Heaven
“Lord, it is good for us to be here.”—Matthew 17:4
In this day’s gospel we read that, wishing to give his disciples a glimpse of the beauty of Paradise and so to spur them on to labor for the divine glory, the Redeemer was transfigured and let them behold the splendor of his countenance. Ravished with sweetness and joy, St. Peter exclaimed: “Lord, it is good for us to be here.” Lord, let us stay in this place; let us never depart from here, for the mere sight of you consoles us more than all the delights of the earth.
Brethren, let us labor through the rest of our lives to gain heaven. Heaven is so great a good that, to win it for us, Jesus Christ chose to sacrifice his life upon the cross. Be assured that the greatest torment of the poor damned in hell is the thought of having lost heaven through their own fault. The blessings of Paradise, its delights, its joys, and its sweetness may be won, but they can be neither described nor understood except by the blessed souls who enjoy them. Still, with the help of the holy Scriptures, let us say the little that can be said of them here below.
1. According to the Apostle, no one living on this earth can comprehend the infinite blessings that God has prepared for the souls who love him. “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love him” (1 Cor. 2:9). In this life we can form no idea of any pleasures except those we enjoy through the senses. Perhaps we imagine that heaven is as beautiful as a wide plain in springtime, with trees in full bloom and birds fluttering and singing on every side; or as a garden full of flowers and fruit, ringed with fountains in continual play. Standing in such a place, a man says: “Oh, what a Paradise!” But oh, how much greater are the beauties of heaven!
Writing of Paradise, St. Bernard says: O man, if you wish to understand what is in heaven, know that in that happy country there is nothing that can displease you, and everything that you can desire. Nihil est quod nolis, totum est quod velis—“There is nothing that you would not want, there is everything that you would want.” Though there are some things here below that please our senses, how many more are there that afflict us? If the light of day is pleasant, the darkness of night is disagreeable; if the spring and the autumn cheer us, the cold of winter and the heat of summer are painful. Add to these the pains of sickness, the persecution of men, and the hardships of poverty; add the troubles within—our fears, the temptations of the devils, the doubts of conscience, and the uncertainty of eternal salvation.
2. But once the blessed enter Paradise, they shall have no more sorrows. “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.” The Lord shall dry up the tears they have shed in this life. “And death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow, shall be any more, for the former things are passed away. And he that sat on the throne, said: Behold, I make all things new” (Rev. 21:4–5). In Paradise there is no more death, nor any fear of dying; in that place of bliss there are no sorrows, no infirmities, no poverty, no hardships, no vicissitudes of day or night, of cold or heat. There it is one continual day, forever serene, one continual spring, forever in bloom.
In Paradise there are no persecutions, no envy; for all love one another tenderly, and each rejoices in the good of the others as if it were his own. There is no more fear of being lost, for the soul confirmed in grace can no longer sin and lose God.
3. Totum est quod velis—“There is everything that you would want.” In heaven you have all that you can desire. “Behold, I make all things new.” There everything is new: new beauties, new delights, new joys; and everything will satisfy our desires.
The sight shall be satisfied in gazing upon that city, so beautiful. What a delight it would be to behold a city whose streets were of crystal, whose houses were of silver with windows of gold, all adorned with the loveliest flowers! But oh, how much more beautiful shall the city of Paradise be! The beauty of the place shall be heightened by the beauty of its citizens, who are all clothed in royal robes; for, as St. Augustine says, they are all kings. Quot cives, tot reges—“As many citizens, so many kings.” What will it be to behold Mary, the Queen, who shall appear more beautiful than all the other inhabitants of Paradise! And what will it be to behold the beauty of Jesus Christ! St. Teresa once saw but a single hand of Jesus Christ, and was struck with amazement at so great a beauty.
The smell shall be satisfied with fragrances—but the fragrances of Paradise. The hearing shall be satisfied with the harmonies of heaven. St. Francis once heard an angel play a viol for a single moment, and nearly died of the sweetness. What will it be to hear the saints and the angels singing the divine praises! “They shall praise thee forever and ever” (Ps. 83:5). What will it be to hear Mary singing the praise of God! St. Francis de Sales says that the voice of Mary will be like that of a nightingale in a wood, which surpasses the song of every other bird. In a word, in Paradise there are all the delights that man can desire.
4. But the delights of which we have spoken are the least of the blessings of Paradise. What makes Paradise is the seeing and loving of God face to face. Totum quod expectamus—“All that we hope for,” says St. Augustine, duae syllabae sunt, Deus—“is contained in two syllables: God.” The reward that God promises us is not merely the beauty, the harmony, and the other glories of that happy city; the chief reward, which makes Paradise itself, is God, who gives himself to be beheld by the blessed, as the Lord said to Abraham: “I am thy reward exceeding great” (Gen. 15:1).
St. Augustine writes that, were God to show his beautiful face to the damned, “hell itself would at once be changed into a delightful Paradise” (On the Triple Dwelling, vol. 9). And he adds that, were a soul departed from this life given the choice either to see God and suffer the pains of hell, or to be free from those pains but not see him, “she would rather see the Lord and endure those torments.”
5. The joys of the spirit immeasurably surpass the delights of the senses. To love God, even in this life, is so sweet—when he communicates himself to the souls he loves—that it raises even their bodies up from the earth. St. Peter of Alcantara once fell into so strong an ecstasy of love that, taking hold of a tree, he drew it up with him on high, tearing it out by the very roots. So great is the sweetness of divine love that the holy martyrs, in the midst of their torments, did not feel them but rejoiced. Hence St. Augustine wrote that, when St. Lawrence lay upon the fire on the gridiron, the ardor of divine love kept him from feeling the burning of the flames. Hoc igne accensus non sentit incendium—“Kindled by this fire, he does not feel the burning.”
