Surprises in Heaven

Learning to love the unseen God and the seen neighbor

11/01/2018

Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14 I, John, saw another angel come up from the East, holding the seal of the living God. He cried out in a loud voice to the four angels who were given power to damage the land and the sea, "Do not damage the land or the sea or the trees until we put the seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God." I heard the number of those who had been marked with the seal, one hundred and forty-four thousand marked from every tribe of the children of Israel. After this I had a vision of a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue. They stood before the throne and before the Lamb, wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice: "Salvation comes from our God, who is seated on the throne, and from the Lamb."

Who do you think you will spend eternity with in heaven? Now that we have built our columbarium and parishioners can inter their cremains in a niche, that question has come up more than once. Who will I spend eternity with? Some people discreetly ask Cindy McNally, who manages whose ashes go where: “Could you make sure that my niche is not next to so-and-so’s niche? I don’t want to be his neighbor for all eternity.” Well, guess what? That person will be exactly who they will be next to in purgatory and probably also in paradise. Cindy may keep you away from them, but God will put you right next to them.

Isn’t that the purpose of purgatory: to purge away our lack of love for our neighbor? We cannot love the God who is in heaven until we learn to love our neighbor who is on earth, even if he is in the niche next door. We read in 1 John 4:20 these challenging words: “For whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.”

Archbishop Fulton Sheen made this same point very memorably when he said: “When we get to heaven, there will be three surprises. First, there will not be people there whom we fully expected to make it but didn’t. Second, there will be people there whom we did not expect to make it, but did. And third and biggest surprise of all is that we ourselves might make it.” The good archbishop is indicating that a sort of “uncertainty principle” prevails in paradise. That is, we cannot know for certain who will and who will not be saved. Salvation is “worked out in fear and trembling” as we read in Philippians 2:12.

The collision and collaboration of a person’s inalienable and utter freedom with God’s omnipotent and irresistible grace cannot be deciphered with catchy sayings and easy explanations. St. Augustine said that “God created us without our help, but he will not save us without our consent.” In other words, who we will ultimately spend eternity with in heaven will remain a sealed secret until we get there and Jesus opens the Book of Life and read the names of the Blessed.

In the first reading today, St. John gives us a glimpse of who we will spend eternity with in heaven. Surprisingly, he sees two groups of people. Here’s how he describes the first group: “I heard the number of those who had been marked with the seal, one hundred and forty-four thousand from every tribe of the children of Israel.” I interpret that passage to mean not literally that number (144,000), but a symbolic number of all the baptized. Baptism is being “marked with the seal” because we are sealed and adopted as God’s own children, just like the Jews were sealed and adopted in the Old Testament when they passed through the Red Sea. This first group St. John sees, therefore, falls into the first category of Archbishop Fulton Sheen, namely, “those we did expect to make it to heaven.” In a word, Christians.

But then St. John describes another group, saying, “After this I had a vision of a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people and tongue.” In other words, here is a vast array – indeed, it is countless – of people who are not “marked with the seal” of baptism but are nonetheless in heaven. These non-Christians have also somehow sneaked into heaven, and they would fall into Fulton Sheen’s second surprise category of the saved, that is, “those we did not expect to make it to heaven.” St. John seems to suggest that who makes it to heaven – and conversely, who does not make it – is a great mystery and even defies denominations. We cannot comfortably sit on our couches and say, “All Catholics will make it to heaven.” Our salvation, who we will spend all eternity with, has to be worked out in fear and trembling, daily and deliberately cooperating with God's grace.

Today is the feast of All Saints, and this feast invites us to reflect deeply on the seemingly simple question, “Who will you spend eternity with?” On this feast the Church teaches us that there will be people in heaven – by the way, everyone who is in heaven is a saint – that we did not expect to make it. May I suggest to you some categories of people we might find hard to believe will be among the blessed? Some may hold that Muslims will not make it to heaven, or that Buddhists don’t have a prayer to make it to Paradise, or that people on death row will find the Pearly Gates locked. Some Protestants are convinced that Catholics will not be saved. As a Catholic priest, I sure hope they are wrong. You might have your own personal category of people you hope is not in heaven, like some parishioners hope so-and-so is not in the niche next door. I would suggest to you that is one reason for this feast of All Saints, namely, to broaden our horizons regarding heaven. The second surprise in heaven is that there will be people there we did not expect to make it, but still did.

Is there anyone you do not get along with on earth? Is there anyone you do not want buried in the niche next to you? That is the neighbor we must learn to love. If we don’t, they will be precisely the people we will find in purgatory, and probably the people we will see in Paradise. That is, if we make it ourselves.

Praised be Jesus Christ!