Fr. Ryan Lerner, Chaplain
While running along a steep, wooded trail a few mornings ago, I remembered that it was two years to the day that I was running along that same trail. Like I did then, I found myself pondering the same question: “What must Heaven be like?”
This pondering also came with a lot of prayer. I was praying for a friend of mine, remembering him. Two years ago, after waging a courageous three-year battle against cancer, he slipped away peacefully on a colorful, chilly November morning just like this. In that moment, I felt fully alive in the November chill: looking from the trail deep into the woods, hearing the wind in the leaves, reveling in the solitude of it all. I was awed by how sections of those woods were bathed in gold, despite the pockets of slow, descending darkness that drifted through the thickets of trees and underbrush. And, as the trees were silhouetted by the blazing glory of the rising sun, I asked myself again, “Is that what Heaven’s like?”
For a moment, it totally felt like it.
What’s your idea of Heaven? Every Sunday we profess that we believe in the resurrection and life everlasting – but what does that look like for those of us who believe without seeing? What does it feel like? An endless summer day by the lake? A perfect night out? A beautiful liturgy? Grandma making her famous cookies? A trail run on a brisk November morning?
In his encyclical, Spe Salvi (Saved in Hope) Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI invites us “to imagine ourselves in the supreme moment of satisfaction, in which totality embraces totality. It would be like plunging into the ocean of infinite love, a moment in which time – the before and after – no longer exists.” Heaven is the goal of every Christian. It is what we have been made for and must live every moment in preparation for. As Edith Stein, Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (a serious hiker by the way), once said, we are called “to live in the light of eternity.” Eternal life is not just an endless calendar of days. How boring would that be? The resurrection exists now for us who hope in God and live for Heaven. Resurrection exists now for those who die in God’s friendship—for whom we pray for and with whom we share the faith. And just like the rising sun in the deep of the wood, it ignites the dark spaces of our hearts with a light that cannot be extinguished. Because the source of that light is Christ, who heals every wound, relieves every suffering, wipes away every tear and who’s love conquers all things – even death itself.
So, what’s your idea of Heaven? How is Christ igniting your vision of it?
