Why aren't our plans working? -- part 9

Letter to Frieda Begue continued ad nauseam)

There are four last things, things that are more important than the color of your hair, your tummy tuck or you face lift. No mater how much rice bran and organic moose drool you eat, no matter how many times a week you go to the gym, there are four things that matter: Death, Judgment, Hell and finally, Heaven.

Forget everything you ever learned in Sunday school about heaven. In the first place the word “heaven” in the text is simply the Greek word “ouranos” or  “sky” in English. Think about it “The kingdom of the sky,” or “when I go to the sky.” “Jesus is in the sky.” “Grammy and Grampy aren’t dead, Junior. They are with Jesus in the sky.”  

I love it when people argue about whether or not heaven is a place. “The sky is a place!” or “there is no such place as the sky!” The text uses the word sky in a metaphorical sense. The sky is simply the biggest and most mysterious place that the ancients could perceive. That fact remains true to this day. There is no way to describe it, just as there is no way to describe the dimension that it denotes, the dimension that we call heaven for want of a better word. Heaven is not just a continuation of life on earth. To compare our life now to Life Eternal is to compare the nine months in the womb to life in the sunlight. To compare this world to heaven is like comparing the light of a match to a thousand suns and more.

St. Paul says that, “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12) and again “It is written: "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.”(1Corinthians 2:9) As I mentioned before, St John goes even further.  “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” (1John3:2)

What does all that mean? First it means that there is no way to describe heaven. That is certainly what people I know who have been there tell me. We always think of mansions on streets of gold. The streets of gold are just poetic description, but the word “mansion” is a downright mistranslation. Jesus said, “In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” (John 14:2) The word “monai” in the Greek text of scripture used to be translated mansion, but it doesn’t really mean that, It means a place to stay permanently, a place to remain, a place for coming home. I’ve been in a lot of mansions and some of them are very lonely places. 

I don’t want a mansion. I want a home. I remember my room when I was little. Ours was a house full of people, full of noise, full of love, not perfect by any means, but still a place of safety and belonging. The aromas that came up from the kitchen, the sound of my father’s voice my seven brothers and sisters, the arrival of guests. We had so many wonderful gatherings of family and friends. So many people had keys to the front door, which were seldom used because the front door was seldom locked. Home was where I was safe. Home was where you were welcome. Not everyone had that kind of home. I realize that I was very blessed. Though not everyone had that kind of home, everyone can have that kind of home. We call it heaven. The fond memories of my childhood home are only hints of the joy and safety of the heavenly home offered  by Christ. You can keep your mansion on its street of gold that you heard about in Sunday school. I would rather return to my Fathers house. (Luke 15:18)

Am I saying that heaven is not a place? No. Heaven is more than a place. It is what places hint at. Now we live in space and time. Remember that St. John tells us we will be like God, and remember that for God all time is now and every place is here. God is not in the skies. The skies are in Him. He holds the skies in the palm of His hand, and we will be like Him. “But,” you may counter, “ didn’t Jesus say “Today you will be with me in paradise”? (Luke 23:24) There are other mentions of paradise in the Bible. "I was caught up to paradise and heard things so astounding that they cannot be expressed in words, things no human is allowed to tell." (2 Cor.12:4) Doesn’t the Book of Revelation talk about paradise? (Rev.2:7) 

Surely paradise is a place. Not necessarily. Paradise is a relationship! Notice that St. Paul when he was taken up to paradise doesn’t talk about what he saw. He talks about what he heard.  Paradise was a fairly common word beyond its religious use. There were lots of “paradises.” Paradise was originally an Iranian word that meant a walled enclosure. It came to mean the garden in which a king could walk with his friends without the formality of the court in which his every word was law. It was a place of friendship, of intimate conversation. In the Bible it came to mean the garden of Eden where God walked in friendship with Adam and Eve. Paradise is about the relationship, not the real estate. In effect, Jesus said to St. Dismas, the good thief, “Today you will walk with me in my royal enclosure as my friend.”  So many people worry that they will not know their loved ones in heaven. Nonsense! We will know them perfectly for we will know as we are known. What passes for knowledge here is nothing compared to the perfect and personal intimacy of heaven. You will know your loved ones there far better than you know them here.

