Dear Friends,
In some eras of the distant past, Christians believed or
were taught that this life was the antechamber for heaven. Thank God that way
of thinking has given way to the
conviction that this life is good, worthy of being lived fully and valuable in
itself. Some of us are old enough to remember singing “Life, I love you! Feelin
’groovy!” Yes. With our contemporaries,
we do love life, but dangerously pay scant attention to the beyond. Yet both
are essential for the Christian life, and our desire for both needs to be kept
in balance. Life after death continues to be an indispensable part of faith,
and an important topic for us to weave into our Lenten thinking. “If we have
been united with him {Jesus] in a death like his, we will certainly be united
with him in a resurrection like his (Romans 6.5).”
What can we say about life with God after death? We know that
Jesus died generously, out of obedience to His Father who wanted us all to be
saved. The death of Jesus “was the culmination of a life of loving obedience to
God, obedience to the mission of being human, really human, with no thought of
controlling or dominating others but simply of giving himself away to them…(
Herbert McCabe, OP).” Jesus took on
death and conquered it. On the third day, he was raised up, never to die again.
Jesus was whole, his risen self unrecognizable at first glance but then revealed
to believers.
We cannot imagine life with God after death. But, as Herbert
McCabe reminds us, we can know two things for certain: “that it is ours… and
that it is now incomprehensible to us.”
Still, Christians have ways of talking about life with God
after death (heaven) in imagery drawn from the Scriptures. We say heaven is
another name for the fullness of life
Christ promised (John 10.10). It is the fruit that never becomes overripe, the
face and the voice that never cease to appeal to us. Heaven is the insight that
never fades, the music that always stirs us, the love that glows with vitality
and never diminishes. Heaven is the fullness of all human relationships summed
up in the depths of our relationship with God.
Once, when visiting a woman in hospice, I wondered with her
whether she was ready to cross over. “No,” she said, “The kitchen in my mansion
isn’t ready yet! (John 14.2)” Belief in this dying woman was laced with humor!
She lingered two more weeks.
We get a feel for what heaven is like in those moments when
we see more than meets the eye in the very people and places which we love.
Elizabeth Barret Browning catches this sense of life hereafter as she reminds
us:
Earth’s
crammed with heaven
And
every common bush afire with God;
And
only she who sees takes off her shoes.
The
rest sit around and pluck blackberries.
~ Sister Joan Sobala
