Heaven and Home

When I was in the Franciscan seminary,  my novice director encouraged me to view things “under the aspect of eternity”. However, the setup of Western society is such that if we’re young and from a materially prosperous enough background, we can maintain the illusion that lasting happiness can be found on Earth. We may not have lost anyone close to us. Media stars are mainly the young and the beautiful. We segregate the aged into retirement communities. We convince ourselves that youth lasts forever.

We’re at a point when our environment and our health can be so managed that we’re rarely physically uncomfortable. The elimination of the “genetically unfit”, or of the simply inconvenient – through abortion and euthanasia – shields us from another type of suffering. The increasing gulf between rich and poor spares the more privileged much unpleasantness. Finally, technology has provided us with endless opportunities for amusement and distraction. A person can make it into his/her twenties or even thirties never having experienced deep suffering. “Life is good” – and will always remain so. "Don’t worry, be happy” seems to be a manageable long-term proposition.

As one gets older, the illusion that ultimate happiness can be found on Earth inevitably fails. If we live long enough, we will suffer the loss of parents, siblings, friends, and perhaps even children. If we live long enough, we will experience the pains and limitations of aging. We will experience broken relationships that our best efforts can’t reconcile - injustices, betrayals, and misunderstandings.

If we are reasonably compassionate, we will suffer through the suffering of those we love. If we’re reasonably reflective, the cycle of amusements won’t completely satisfy. At whatever age suffering hits us, the necessity of Heaven becomes clearer. If we’re honest enough with ourselves, we come to see that we have desires that are foundational to who we are, that Earth can’t satisfy.

What heaven offers is perfect fulfillment of the desires of every human heart: 1) a place of belonging and welcome; 2) a place of unutterable, aching beauty; 3) a place where every hope and dream and longing is satisfied; 4) a place of fellowship, where every conflict is resolved; 5) a place where every tear is dried; 6) and all of the above forever and ever and ever.

It is striking how prevalent those themes are in great literature. For example, regarding “Heaven as a place where every longing is satisfied,” an editor of The Wind in the Willows singled out “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn” as a chapter that all readers find particularly moving. It’s a powerful, haunting scene. The Mole and the Water Rat are searching on the river through the night for Otter’s lost child. They find the child, at dawn, on a little island, in the care of the nature god Pan. In simply beholding Pan, their deepest longings are fulfilled. They are overwhelmed, not just with love, but with worship.

I don’t know if the author, Kenneth Grahame, was a Christian. But how beautifully he captures the almost painful sweetness of the Beatific Vision! The vision of Pan’s glory flees as soon as it appears, leaving an ache and a memory. But the human heart longs for such a vision to last forever and ever.

The longing for a beauty and sweetness that last forever is captured also in Keats’ “Ode to a Grecian Urn”. The lovers’ kiss depicted on the urn is frozen in time, eternal. We do experience some moments we want to last forever – but they pass. I still vividly remember when a family friend, Terry, took my sister and me for a a day to a nearby park on the shore of Lake Michigan. We ran up and down dunes, dove in the lake, and - best of all - swung out the side of a large dune on a rope tied to a tree, dropping down into the soft sand. We bought a bushel of fresh-picked peaches on the way home and ate them as the juice ran down our chins.

It was a day out of Eden with the fun-loving, easygoing father I never had. Our hearts are made for days like that, fruit like that, forever and ever.

In the second book of C. S. Lewis’s “Space Trilogy”, Perelandra, the main character, Ransom, experiences an unfallen paradise on the planet Venus. It is a world where everything is provided for to one’s heart’s delight, and everything permitted except sin. In the third book of the trilogy, That Hideous Strength, the angel of the planet Venus descends to Earth, and the overwhelming scent of that paradise fills the nostrils of Ransom and his friends.

Only Ransom recognizes the scent, but all are overwhelmed with tears of aching longing – a longing so sweet that it’s almost a fulfillment. For Ransom, it is the home to which he longs to return. For them, it’s the home they’ve never been to but always knew, somehow, existed. St. Augustine prays, “Our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee”. We might also say, “Our hearts are homeless till they rest in Heaven”. As Lewis writes in the last Chronicle of Narnia, The Last Battle, we love Earth so much because for brief moments, it looks just a bit like our true home, Heaven.

Literature is filled with examples. Earth has moments of haunting beauty and joy. But it's not enough. The window on the eternal, on what we were made for, opens for the slightest moment, and we are wounded with a taste, a touch of what is beyond our wildest hopes. With St. Augustine, we cry out, “I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.”