Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven

Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed

           

Kenny Chesney, the country singer, wrote a cute song entitled “Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven.”  Perhaps you’ve heard it.  Like many country music songs, the lyrics are really what make it so great:

Preacher told me last Sunday mornin

“Son, you better start livin right

You need to quit the women and whiskey

And carrying on all night

Don’t you wanna hear him call your name?

When you’re standing at the pearly gates?”
I told the preacher, “Yes I do

But I hope they don’t call today.

I ain’t ready.”

Everybody wants to go to heaven

Have a mansion high above the clouds.

Everybody wants to go to heaven

But nobody want to go now.

The song continues:

I said, “Preacher maybe you didn’t see me

Throw an extra twenty in the plate

There’s one for everything I did last night

And one to get me through today.

Here’s a ten to help you remember

Next time you got the good Lord’s ear.

Say I’m comin but there ain’t no hurry

I’m having fun down here.”

Now, if this is the mentality of most of you today, I’ve got my work cut out for me in this parish!!  But while we probably don’t think of all these things, there is a sneaky way in which these lyrics, or some of them, may ring true.  First and foremost, we all probably want to go to heaven.  If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be here.  But, it’s all too easy to think that we can live a double life as a Christian: we sin all we want, and then try to buy our way into heaven with a last big donation or a last-ditch effort at living on the straight and narrow. 

            Jesus says in our Gospel, “‘Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and I will not reject anyone who comes to me…And this is the will of the one who sent me, that I should not lose anything of what he gave me, but that I should raise it on the last day.’”  This is sounding pretty good!!  We’ve been baptized, we belong to the Father, so we must go to heaven (unless we’re Hitler or Osama bin-Laden).  Jesus isn’t going to lose us, and if we come pleading at the last minute, Jesus will not reject us. 

            St. Paul, too, gives us lots of hope: “Are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might have newness of life.”  Baptized into death? Check!  Share in the resurrection? Check!  Sounds good!!  But if everyone is in heaven (except the really evil people who are in hell, the exceptions to the rule), then what in the world are we doing today?!?  Why would we take a day to pray for All the Faithful Departed?  And why would this day trump our usual Sunday of Ordinary Time celebration?

            Jesus and St. Paul give us the answer.  Jesus later says, in this same passage, “‘everyone who…believes in him may have eternal life.’”  Belief is necessary.  But belief is proven through our actions.  That is why St. Paul has the conditional statement: “if we have grown into union with him through a death like his, we shall also be united with him in the resurrection.”  Our share in the resurrection is based upon how much we are sharing in the crucifixion.  Specifically, how much are we putting our sinful self to death? 

            We pray today, and the tradition of Catholics to have Masses said for the deceased (though they can be said for the living as well) should be continued, because we never know how much a person has died to their sinful self and so risen with Christ.  That’s easy to say for other people, right?  ‘Oh yeah, Mrs. Magillicudy?  She was a wonderful old woman, but she may have still had some sins that she was attached to.  It’s good to offer Mass for her.  But mom and dad, they were saints to put up with us!  There’s no way they didn’t go straight to heaven!’  I’m certainly not denying that our family members may be in heaven.  I hope they are!!  I think of a dear friend of mine from East Lansing, whom I called Uncle Bill.  He was, in the time I knew him, a saintly man, and his family told me about the great things he would do for the faith, including a daily rosary.  And I know that God is merciful and will not reject anyone who comes to him.  But I also know he was human, and probably had some sins, no matter how little.  So I, as well as his family, continue to offer Masses for the repose of his soul.  Until he’s canonized a saint, we never know for sure.  And if he is in heaven, then I know God will apply those graces to someone else who needs it more.  I’m sure that Uncle Bill will be in heaven long before me, but I’m not the judge of who gets into heaven and when, so I keep praying for him.  And that’s what we do today.  We pray for all of the faithful departed and ask God to receive them into heaven through the merits of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.  But, I want to encourage you not to leave praying for them only to the Mass.  There is a beautiful Catholic custom, and I know some of you here practice it, to pray for the souls of the faithful departed at each meal, or at least at dinner.  What a great thing to say, at the end of grace: May the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace.  Amen. 

            Everybody wants to go to heaven.  God wants us to be in heaven.  May our life on this earth, as well as our Mass and daily prayers, show God that our sinfulness has been crucified on the cross, so that we can rise with Christ to new life in the eternal happiness of the blessed.  Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.  May their souls and all the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace.  Amen.