|
A trip to
my dentist
PRAISED BE JESUS
CHRIST!
(Now and Forever)
Not too long ago, my dentist asked me if heaven is a place. One of his
patients had raised the issue. Knowing I had an appointment, he promised
he would quiz me and get back to her. A priest supposedly had said there
is no such place as heaven. I’m confident it wasn’t put in those exact
words. Nonetheless, a widow, she found what she heard extremely
disturbing.
Heaven certainly is referred to as a place. In the Creed, for example,
we proclaim as an article of faith: “We believe in one God, the Father,
the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. …” Further on in that same
Creed we say that Jesus Christ “came down from heaven.” Still further in
the Creed: “He ascended into heaven.” It certainly sounds like heaven is
a place. It even sounds like it is “up there” somewhere.
Well, here’s the scoop. The Catechism of the Catholic Church does
not identify heaven as a place. Rather, it is said to be a condition,
a state of communion with the Trinity, with the Virgin Mary, the angels
and all the blessed. Number 1024 of the Catechism: “Heaven is the
ultimate end and fulfillment of the deepest human longings, the state of
supreme, definitive happiness.” And, in number 1026: “Heaven is the
blessed community of all who are perfectly incorporated into Christ.”
The Bible (sacred Scripture as we Catholics prefer to say) uses symbolic
and metaphorical language when referring to heaven: a wedding feast, the
Father’s house, the heavenly Jerusalem, paradise, etc. St. Paul says of
the communion we call heaven: “Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor
has it so much as dawned on man what God has prepared for those who love
him” (1 Cor. 2:9).
The Catechism teaches “to live in heaven is to be with Christ.”
It continues: “By his death and resurrection Jesus Christ has ‘opened’
heaven to us. The life of the blessed consists in the full and perfect
possession of the redemption accomplished by Christ. He makes partners
in his heavenly glorification those who have believed in him and remain
faithful to his will (1026).”
Back in 1999, our late Holy Father, John Paul II, struck a sensitive
nerve in a lot of people over this heaven issue. He challenged us to
take a fresh and thoughtful look at what we say we believe. He opined
that heaven is neither an abstraction nor a physical place in the
clouds, but a living, personal relationship with the Holy Trinity. He
added that it is always necessary to maintain a certain restraint in
attempting to describe heaven, hell and purgatory, because they defy
accurate description. The Holy Father made explicit what has been
implicit all the time.
When we hear key words, more often than not we pay more attention to
familiar and popular images than to doctrines of the Church. Heaven,
purgatory and hell are all strongly evocative words. Hearing them, our
minds immediately shift to stories or artwork that have been generated
by others in an effort to put flesh and blood on doctrines of the faith.
John Paul suggested that those efforts are always unsatisfactory, if not
misleading.
Our faith assures us that there will be no sorrow, no pain, no hardship,
no want for souls in heaven. There will be no struggle, no temptation,
no possibility of sin or disorder.
Heaven is a state of peace and joy. This is attested to by the
Scripture: “But the souls of the just are in the hand of God, and no
torment shall touch them. They seemed in the view of the foolish to be
dead; and their passing away was thought an affliction and their going
forth from us, utter destruction, but they are in peace (Wis. 3:1-3).”
The symbolic and metaphorical language we find in the New Testament
about heaven attempts to put into human words the reality not of a
place, but a state of “joyful communion with God.”
Just as heaven is not a place but a state, a condition, hell too
indicates the condition of those who freely and definitively have
separated themselves from God. This damnation is not a matter of God’s
initiative. It is not punishment imposed externally by God, but the
experience of those who have rejected God’s mercy. It is self imposed.
Over the centuries, artists have been graphic in their depictions of
hell. In the ancient world, there was no greater torment than
fire-inflicted burns. Lacking the medications of later centuries, to
suffer serious burns was agonizing. So, hell was illustrated as a place
of fire, brimstone, tortured bodies, loud screams and a variety of
tortures. These were poetic attempts to show the complete frustration
and emptiness of life without God. In essence, that is what hell means.
Hell is the condition of those who have cut themselves off from God, who
desire God but who will never possess him.
While all who die in the state of sanctifying grace are assured eternal
salvation, all attraction to sin must be jettisoned before a soul can
experience the joy that is heaven.
While this detachment from sin can be accomplished during life, for most
it is completed after death in a purification process called purgatory.
Entirely different from the punishment of the damned, purgatory is an
opportunity for a soul to undergo final purification needed to
experience the fulfillment which is heaven.
With this conviction, from the beginning, the Church has honored the
memory of the dead and offered prayers for them. As the most perfect
prayer, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is offered for the de-ceased.
Works of penance undertaken on behalf of the dead are also part of
Catholic culture. Those undergoing the purification known as purgatory
cannot reverse course, so to speak. Death is the finish line, the end of
the test, the moment of final accounting. But, those who have died can
be helped by the prayers and sacrifices of the faithful on earth and the
souls in heaven.
John Paul II stressed that every bit of attachment to evil must be
eliminated, and every imperfection of the soul corrected, before a soul
experiences full communion with God.
Since God is all holy, a soul would not be at peace were it to enter the
presence of that holiness without this purification. Purgatory is not a
post-life opportunity to change one’s eternal destiny. Rather, those who
find themselves in a state of purgation are united both with the blessed
who already enjoy the fullness of eternal life and with those of us who
are still on our way toward our Father’s house.
Purgatory is “the process of purification for those who die in the love
of God but are not completely imbued with that love,” according to John
Paul. It offers people who remain imperfect after death a possibility
for eventual entry into heaven. It awaits most people because it is
difficult to go through life without accumulating the residue of sin
which remains even after they have been absolved.
It is next to impossible for us to imagine a state or condition. So, we
concoct: St. Peter checking credentials at the gate of heaven or the
fires of hell inflicting horrific pain on the damned.
These images and the “places” which they project help us focus our
attention. The fact that they are poetic expressions does not diminish
the reality. Heaven, hell and purgatory are not places hidden away in
some far distant part of God’s creation, but that does not mean they are
not real.
People refer to heaven, purgatory and hell as places because it’s the
best we can do. But, don’t look for them “up there” or “down there.” The
only road map needed is sanctifying grace won for us by the life, death
and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which is dispensed to souls through
the sacraments of the Church.
It was a memorable trip to the dentist. |
