Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time
In
this month of November, when we remember the dead in a special way, our minds
easily turn towards heaven. We
began the month by praying for All Saints: all those who are in heaven, not
just the ones the Church knows about and has canonized, but even those who are
known only to God. As we write the
names of our family members and friends who have died in the Book of the Dead,
we pray and we hope that they are in heaven.
Secular
music has thought about heaven a fair amount, too. As I thought about songs with heaven in them, three came
right to mind: Belinda Carlisle singing, “Oh, heaven is a place on earth”; Eric
Clapton singing, “Would you know my name, if I saw you in heaven?”; and, a
little more recently, Los Lonely Boys singing, “how far is heaven?” You can probably think of more (but do
it after Mass so you’re not distracted).
Heaven
is our goal. It is the hope we
have. I’ve never known a person
who didn’t want to go to heaven.
It was the hope for the seven brothers and their mother as they were
offered the choice to eat pork, that is, to break the Mosaic Law, or to
die. We get a few of their stories
today, and their perseverance in the face of physical torture is inspiring. Why do they remain faithful to God
rather than make a small concession?
Because they believe that God will reward them for their fidelity. We have countless martyrs, many from
the last century in the Spanish Civil War, during World War II, and in from Communist
countries, who died rather than deny their faith. From the very beginning with St. Stephen, the first martyr,
the hope of heaven has been what has consoled the multitude of men and women as
they underwent excruciating pain for Jesus.
Heaven
is our hope amid the sighs, mournings, and weepings in this vale of tears, as
we pray in the Hail, Holy Queen prayer.
And we intuitively want heaven to be worth the price of what we go
through on earth: all the little sacrifices we make, all the big sacrifices we
make. We want to know that heaven
is worth it. In a way, we’re weighing
the cost of discipleship against the cost of the world. For this reason, it’s no surprise that
when I visit our parish school classroom, or when I visit our parish high
school, Lansing Catholic, I frequently get asked what heaven will be like.
The
students often want to know: will heaven have a TV? If not, how can I be happy if I can’t make sure I’ve seen
all the episodes of my favorite shows?
Will heaven have an X-box?
If not, how can I truly be happy if I’m not killing zombies? Will heaven have my iPhone? If not, how am I ever going to finish
all the levels of Candy Crush?
Perhaps we adults like to think that we’re a little bit more
sophisticated: will my favorite food and drink (maybe adult beverage) be
there? Will it be the perfect
temperature? Will the Lions finally
win the Super Bowl? Our view of
heaven is very much based upon what we know, and that is what is earthly, and
then making it a perfected earthly existence.
But
it strikes me that in our Gospel today, Jesus challenges the Sadducees, and us,
to not get caught up in making heaven simply a better version of earth. The Sadducees are trying to trap Jesus
into making the resurrection seem silly if the Law of Moses is true, because
all seven men will claim to be this woman’s husband in heaven. But Jesus sidesteps the trap by
teaching them that heaven is not simply earth perfected. Heaven involves a change of mind, a
change of attitude because it’s not happiness from our fallen point of view,
but is happiness from God’s point of view. God, who made us, and who knows what will make us perfectly
happy, gives us true happiness, not just what our minds can conceive as true
happiness. Even our bodies, which
we know we will receive back at the end of time in the resurrection of the
body, are different, and we see that in Jesus. It’s still His body; He still has the marks from the nails
and the spear, but it’s different; it’s glorified. And it’s different enough that Mary Magdalene at the tomb
does not at first recognize Him; the disciples on the road to Emmaus don’t even
recognize Him. But it’s similar
enough that the apostles in the Upper Room do know it’s Jesus.
What
we know by Scripture and the teaching of the Church is that heaven is perfect
happiness, and it involves the worship of God in a time of Sabbath rest. It is being with God, who made us to be
with Himself, and the fulfillment of what it means to be human. Maybe some of our creature comforts
will be there; maybe not. Maybe
the Lions will actually win a Super Bowl; maybe not. But we do have faith and confidence that whatever heaven is
like, we will be perfectly happy because we will be with God and lack for
nothing that we truly need. May we
all be found worthy, by the way we live our lives, to accept that gift of
eternal blessedness that God wants to give us, so we can experience for
ourselves, with all the saints, canonized and known only to God, the joy of
entering into the eternal rest of our Lord.