan myths, such as the Elysian Fields of Greek mythology. The problem for Christians is actually the same problem that Greeks had. We can’t imagine a physical paradise that wouldn’t get boring in eternity. In fact, the Greeks saw death as a shadow existence, and Greek wisdom taught people to enjoy life to the fullest because real enjoyment was not to be found in eternity.
So when a Christian embraces the idea of Heaven as a physical paradise to reward the “good,” they tend to lose their excitement. Yeah, we want to go to Heaven so we can avoid the alternative – an eternity of pain and suffering in Hell. But really we’d rather enjoy life here and now because Heaven is bound to get boring. If that’s you, then I have some good news . . .
Heaven is not a reward for being “good”!
What Heaven IS
Heaven is first and foremost a relationship with God. But what a relationship! Through the grace of Jesus, we are given the power to actually participate in the very divine life of God. United to Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, we actually share in His eternal Trinitarian life as He offers Himself to the Father and to the Spirit as a perfect gift of love. So our connection with the Triune God will be a soul-to-soul intimacy.
God is the perfect good that completely satisfies all of our desires. He is also the eternal, infinite mystery. So our spiritual connection to God will be an eternity of exploring His goodness.
Eye has not seen nor ear heard what God has in store for those who love Him
Beyond that definition of Heaven, we really don’t know much about what we’ll experience there – except that it will be GLORIOUS! Saint Paul tells us, “But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1Corinthians 2:9). The human mind cannot comprehend eternity. Nor can we comprehend the extent of God’s goodness.
But what we can do is consider the goodness that God has already revealed to us, and from that we can conjecture some of what awaits us in Heaven.
Perfection of Relationship
For example, we know from the constant teaching of Sacred Scripture that God intends all of humanity to be His family. He not only wants us to love Him, He wants us to love each other. There is no reason to believe that will change in Heaven. But without sin and ignorance to get in the way, our relationships will take on a whole new meaning of love and intimacy.
We can’t even begin to imagine what it means to have eternity to grow in relationship with each other.
But the intimacy we’ll experience in Heaven is even greater than that! Right we have to overcome a number of obstacles to true intimacy. Sin and ignorance keep even the best of relationships from really entering into total intimacy. But in Heaven every obstacle will be removed. Our bodies will perfectly express our spirits. We will trust each other completely and unreservedly.
Perfect Enjoyment of Every Good
With the top two joys of Heaven in their proper place, we can now return to the idea of Heaven as a paradise with new eyes. We know that we will have bodies in Heaven. How do we know this? Because God created human beings to be both physical and spiritual creatures. Heaven will be the perfection of what we are. We also know that in the beginning, God created the world as a sign of the Covenant. In other words, every created thing – and the ability God gave us to find pleasure in created things- is a sign of God’s love for us.
How much more would we enjoy a nice juicy steak if we saw clearly the love that God put into every dimension of its table? By the way, that’s why we say grace before meals. The prayer is meant to open us more completely to the connection between the goods of creation we’re enjoying and the love of God that made them enjoyable. But because our fallen nature makes us focus more on the good and less in the Giver of the good, we miss out on the fullness of the good.
In Heaven there will be no missing the connection between our experience of the good and the expression of God’s love. So we will experience every good to the fullest possible extent, but on top of that we will be fully aware that each good is an expression of love from God. So our enjoyment will be complete.
Exactly what good will we experience in heaven? Will we eat? Will our pets be there? Will Heaven be much like earth before the Fall? Here we have to say that we really have no idea, except that Heaven is greater than we can imagine. Because we will have bodies, we know that we will experience physical goods. But if Jesus’ resurrected Body is any indication of what’s in store for us (and we believe it is), our bodies will glorified in Heaven. So while the goods we enjoy now will be in a heaven in some form, they will be glorified as well.
But remember that human nature is spiritual as well as physical. So spiritual goods such as truth and beauty will also be part of our experience of heaven. And we know something else about human nature. We know that we are created to experience things gradually. We don’t know unless we learn. We even experience beauty in progressive degrees. So what does this tell us about heaven? Well, like every good the spiritual goods such as truth and beauty have their origin in God. And God is inexhaustible. Therefore truth and beauty is inexhaustible. So our experience in heaven will be a never-ending active exploration of truth and beauty.
Are You Excited Yet?
So how does this compare to your vision of heaven? An intimate, soul-to-soul connection with God and never ending exploration of His goodness. True intimacy with each other. Ultimate enjoyment of created goods as signs of God’s love for us. Unending exploration of truth and beauty. And all of this in a kingdom of perfect love.
Quite a different vision than the shadow world that the Greeks envisioned. Does it get you excited for Heaven?
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