Even to sinners who weep for their sins God gives so great a sweetness that it surpasses all earthly pleasures. Hence St. Bernard says: “If it is so sweet to weep for you, what shall it be to rejoice in you!”
6. How great is the sweetness that a soul tastes when, in prayer, God by a ray of his light reveals to her his goodness, the mercies he has shown her, and above all the love that Jesus Christ has borne her in his passion! Then the soul feels herself melt and all but dissolve with love. And yet in this life we do not see God as he is; we see him as in the dark. “We see now through a glass in a dark manner, but then face to face” (1 Cor. 13:12). Here below the Lord does not show himself to us, but stays hidden behind the veil of faith. What shall it be when this veil is raised, and we behold God face to face? We shall see how beautiful God is, how great, how perfect, how lovable, and how loving toward our souls.
7. “Man knoweth not whether he be worthy of love or hatred” (Eccles. 9:1). The greatest affliction that souls who love God suffer on this earth is the fear of not loving him and of not being loved by him. But in Paradise the soul is sure that she loves God and is loved by him; she sees that the Lord holds her embraced with a great love, and that this love shall never be dissolved for all eternity. This love shall then be increased by the knowledge of how greatly Jesus Christ has loved her—in sacrificing himself for her on the cross, and in making himself her food in the sacrament of the altar.
She shall then see clearly, all at once, every grace that God has shown her, and every help he has given her to keep her from falling into sin and to draw her to his love. She shall see that the tribulations, the poverty, the infirmities, and the persecutions that she counted misfortunes were all love, all means employed by Divine Providence to lead her to Paradise. She shall see all the lights, the loving calls, and the mercies that God granted her after she had spurned them by her sins. From that blessed mountain of Paradise she shall see, far below, so many souls damned in hell for fewer sins than her own, while she finds herself already saved and secure, never able to lose God again.
8. The goods of this earth do not satisfy our desires; though at first they allure the senses, in time they grow familiar and please no longer. But the goods of heaven satisfy and forever content the heart. “I shall be satisfied when thy glory shall appear” (Ps. 16:15). And though they satisfy, they always seem new, as though they were tasted for the first time: they are always enjoyed and always desired, always desired and always obtained. St. Gregory says: “Satiety attends desire” (Moralia, Bk. 13, ch. 18).
Thus the desire of the blessed begets no pain, because it is always satisfied; and their satiety begets no weariness, because it goes ever joined with desire. And so the soul shall be always satisfied and always thirsting—always thirsting and always satisfied with delights. Hence, as the damned are vessels full of wrath and pain, according to the Apostle—“vessels of wrath, fitted for destruction” (Rom. 9:22)—so the blessed are vessels full of mercy and of joy, so that they have nothing left to desire. “They shall be inebriated with the plenty of thy house” (Ps. 35:9).
Then it shall come to pass that the soul, beholding the beauty of God, shall be so inflamed and so inebriated with divine love that she shall happily remain lost in God; for she shall forget herself entirely, and from then on shall think only of loving and praising that immense good which she possesses and shall possess forever, with no fear of ever losing it again. In this life holy souls love God, but they cannot love him with all their strength, nor can they always actually love him. St. Thomas teaches that this perfect love is given only to the citizens of heaven, who love God with their whole heart and never cease actually to love him. Ut totum cor hominis semper actualiter in Deum feratur, ista est perfectio patriae—“That the whole heart of man may always be actually carried toward God: this is the perfection of heaven” (Summa II-II, q. 44, a. 4, ad 2).
9. Justly, then, does St. Augustine say that to win the eternal glory of Paradise we ought gladly to embrace an eternal labor. Pro aeterna requie aeternus labor subeundus esset—“For eternal rest, eternal labor must be undertaken.” David says: “For nothing shalt thou save them” (Ps. 55:8). The saints have done but little—pro nihilo, next to nothing—to win Paradise: little have they done, those many kings who left their kingdoms to shut themselves up in a cloister; little, the many anchorites who went to hide themselves in a cave; little, the many martyrs who embraced their torments, the iron hooks, the red-hot plates. “The sufferings of this life are not worthy to be compared to the glory to come” (Rom. 8:18). To endure all the pains of this life in order to win Paradise—it is all little.
10. Let us take heart, then, brethren, to bear with patience whatever we are given to suffer in the days that remain to us: it is all little, all nothing, for the gaining of Paradise. Rejoice! One day all these pains, sorrows, and persecutions shall end, and shall become for us, if we are saved, joys and contentments that have no end. “Your sorrow shall be turned into joy” (John 16:20). When, then, the crosses of this life afflict us, let us raise our eyes to heaven and console ourselves with the hope of Paradise.
At the end of her life, St. Mary of Egypt was asked by the abbot St. Zozimus how she had been able to endure living for forty-seven years in the desert where he found her dying. She answered: “With the hope of Paradise.” So too shall we not feel the tribulations of this earth. With good cheer, then—up, let us love God and win Paradise! There the saints await us, Mary awaits us, Jesus Christ awaits us, who stands with a crown in his hand to make each of us a king in that eternal kingdom.
Points for Reflection
1. “Let us labor through the rest of our lives to gain heaven” (§ Intro)
2. “When the crosses of this life afflict us, let us raise our eyes to heaven and console ourselves with the hope of Paradise” (§10)
3. “Let us take heart to bear with patience whatever we are given to suffer in the days that remain to us: it is all little, all nothing, for the gaining of Paradise” (§10)