Many people — those seeking happiness in their normal lives and those seeking glory through dictatorial leadership — have gone astray by trying to create a Heaven on Earth.
Whether it was trying to perfect a master race, create a community of like-minded people to isolate themselves from the supposed evils of the world, or [something, something, something, Communism, something], it just doesn’t work. One cannot create a perfect Heaven-like society on Earth.
Heaven and God go together like peas and carrots, yet all of these individuals who strove to make their own Heaven totally ignored the God part of things.
How can you have Heaven without God? You can’t.
As a people, we just have to accept this world is not going to be perfect. The Heaven we seek is only in the real Heaven, united in communion with God, the angels, and all of the saints.
We get to Heaven after knowing, loving, and serving God and doing other good things upon God accepting us there at the hour of our death.
A lamentation
It’s rather sad that it’s impossible to experience Heaven on Earth. I imagine a few of us could use that right about now.
How would we not want to be in a place where “He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death or mourning, wailing, or pain, [for] the old order has passed away” (Rev 21:4, NABRE)?
No more death.
No more mourning.
No more wailing.
No more pain.
Won’t those be nice?
Those are things we just cannot have on Earth.
It’s rather sad when you think about it. Looking at it another way, that means on Earth, we’re guaranteed to have death, mourning, wailing, and pain.
One of those on its own is a full day, right there.
Heaven does sound a lot better than Earth. I can see why people would want that for the here and now.
A hope
I’m left with the fact that if I want all those Heavenly things of Heaven, I need to be good and holy on this Earth.
What could I do?
What could I do?
I suppose an easy one would be not to bring death upon people.
That’s easy. I’ve not killed anyone for almost 40 years and I’m pretty confident that trend will continue.
Ah, but I could also not “kill” people with my words, actions, and other things that may harm them. That would help me get to Heaven.
And mourning. Well, that seems easy enough. I won’t do things to others that will give them a reason to mourn. I won’t maliciously make people sad.
Wailing. Pain. I’ll do my best not to inflict these onto anyone.
People go through enough on this world without me adding to their problems.
I bet if everyone tried really, really hard and found the love in their hearts not to bring about death, mourning, wailing, and pain upon others, we’d have a pretty decent time on this planet.
Hold on, though. There may be a flaw in this theory.
If we had fewer of those bad things in our daily lives, wouldn’t that mean Earth would be more like Heaven?
I thought we can’t have that.
“Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth, as it is in Heaven.”
Oh. Right.
He said it better than I could have.
His Heaven on Earth, while not totally 100 percent possible, can be seen in small glimpses. Glimpses that will help us get to Heaven.
The more we act like Christ to others, the more others will see His witness on Earth.
The truth and goodness that we’re called to share with others might not be the full existence of Heaven, but it’s a window into what could be next.
Imagine a whole eternity of Christ moments one after the other.
Let’s help each other toward that perfection.
Thank you for reading.
I’m praying for you.