A Guide to Heaven

Second reading
Apocalypse 21:10-14,22-23 ©

He showed me the holy city coming down out of heaven

In the spirit, the angel took me to the top of an enormous high mountain and showed me Jerusalem, the holy city, coming down from God out of heaven. It had all the radiant glory of God and glittered like some precious jewel of crystal-clear diamond. The walls of it were of a great height, and had twelve gates; at each of the twelve gates there was an angel, and over the gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel; on the east there were three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates. The city walls stood on twelve foundation stones, each one of which bore the name of one of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

  I saw that there was no temple in the city since the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb were themselves the temple, and the city did not need the sun or the moon for light since it was lit by the radiant glory of God and the Lamb was a lighted torch for it.

Where is heaven?

This is a good question.  My answer is simple, I don't know.  Is heaven a "place" in the classical sense in that it occupies space somewhere "out there?"  Well, you can answer that in two ways.  First of all, it is the abode of souls, a multitude of millions of them. Souls, of course, have no physical substance to them.  They, therefore, would require no physical world to house them.  A soul is the inner essence of a person and we are told that we will recognize each other in heaven and that it will be a place of perfect happiness and joy.  On the other hand, heaven is also the home of the Risen Jesus and His Mother, Mary who both have bodies that have been glorified by God. You might make a case that they are exceptions because of their special place in salvation history.  But then you are faced with Elijah who, while still a holy man and a prophet, went to heaven in a fiery chariot.  While he is an important prophet, his importance does not reach as high as that of Jesus and Mary.  So, he too is in heaven with a physical body if we are to believe the scripture. I believe that our heaven, the home God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, is a real place where you can either have a physical body or be a spirit.  The location of this place is beyond our understanding. I believe it is outside of our universe, inaccessible to us because we live in the universe where time moves forward at a constant speed and the citizens of heaven dwell outside of time.  While in our universe it is forever expanding and is subject to the passing of time. 

How do you get into heaven? 

Our residency in heaven is assured and is a free gift because Jesus died for our sins.  To enter heaven one just needs to be owned by Jesus.  We must bear his mark on our soul.  This begins with the Sacrament of Baptism.  This Sacrament wipes away original sin and brings us into the household of God.  We are then to live our lives as servants to one another.  We are to love others as Jesus loved us.  He loved us to death, His death upon a Roman cross. We are to become whole people, that is, holy. 

So, Everyone goes to heaven then? 

No, unfortunately, that is not the case.  After Baptism has wiped away original sin and you become old enough to understand good from evil, it is possible for you to squander your inheritance and declare God as your enemy by living a life that places your will and your rules above God's.  God loves you so much that He will allow you to do your will over His.  He will, of course, try to win you back.  You have to come back of your own volition, He will do nothing to force you.  Some of the evil you do will cause consequences in this life but they are because of the natural world we live in.  For example, if you murder someone, you may get the death penalty which is a consequence of your actions.  People who consistently follow their own will and desire God to be out of their life will have their wish granted to them and after death will make hell their abode. 

Also, not every "good" Christian goes directly to heaven.  We may have some minor sins that we did not confess and did not make amends for.  Or, we may have some attitudes that would cause discord in heaven. For example: 

I found out in first grade that you stole my pencil when I was not looking. I loved that pencil, it had a red lead on one side and a black lead on the other.  My grandma gave it to me and I always thought about her when I used it.  You stole it.  When you were on your deathbed and I came to visit and comfort you, you confessed to what you had done.  I became very, very, angry at you even though I did not say anything.  Shortly after this, you died.  I lived a few more years and then I said good-bye to this world and passed away.  Let us assume I arrived in heaven and saw you.  Immediately, anger boiled up inside of my soul and discord and hate arrived for the first time in heaven.  This cannot be.  Heaven is a place of eternal happiness and peace.  With the hate, I was carrying around for you because of what you had done to me on earth, I was not fit for heaven.  Yet, it was a small matter and I was not damned to hell for it.  What would become of me?  I would choose to go to purgatory, a place that God has provided for us to get rid of those things that keep us from heaven. 

Purgatory? Didn't the death of Jesus remit all sin?

Why, yes it did. Guilt for the sin was is not the point of purgatory. Purgatory is there to purge the underlying cause of the sin.  In the case of me and stolen pencil, I would be in purgatory to purge the hate from my soul so that when I got to heaven I would be a whole person or a holy one.  Purgatory also is the place where you satisfy the demands of justice for the sins you committed.  For example, you stole, well, you would either make amends on earth while you were alive or in purgatory.  Evil and God do not mix.  Heaven will admit no sinful person. But God is a God of mercy and He will do what is best for His children, applying discipline as needed as a good father will but His discipline will be applied and be tempered with mercy. 

Imagine, if you will, that you were getting married in the afternoon.  In the morning of your wedding, you go and play a game of football with your friends.  The field is wet and muddy and you are tackled several times and are quite dirty.  Would you go to your wedding before you had a chance to take a shower and just perhaps put on some clean clothes?  Well, purgatory is just that sort of a place.  You are readying yourself to see God as He is.  You do not want to do it in dirty attire. 

What about those in hell, can they repent? 

St Teresa once said, "Hell could be emptied with one tear of sorrow."  This means that the people in hell want to be there, they want to be away from God, they do not have any desire to share eternity with Him.  To repent from the evil of their lives would be abhorrent to them.  They curse God and blame Him for all of their woes.  Every corrupt thing, every curse, every evil ever committed are memorialized on the walls of hell.  Each person is known by their own particular sin and the punishment they receive is appropriate to the crime.  Some say that they would choose hell because that is where all of their friends are.  Well, there is no friendship in hell, only hate, bitterness, regret, and thoughts of revenge against God and His followers.  Your "friends" will be too busy hating and lusting after violence to be talking over old times with you.  The fact is, they will despise you and do what they can to make you more miserable.  There are no friends in hell.