Heaven
one
There is a problem of the way we normally think of Heaven
To those who have gone before us we say “Rest in Peace”
Well, I love a good nap but I don’t want to take a nap forever – I want to live and live to the fullest
Or we describe heaven as the Beatific Vision, gazing at God
· The idea of just looking at God forever seems boring
· I certainly don’t want to Sing in the choirs of angels forever
We may even fear death and heaven
· B/c we fear the end of all that is good
· We fear boredom
· Earth seems much more interesting than heaven
· b/c there seems to be nothing to do in heaven.
Do you ever think about heaven? What is your idea of heaven?
two
Scripture tells us that Heaven will be a “New Heavens and a New Earth”
· 2 Pet. 3:10 What we are waiting for is what he promised: the new heavens and new earth, the place where righteousness will be at home.
CCC 1042 The visible universe itself is destined to be transformed
New Heavens and New Earth” means that everything good about this world will be present in Heaven
There will be dogs in heaven
· Psalm 36:6 seems to tell us so
· I don’t know if your dog will be in heaven
· But why not dogs that we had relationships with here
Heaven and the Contemplation of God is not boring. Heaven will be
· Dynamic rather than static
· Exploring rather than staring at God
· Endless beginnings rather than merely the end
· Because the whole world will be renewed and transformed
three
From The Chronicles of Narnia: The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis chapters fifteen and sixteen
· Drawn into a stable from which the watch this world come to an end
· Their sadness at the loss of everything good in Narnia
· But then they turn around and realize the stable was Bigger on the inside than it was on the outside
Then they all went forward together, always Westward, for that seemed to be the direction Aslan had meant when he cried out, “Further up and further in.” They kept on stopping to look round and to look behind them, partly because it was so beautiful but partly also because there was something about it which they could not understand.
“Peter,” said Lucy, “where is this, do you suppose?”
“I don’t know,” said the High King. “It reminds me of somewhere but I can’t give it a name. Could it be somewhere we once stayed for a holiday when we were very, very small?”
“It would have to have been a jolly good holiday,” said Eustace. “I bet there isn’t a country like this anywhere in our world. Look at the colors! You couldn’t get a blue like the blue on those mountains in our world.”
Suddenly Farsight the Eagle spread his wings, soared thirty or forty feet up into the air, circled round and then alighted on the ground. “Kings and Queens,” he cried, “we have all been blind.
We are only beginning to see where we are. From up there I have seen it all – Ettinsmuir, Beaversdam, the Great River, and Cair Paravel still shining on the edge of the Eastern Sea. Narnia is not dead. This is Narnia.”
“But how can it be?” said Peter…. “We saw it all destroyed and the sun put out.”
“And it’s all so different,” said Lucy.
“The Eagle is right,” said the Lord Digory. “Listen, Peter. When Aslan said you could never go back to Narnia, he meant the Narnia you were thinking of. But that was not the real Narnia. That had a beginning and an end. It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia…You need not mourn over Narnia. All of the old Narnia that mattered, all the dear creatures, have been drawn into the real Narnia through the Door. And of course it is different; as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream.”
It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right fore-hoof on the ground and neighed, and then cried: “I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now…
four
Come further up and further in!”
He shook his mane and sprang forward into a great gallop – a Unicorn’s gallop, which in our world, would have carried him out of sight in a few moments.
But now a most strange thing happened. Everyone else began to run, and they found, to their astonishment, that they could keep up with him…The air flew in their faces as if they were driving fast in a car with the top down…Faster and faster they raced, but no one got hot or tired or out of breath. If one could run without getting tired, I don’t think one would ever want to do anything else.
The Unicorn cried out: “Don’t stop. Further up and further in! Take it in your stride.”
So they ran faster and faster till it was more like flying than running, and even the Eagle overhead was going no faster than they. And they went through winding valley after winding valley and up the steep sides of hills and faster than ever down the other side, following the river and sometimes crossing it and skimming across mountain lakes as if they were living speedboats, till at last at the far end of one long lake which looked as blue as turquoise, they saw a green hill. It’s sides were as steep as the sides of a pyramid and round the very top of it ran a green wall: but above the wall rose the branches of trees whose leaves looked silver and their fruit like gold.
five
“Further up and further in,” roared the Unicorn, and no one held back…Only when they had reached the very top did they slow up; that was because they found themselves facing great golden gates. And for a moment none of them was bold enough to try if the gates would open. – “Dare we? Is it right? Can it be meant for us?”
But while they were standing thus a great horn, wonderfully loud and sweet, blew from somewhere inside that walled garden and the gates swung open. “Welcome, in the Lion’s name. Come further up and further in.”
This is fiction
· but it certainly helps us think about the Heaven
· and think about it we must
· b/c that helps us appreciate more fully all Christ suffered for us in Holy Week