This is a great question, especially for this time of year. It is a question about what we believe in, but does it have anything to do with how we should act? Most certainly, yes, as we shall see!
Some of the things we read in the Bible about our final destiny make it seem like there is nothing we can actually know about it. As St. Paul wrote, “Eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and what has not entered the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor 2:9).
But St. John the Evangelist also lets us know that there are ways that we can glimpse what heaven is like because of the gifts that God gives us already in this life: “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 Jn 3:2).
“We shall see him as he is!” And it is precisely that sight of him that will transform us into our future selves. In our present life, we cannot see God perfectly, but we do see him already in a mysterious way, through faith. And already, we can begin to pattern our own lives on what we know about God through faith. Most importantly, as John says, “Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love” (1 Jn 4:8).
In this life, we love and experience the love of others. When others love us, it feels good, and we begin naturally to love them back. Even so, our love is limited by our sins and human weakness, and the love that we experience from others is also affected by these. Yet they offer us an experience of love that can give us, at least, a faint glimpse of what God is must be like.
In Jesus, we see even more deeply into God’s own love, because it was to reveal God’s love that Jesus came into our world. In him, we see a love that is not just a response to something else — this love is the first thing, coming before our good deeds. It is reliable or completely dependable, remaining constant in spite of all our bad deeds. It is the last thing standing, more unshakeable than even the universe itself.
This love is not something God does; it is who He is — pure love in personal form — and even though we try, this product of our imagination will not come close to the reality of God-Love, who is infinite, beyond any stretch of our imagination.
Despite what we are unable to say about heaven, then, here is what we can affirm: heaven is to be constantly and permanently in the presence of this love. We will not only see him with a new kind of sight that we do not yet possess in this world, but this love will also fill every aspect of our own selves, permeating our relationships with him and with each other forever, with no shadow of selfishness left in us.
There is one thing about human love that is different from that of God and his angels — it is the fact that we love not just inwardly, in our souls, but also through our concrete actions and treatment of others. And that is part of the message of Easter: the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead in his human body. Our bodies, too, will be raised up from the grave, and we will live in them forever.
In Jesus’ own resurrection appearances, we see hints of the transformation of our body in the resurrection. His risen body was no longer limited by the same laws of time and space as when he had lived among us before. He was able to appear instantly, pass through locked doors, and make himself present wherever he wished or wishes to be, and most amazingly, in the Holy Eucharist in every place on earth.
For ourselves too, we can be sure that the glory of the love that will then fill our souls will also affect our risen bodies in a profound way, removing all suffering, freeing us from death forever, and taking away many of the limitations that we experience in this world.
The glory of heaven is indeed beyond our ability to imagine. Yet what we do know about it makes it possible to prepare for it even now! If heaven means essentially to be in the presence of infinite love, letting this love permeate us and fill all our thoughts and free actions toward God and others forever, then we can prepare for it by living in his love even in this life — not just as a response to the love we receive from other people, but in gratitude for the fullness of his love that we receive from him even now.
Loving God by seeking to do his will, and loving others unconditionally and unreservedly in concrete action, is the part of heaven that we can live even now, beginning anew each morning.
Msgr. Michael Magee
(Living City, USA)
