Two topics commonly avoided in the experience of our faith are heaven and hell, but the latter is talked about even less. Sometimes one gets the impression that all roads lead to heaven. No matter what we do, no matter how we live our lives, it seems there will always be a way to escape the wide road that leads to perdition. But this is not what Our Lord teaches us: “Fight to enter through the narrow gate, for I tell you that many will try and fail”.
Unfortunately, most of us live as if hell didn’t exist, as if there were no consequences for our actions. Even if we are liars, envious, proud, adulterers and thieves, God will welcome us into his presence, as long as we invoke and exalt his Holy Name. Once again it is Jesus himself who corrects us: “Not everyone who says to me: Lord, Lord! will enter the kingdom of God, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven.”
Do you think about heaven and hell?
More than believing in hell, we need to meditate on it, on what it means to be condemned. There, as Saint Alfonso Maria de Ligório teaches, “all centuries will pass and hell will be at its beginning”. We can’t even imagine what it’s like to suffer eternal torture, to see time pass amidst suffering and not have hope that it will end. The warning by , that “because of fleeting pleasures, we suffer great eternal torments”, applies to all of us.
A step further in this meditation is to think about how many times we have already deserved hell. It is said that some saints never sinned mortally, but I believe that this is a very exceptional condition. I know that I have fallen into mortal sin countless times and perhaps this is your situation. If I’ve already confessed and been acquitted, what’s the point of thinking about it? To recognize God’s love and mercy towards us: “Praise you, Lord, for I deserved it several times, but you did not rush me into it, giving me new chances to make amends”.
If hell is a topic that rarely appears in our lives, it is no less true that we have enormous difficulty thinking about heaven, paradise. As we are governed by the senses, every representation we see of the sky tends to be based on them. It turns out that as this world is the empire of the senses, it is not possible for heaven to “compete” with the sensual pleasures that we already find here on earth. Is it possible to find food in paradise that satisfies our palate more than what we already find at the banquets we participate in? The same can be said about aromas, sounds, beautiful images and touch. Our world specializes in pleasing the senses, so every mundane representation of heaven seems silly, dull, boring, to the point that it seems “cooler” to go to hell, where there is more “hustle”.
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What is it like to enter heaven?
We should get out of this superficial dimension and meditate on what it really means to enter heaven. This, however, is not easy. So much so that Jesus always used many images to describe the Kingdom of Heaven: a treasure hidden in the field, a net thrown into the sea, a precious pearl, yeast in the dough, the mustard seed that grows and becomes huge…
It helps us a lot to imagine what kind of treasure we will find in heaven. There we will see, “uncovered and without a veil, the infinite beauty of God, and this is what the joy of the blessed will consist of”. While we are in this mortal body, we are unable to see God because our senses trap us. Once this veil is removed, we will see, says the saint, “the immense love that God showed us in becoming man and in sacrificing his life on the Cross for love of us”. Finally we will know “the excessive love enclosed in the mystery of the Eucharist: seeing a God made present under the species of bread and made food for his creatures”.
Think about your eternity
Everything we see in heaven will make us know the infinite goodness of God and we will be “submerged in the infinite sea of divine goodness”. We cannot get lost in what our senses tell us, but trust in the promise of Christ, Our Lord: “I am going to prepare a place for you”.
Don’t waste time: reflect a lot on death, heaven, hell, on your sins and think that “anything you can do to avoid an eternity of punishment is little, it’s nothing”. Therefore, exclaim: “Here I am, Lord: I want to do whatever you want of me”.