We Christians hope for more than heaven when we die, at least more than the heaven that most people are expecting. God promises to adopt us as His children. As Jesus is His only begotten, we will be His adopted, no less His children than Jesus. If you have ever adopted a child, you know that child is your real child, not your make believe child. I had a dear friend who had two begotten children and one adopted. He was a very peaceable man, but when some talked about his two real children he was always sore pressed not to strike them. He contented himself by reminding them that had three real children. So, too, we shall be the real children of God, but as St. John says above, we are called His children but “child” is only the dim shadow of the wonderful truth which cannot be adequately described in our limited languages. We shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is.

When I was a little boy, the nuns would tell us about the “beatific vision.” We would spend eternity looking at God. I could think of nothing more boring. It sounded like an eternity in church. I would rather have spent eternity watching Bugs Bunny cartoons. Then I grew up and realized that there is such a thing as falling in love. When a young man marries a young woman, and if perhaps he wakes up in the middle of the night, and if perhaps the moonlight streaming  through the curtains allows him to see her soft breathing gently rising and falling as she sleeps, he wishes that the moment would last forever. It can and it will, if we have loved the Lord. To behold the Beloved! Heaven is to fall in love forever. What this sorry world calls falling in love is just the hint of that infinite well of love into which we will someday fall if we have truly, sacrificially loved in this brief life.

And yet heaven is more than to behold the beloved. The most amazing thing is that we are to become part of God who is Love. By being adopted into that family which is God. God is perfect relationship, perfect family, as the Blessed Pope John Paul II called Him. We are to be “divinized,” to be made part of the God who is love, sacrificial love, not simply selfish emotion, but real sacrificial love. If we are to become part of that relationship with God who is true love, we will not simply love and be loved, we will become Love. We will become Love. Think about it. We will become Love. Is there another religion that makes such a promise? Our mortal longings and affections are barely the slightest hint, not only of what we will experience, but of what we will actually be, when our sin and selfishness have been burned away. To become Love!  Is there a more wonderful destiny?

So, why be a Catholic, a follower of Christ in the most ancient and, I believe, the most authentic form? In the face of death the Lord offers hope. In the face of judgment, the Lord offers mercy. In the face of hell, the Lord offers freedom and Heaven’s freedom offers true Love, Eternal Love, the Love for which you and I were created, the Love which is God.

Why aren't our plans working? -- part 7

(Letter to Frieda Begue continued interminably)

The question at hand is why bother to have Catholic schools, if not to live the Catholic life? And  why bother to live the Catholic life? The first good answer is that Christ offers real hope in the face of death. It is fascinating to think that the hope Christ offers is so great that practically all those who knew Him fearlessly died violent deaths simply for insisting that Jesus was who he claimed to be, when simply by renouncing Him they could have lived to a peaceful old age. It is yet more amazing that this willingness to die rather that to deny Christ has persisted throughout the history of Christianity. Untold thousands, even millions, have found the Catholic way of life, the Gospel way of life preferable to life itself. I told you the story of the first person I met who claimed to have had the experience of clinical death. He was only the first person I met to claim such things. I have told that story repeatedly and often people tell me about their own similar experience. I have to admit that not all of these experiences are pleasant. There is a second reason to follow Christ by living the Catholic way of life. It seems there really is a hell.

Years back, a couple of kids asked about heaven. I told them the story that I told you just last week, the light and the tunnel and all that. Their uncle, and old friend of mine was listening. He said that it was all a load of .....! 

He said, “When you die, you’re dead. I know. I died.” Later he told me, “What I said a while ago isn’t true. I was in hell.” 

