By Lauren Humphries
As CCC 1024 says, “Heaven is the ultimate end and fulfillment of the deepest human longings, the state of supreme, definitive happiness”. While we may say that we want to “go to” heaven, or are striving “for” heaven, heaven is not a place.
Heaven is God Himself!
Where else can we be in perfect union with Him if not for being in Him? To live in heaven is to be with Christ, and is the blessed community of all our brothers and sisters who are also perfectly incorporated with Christ. It is a call to live truly and freely as who He has created us to be: not copies of one another, but unique children of His.
What is purgatory?
Sometimes, it may be difficult for us to imagine that we can be in this perfect union with God. Yet, He promises us that He will continue to purify us even after our death. In our own humanness, our purification on earth may be an imperfect one. As Jesus has assured us of our eternal salvation in Him, we believe we will be perfectly purified by God Himself through purgatory so that we may achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven.
What is hell?
Popular culture and television has likely led us to view hell as a dark, fiery place where one is punished for eternity merely because they have done bad things in their lives. Yet, hell is neither a place nor a state of being of simply “bad people”, but the total self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed. In believing that He alone gives us life, the punishment for hell is through one’s own decision to turn away from God resulting in the inability to possess the life and happiness for which we were created for by Him.
While He desires for us to be with Him in perfect union in heaven, He does not predestine anyone to go to hell. It is a wilful, consistent, and persistent turning away from God which leads one away from Him, to what we consider ‘hell’.
What does this mean for me?
There is hope!
By his death and Resurrection, Jesus has opened the gate to heaven for us; only he who came from the Father can return to the Father. In his mission, Jesus reveals heaven to his people, and to us too. He talks of heaven as “life”, “light”, “paradise”, or “the Father’s house” to help our humanness begin to fathom what heaven is like. He revealed heaven to his disciples and apostles through loving his people only as God can – giving His entire self to us because that is how much He loves us. Even to this day, we catch glimpses of heaven in our life-giving communities, in brothers and sisters who love us when we struggle to love ourselves, our families and so on (and we’re called to BE this glimpse of heaven to others).
Since Heaven is in God himself, heaven is eternal. Jesus’ opening of the gate to heaven is eternal. As Christ promised us, “they shall reign for ever and ever”. This gate has never and will never be closed since his ultimate sacrifice on the cross for us. This hope of goodness and eternity, therefore, forever is and can live in our hearts!
Our call is to continue to be humble, loving and Christ-like in all we do. He has given us this life freely and lovingly, and he has also given us the free will to decide what we want to do with it. We all, therefore, have a responsibility to use our freedom in view of our eternal destiny – that all we do leads us to God and to heaven where we will meet the one who loved us first. As St Elizabeth Ann Seton said, “The gate of Heaven is very low; only the humble can enter it”.
