May 17, 2019

5^th Sunday of Easter

“Will I Get My Wings in Heaven?”

Msgr. Thomas Gervasio

In one of his books, Fr. William Bausch, a senior priest of our diocese, provided this description of heaven and hell: “Heaven is where the cooks are French, the police are British, the mechanics are German, the lovers are Italian and everything is organized by the Swiss. Hell is where the cooks are British, the police are German, the mechanics are French, the lovers are Swiss, and everything is organized by the Italians.”
 
What are your images of heaven? Wings and halos? Robes, harps, trumpets? Floating along on a cloud? Standing at the pearly gates with the hope that St. Peter finds our name in his book? These are amusing images but they are also our poor human attempt to describe a reality that is far beyond our imagining. When we think about it, don’t they trivialize a truth that should be considered with great seriousness?
 
Today’s reading from the Book of Revelation prompts me to think about heaven. St. John has a vision of a new heavens and a new earth. Heaven is our goal. The Baltimore Catechism made this clear at the outset, in its answer to Question #2: Why did God make you? God made me to know him, to love him and to serve him in this world so that I might be happy with him in the next. Heaven is Christ’s promise and desire for us: “This is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks upon the Son and believes in him will have eternal life. Him I shall raise on the last day.” Yet, we know so little about it. Scripture provides images but no specific details about heaven. Perhaps this is because God knows that it is impossible for our natural faculties to grasp any supernatural truth in its totality. [The Afterlife, Federico Suarez, p. 69] Fr. Roland Knox said that trying to describe heaven is “like wanting to pay the works of Wagner on the teeth of a comb.” [The Afterlife, Federico Suarez, p. 72]
 
What can we understand about heaven? What happens when a soul enters heaven? Fr. Leo Trese, in his book, The Faith Explained gives us some idea:

“As the soul enters heaven, the impact of the Infinite Love that is God would be so shattering as to annihilate the soul, if God did not give the soul the strength to endure the happiness that is God...a happiness that nothing can take from us...an instant of pure bliss that will never end. There are other incidental joys that will be ours. There will be our joy in the company of our Savior and of our Mother Mary. There will be our joy in the companionship of the angels and saints, including our family members and friends who preceded or who followed us to heaven. But these joys will be only the tinkling of little bells compared to the crashing symphony of God’s love that beats upon us.” [pp. 151-152]

At the resurrection of the dead, our souls will be reunited to our bodies. God will make all things new. Our bodies will be transformed, that is to say, glorified—free from physical limitations, with no need of food, drink or rest. They shall have a perfection and beauty that reflects the perfection and beauty of God. We don’t become angels—angels belong to another order of God’s creation. They are purely spiritual beings. (I think the song of the angels might be, “I Ain’t Got No Body!”) We become not angels but saints; who will have glorified bodies. We’ll then understand how God was working in our life. We’ll have the answers to the questions and mysteries of life.
 
What will life be like; what will we do in heaven? Won’t we get bored? Is it like being in church for eternity? While worship is central to heaven, but it will be far richer than anything we experience on earth...but surely never boring! Boredom is a form of suffering, and there is no suffering in heaven.
 
Heaven is our goal and what God wants for us. But we must enter it. Whether we enter it, depends on how we spend our lives on earth. The key to the “pearly gate” yes, to use an image, is found in today’s Gospel: “I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.” Only then will we come to know what God has prepared for us--what “eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor even conceived in the mind of man.”

St. Fulgentius of Ruspe [Everyone knows St. Fulgentius] expressed it eloquently: “Christ made love the stairway that would enable all Christians to climb to heaven. Hold fast to it in all sincerity, give one another practical proof of it, and by your progress in it, make your ascent.” St. John of the Cross also reminded us of this when he said, “In the evening of life, we will be judged on love alone.” Therein lays the key!