I had known him since he was a child, and believe me, he was a difficult child. He got involved in theft and then selling drugs, and then worse. Finally his liver was almost severed in a knife fight. They lost him on the table, but  they were able to patch him back together and revive him. He didn’t want to go into the particulars of hell, but I have heard a similar from others. I particularly remember a young man who had died of an overdose. He had lived a violent and self absorbed life. He said that when he died, he found himself sinking into a dark alone-ness and he knew he was going to be there for a very long time. He saw Jesus in a distant light, the Christ whom his family loved and served, but who he had rejected. He cried out to the Lord as he fell into the blackness and begged for another chance. He woke up on the an emergency room table of the local hospital. True to his word, he turned his life around and is alive to this day.

If there really is a hell and if God is so good and so loving, how can he send anyone there? The answer is very simple. He doesn’t send us to hell. He finds us there. Think about it. When we are born into this world we are completely self-absorbed. We live in a world of one. If a baby wakes up in the middle of the night and wants a bottle, a change of clothes or mommy’s warm embrace, the whole house is up. It doesn’t matter that you have to be up before the dawn. A baby has a cry that can penetrate brick, and he wants what he wants. I know people who are 60 or 70 years old, who, if they want a bottle, a change of clothes and mommy’s warm embrace.... 

Catch my drift? Many of us never leave the place of fundamental isolation and narcissism into which we are born. We Catholics call this original sin. I suspect that when we die, all that happens is that time stops, and to paraphrase God’s words to Moses, “we are who we are.” And we will be that forever. If we reject God’s offer of grace and refuse to live for anyone but ourselves, then we will live in that absolute alone-ness eternally. Jesus compared heaven to a wedding banquet but He called hell the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

We want God to guarantee the pleasures of heaven, but we fail to understand that heaven is not so much a place as a relationship. If we refuse the relationship, we refuse heaven. More than heaven awaits us. God’s plan is to adopt us, to make us part of that relationship which is God. Remember that God is love, sacrificial love. If I cling to myself, I cannot cling to Him. If God is “agape,” sacrificial love, and I reject sacrifice, I have rejected God. God will not force anyone to go to heaven. He makes us free to reject Him or to accept Him. C.S. Lewis puts it this way: In the end there are only two types of people, those who will say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God will say, “No, thy will be done.” If we want only what we want, than we have made our choice. 

We Americans love to think that we are free. We may once have been, but are no longer. We are a nation of slaves: slaves to our possessions; slaves to our desires; to our sexual needs; to all the things we see on TV. We are enslaved to the cruelest master, our own desires. 

Jesus once said you cannot serve both God and possessions. Things, self-centered passions, an insistence on what we have decided are our “rights” and the inflated sense of our own importance are dragging us down to hell. We talk about freedom of choice. We don’t have and have never had freedom of choice. I may want to be eight feet tall and have a billion dollars. Neither is possible. I may not be able to have them, but I can want them. I can want them with a passion that excludes all other loves. 

Freedom of choice is a myth. All we really have is freedom of will. I can will my own desires, or I can say to God, “Not my will but Thy will be done. Into your hands I commend my life.” The possibility of hell is also the possibility of freedom. We want a God who gives us our every desire, and if He does not obey us, then He is not a good and loving God. Perhaps He doesn’t even exist. Most people love, not God, but what they think He can give, and when He does not give, He is no God at all. 

Perhaps you’ve heard me tell the story of the young starlet who is about to marry the rich old billionaire who has one foot in the grave and one foot on a banana peel. She is interviewed by the paparazzi and we all get a laugh out of her protestation that she is marrying for love. “I’d marry him if he was the poorest man in the world. I love him,” she protests!  Then, in a few months when he finally dies and leaves his fortune to her and her two chihuahuas, the battle is joined between the lawyers of the first, second and third wives and the lawyers of the starlet, over who gets the money. 

The young beauty wasn’t able to love him. She was so self-absorbed and he was so rich. She knew he was an old fool. We knew he was an old fool. The reporters knew he was an old fool. The only one who didn’t know he was an old fool was the old fool. I assure you that God is not an old fool. He can tell the difference between true love and manipulation.

To love God is not to desire Him for what He can provide, but to desire Him for who He is. He allows suffering and difficulty in order to give us the one prerequisite of love -- freedom. The possibility of eternal damnation is also the opportunity for eternal freedom. 

