My personal life in Christ has been an experience of constantly being surprised (or, more appropriately, reminded - maybe "re-surprised"), that the stakes of this life are infinitely higher than can be imagined. So much of my day-to-day life consists of "shades of grey" - sometimes it's darker grey and sometimes lighter grey - but everything is basically grey. But, each day, as I sit down and "plug in" to my life in Christ in prayer, I am brought again into the mystery of the Christian religion, and the grey begins to recede and I begin to perceive an underlying substrate of black and white. This process isn't a retreat into shallowness and an abandonment of appreciation for subtlety. Rather, it's a peering into profundity. This isn't a black and white that means what I think is right and what you think is wrong, it's a discernment of ultimate truth that reveals a promise of fulfillment that exceeds expression (as in "eye has not seen, ear has not heard...") and a potential, indeed a threat, of disappointment that is literally unspeakable (as in "worm dieth not..." etc.). The futility of my intellect to grasp either of these extremes is a burden and it helps to name it such. I cannot understand, but not for lack of trying.
I am sometimes puzzled that we don't hear more about heaven in Church. It seems like it should be on the agenda for each mass. But it isn't. I think that there is a "sense" out there that people already know all about heaven. But do they? Can they articulate the Christian teaching on heaven with the same effectiveness as something related to their job?
One problem I have with heaven is that any time I try to conceive of it, the conception can't hold up under the requirement to satisfy a person to eternity without turning into hell at the limit. For instance, I love coffee, but the thought of spending eternity at a Starbucks starts to turn around and go the other direction and sound something like the Hotel California. I love Christmas, but don't sit me in front of a lighted tree forever.
At some point, I stumbled across a particular book with an ominous-sounding title: "Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma" by Dr. Ludwig Ott. (If that name and title doesn't bring a certain image to mind, I don't know what does.) But this book has been a fascinating read. In fact, it's a great place to go when I'm looking for a little more "complete" treatment of the faith. I found the following on page 491 regarding the state of the resurrected body in heaven. The "teaching of the Apostles" is that there are four properties of the resurrection body:
"1. Incapability of suffering... that is, inaccessibility to physical evils of all kinds, such as sorrow, sickness, death. ... It may be more closely defined as the impossibility to suffer and to die."
"2. Subtility... that is, a spiritualised nature, which however, is not to be conceived as a transformation of the body into a spiritual essence or as a refinement of the matter into an ethereal body. The archetype of the spiritualised body is the risen body of Christ, which emerged from the sealed tomb and penetrated closed doors. The intrinsic reason of the spiritualisation of the body lies in the complete dominion of the body by the transfigured soul in so far as it is the essential form of the body."
"3. Agility... that is, the capability of the body to obey the soul with the greatest ease and speed of movement. It form a contrast to the heaviness of the earthly body, which is conditioned by the Law of Gravity. This agility was manifested by the risen Body of Christ, which was suddenly present in the midst of His Apostles, and which disappeared just as quickly. The intrinsic reason of agility lies in the perfect dominion over the body of the transfigured soul, to the extent that it moves the body."
"4. Clarity... that is, being free from everything deformed and being filled with beauty and radiance ... The archetype of the transfiguration is the Transfiguration of Jesus on Tabor and after the Resurrection. The intrinsic reason for the transfiguration lies in the overflowing of the beauty of the transfigured soul on to the body. The grade of the transfiguration of the body ... will vary according to the degree of clarity of the soul, which is in proportion to the measure of the merits."
There is nothing here that contradicts anything I've ever heard in Church, I've just never heard it so concisely put. The interplay between the soul and body is particularly interesting to me. In this life, our bodies have the upper hand and our souls are in some sense held hostage. Death, interestingly enough, is defined as "the separation of the soul from the body". After death, when the soul is transported, by the Holy Spirit, through death to eternal life, and rejoined to the "glorified" (technical term) body, the upper hand will lie with the soul and it will be the body that follows.
I actually find this stuff helpful in my struggles to conceive of eternity. Shallow son of a suburbanite that I am, my conceptions of heaven tend to be strongly influenced by Hollywood. I can't seem to help picturing myself in heaven as some sort of Jedi master, or maybe Neo (again) from the Matrix, with my human potential fully developed. But, again, the reality of the promise escapes my attempt to flesh out the details. We won't be warriors in heaven because war will be meaningless (it's hard to sell aspirin to people with "incapability for suffering"). I won't raise my hand and be able to stop bullets in mid air, or "search the force" to see what is happening next. Concepts like travel and knowledge will have different meaning. And, as Louis of Granada describes in "The Sinner's Guide", heaven will be great because God's agenda will be to reveal his greatness to us (which is infinite) forever. Put simply, God will be out to "impress" us in heaven and what He wills he accomplishes.
See you on the other side...
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