My Sisters and Brothers in Christ:
Where do you want to go? I ask you this often when I visit you at your parishes, because it is an important question and one that demands perpetual attention. Most of you reply to me, “I want to go to heaven!” Yes, as Catholics, heaven is our ultimate destination. I ask you to ponder this, “Is heaven on earth?”
Before you reply, think about the meaning of the question. God created the earth and all within it, the sea and the dry land, the sky and the soil, the sun and the moon and the stars, and the creatures who live upon the earth. God created you to flourish His garden. God offers us Jesus the Eucharist to sustain our spiritual heart, as He provides us with physical nourishment to sustain our human heart. Each time we pray The Lord’s Prayer, we pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Most of us would say that heaven is not earth and earth is not heaven. Yet, I suggest to you that God calls us to begin the heavenly journey while we live in His garden on this earth. He calls us to care for everything and everyone in it. He asks us to be tender and merciful to one another. He offers us a spirit of fortitude to consider heavenly possibilities during all our days. He colors the earth, that we might know the beauty of heaven and help flourish that beauty by our thought, word, and deed. As St. Paul tells us, “Proclaim the Word; be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient; convince, reprimand, encourage through all patience and teaching (2 Tim 4:2).
Pope Leo XIV reminds us of what our impersistent nature — our sinfulness — yields on this earth, “we still see too much discord, too many wounds caused by hatred, violence, prejudice, the fear of difference.” But, as St. Paul exhorts, if we are persistent in our faithfulness, then the yield of this earth will be heavenly. At Baptism, we or our godparents on our behalf, profess our belief in the triune God and the gift of salvation history and our participation in salvation history. We come to understand that all Scripture is inspired by God so that one who belongs to God may be competent, equipped for every good work (2 Tim 3:16,17). As God’s Word, the Scriptures share His divine authority.
You see, God did leave us heaven on earth. He gave us the Scriptures, our guiding light. He gave us Jesus the Eucharist, God with us. He gave us one another to love as God loves. He gave us the earth and all within it to flourish as His garden.
We have the ability as God’s own to bring forth heaven on earth. God is not waiting for us to die in order to meet Him. God is with us always and in all ways if we are faithful to Him. To be received then into Heaven after death is a continuation of our heavenly pilgrimage.
During the month of October, our Holy Father asks us to pray the Rosary every day, a devotion leading toward eternal Peace. Our Blessed Mother who bore the Word within her womb and offered the Word through, with and in God to each one of us remains our advocate as we seek and live the redemption of her Son.
Yes, we have a lot to do. Jesus told his disciples about the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary. May our prayer be the embodiment of God all our days that the heavenly pilgrimage will lose the bonds of heaven upon the earth. May we come to understand living as God calls.
Jesus asks us, “When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth?”