So why live the Catholic life? To live the Catholic life, with all its self-denial and sacrifice is to live in real freedom and to have the ability to truly love God who is Love itself.

And now for Heaven....

Letter to Fleming N. Ferneau continued: Heaven

Yes, dear Fleming, we still believe in Heaven. May I direct you to the catechism of the Catholic Church? Paragraphs 1023 and 1024 “Those who die in God's grace and friendship and are perfectly purified live for ever with Christ. They are like God for ever, for they "see Him as He is," face to face.” This perfect life with the Most Holy Trinity - this communion of life and love with the Trinity, with the Virgin Mary, the angels and all the blessed - is called "heaven." Heaven is the ultimate end and fulfillment of the deepest human longings, the state of supreme, definitive happiness.

Still, we have a very strange concept of heaven that we probably get from a very poor understanding of certain biblical passages. In John 14:2-3 we read, "In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also." So that means we each get a mansion. Revelation 21:18 “And the building of the wall of it was of jasper: and the city was pure gold, like unto clear glass.” Somehow this is taken to mean that our mansion is on a street of gold. And then there are those @#$%^ harps.... Revelation 14:2. “And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder: and I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps.” So that’s heaven: Mansions on streets of gold, while we sit on clouds playing harps. To this, Catholicism adds something called the beatific vision: we sit around staring at God, who must be terribly fond of harp music. At least it’s not bagpipes.

First of all, the word in the text isn’t mansion. It is dwelling places, and can just as well mean rooms, which makes more sense. In My Father’s house there are many rooms.” In other words, we are going to move in with God. Second, the bit about gold is obviously poetic. Gold like glass? As I always remind you some of us have the souls of poets, others have the souls of appliance repairmen. Third, we have the harps and all that staring at God. It all sounds very boring. No wonder Hollywood makes hell seem so much more interesting.

What the Bible really says is that you can’t even begin to imagine how wonderful heaven will be, but you can begin to experience it a little if you get to know Christ. “However, as it is written: "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him, but God has revealed it to us by His Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.”
(1 Cor. 2, 9-10)

The amazing thing is that there is more than heaven when we die! Remember that God’s plan is not simply to reward us, but to adopt us. That’s why He wants us to move in with Him. We are His children and he want us to move back home! We have a room at Dad’s house, and when we grow up we will be just like Him. He will be part of us and we will be part of Him, just as Jesus already is. At least that’s what St. John seemed to think:

“How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know Him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. Everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure."(1John 3:1-3)

The beatific vision, staring at God for an eternity, is not quite as boring as it might first appear. Have you ever fallen in love? A young man marries a young woman and she wakes in the middle of the night to find him staring at her in the moonlight. It’s kind of creepy. She asks him “What are you doing?” and he says, “Oh nothing. I was just looking at you. You’re so beautiful.” A parent might sneak into the nursery late at night and just watch a newborn child asleep. There is nothing as beautiful, as wonderful as the simple joy of seeing someone you love. Heaven is to behold the beloved perfectly and forever. If you have ever fallen in love, You’ve experienced a pale shadow of the wonder of heaven. To be perfectly in love forever with someone who is really worthy of all our devotion. That is worship. That is heaven. We will see Him as He is, and He will see us as we shall become.

The thief on the cross asked Jesus if He would remember him when He came into His kingdom. Jesus answered him, "I tell you the truth, today you will be with Me in paradise." (Luke 23:43) Paradise is not quite what most people understand as heaven. Paradise is originally a Persian word that means a walled garden. The king was very formal and anything he said was law, but in his private chambers and his walled garden he walked with his friends as equals. That is God’s promise to us. We shall be in love with Him and walk with Him forever.

Yours,
the Rev. Know it all

PS The harps are optional.

Didn't we do away with hell?

Dear Rev. Know it all,
The priest in my parish, Fr. Besserwurst, is going into the grade school, terrifying the children by telling them about hell. I think this is entirely inappropriate since the Vatican Council did away with both Hell and Purgatory. Should I call the Bishop and report Fr. Besserwurst?
Yours,
Fleming N. Ferneau

Dear Fleming,

By all means, call the Bishop. I’m sure he will be amazed that someone is actually teaching what the Church teaches. Contrary to what you read in most religion books, we still believe that there is a heaven and a hell and you are going to end up in one or the other. Even purgatory is still on the books. Read the Catechism. Paragraph 1035

“The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, "eternal fire." The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs.”

Doubtless you will ask the great question, if God is so good and loving, how can He possibly send someone to hell? The answer is quite simple. He doesn’t send us there. He finds us there. When Jesus spoke about hell, He described it as the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Actually that sounds more like the cry room in the back of church. But I digress.) Hell is utter isolation. Imagine finding yourself alone in an unending darkness. Welcome to Hell.

Think about it. Human beings enter the world as perfect little narcissists. It doesn’t matter that you may have to be up at 5AM to get to work or that you are unwell. If that little tyrant in the nursery wants a bottle, or a change of clothes, or wants mommy to hold him, he notifies everyone in the house with a cry that can penetrate brick. He lives in a world of one. I’ve known men who are 50, 60, or 70 years old who, unless they have a bottle, a change of clothes and mommy to hold them...... So it is, that many of us never leave the fundament aloneness with which we enter the world. We call that state of narcissism original sin. Every human being is born with it and the challenge of life is to allow God to save us from it, to save us in effect from ourselves.

The world we live in is a nursery for narcissists. Every television commercial, every program, every self help book, every pop psychologist, every politician feeds our preoccupation with the self. “Get the credit you deserve.” “Thinner thighs in thirty days.” “Your wedding day when all eyes will be on you.” “Get more for less.” “Have you been injured in an accident?” Our culture has been reduced to “Life, liberty and the pursuit of ...”self gratification which is how we define happiness. If we live as the word tells us, we will end our life as perfect candidates for an eternity of me, mine and my.

In my line of work. I’ve met a lot of people who’ve died and lived to tell about it. You know, the tunnel, the light and all the rest. Quite a few have told me that the thing that most bothers them is that they know the answers before they hear the questions. I suspect that they are trying to describe timelessness in temporal categories. Remember that we are promised eternal life. “Eternal” simply means timeless. For God there is no time. It is all now, never then. It is all here and never there. I imagine that when we die all that really happens is that time and space cease to be and as God said to Moses about His own nature, “I am who I am.” We will say I am what I am. If we are self absorbed sons of our mothers, that is who we will be forever.

Is there fire in hell? Isn’t that just symbolic? Oh yes, it’s quite symbolic, but the fires of hell are the real fires. The fires of this temporary dimension are just a symbol of the fires of hell. Perhaps the fires of hell are the piercing anguish of eternally knowing what could have been and what now will always be, the bitterness of love rejected, infinitely amplified by eternity.

Why would God ever allow such a thing to happen? He allows it for love’s sake. LOVE?!? How can hell have anything to do with love? Simple: the only thing that love demands is freedom. You can’t be forced to love. God allows us to choose love, or to reject love. On the Cross, He defines love as sacrifice. We define love as self indulgence. If we choose narcissism and call it love, He gives us what we want. If we confess that we don’t know love, and ask Him to teach us love, He will do so.

We are not predestined to either heaven or hell. We are offered love and most of us choose self gratification instead. Voltaire said “God will forgive; it is His job.” It is also said that he died a terrible death. His nurse said: "For all the money in Europe I wouldn’t want to see another unbeliever die! All night long he cried for forgiveness."

Voltaire was right. If we ask, God will forgive. The problem is that we ask with our lips, but not with our hearts, which is not to ask at all. We spend a life indulging ourselves, and then hoping that God will wink and allow us to indulge ourselves eternally. We don’t really ask God to forgive. We ask him to permit. St. Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 15 verse 19, “If only for this life we have hoped in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.” In other words, if your eyes are glued to the ground, if you are aiming at this world alone, be afraid, be very afraid. By the way, have a lovely Halloween.

Rev. Know-it-all

NEXT WEEK: PURGATORY!!!