Homily 4th Sunday Easter C
Fr. Paul D. Williams, Jr.
At the end of his book, “The Problem of Pain”, C.S. Lewis talks about heaven. He says, “We are very shy nowadays of even mentioning heaven. We are afraid of the jeer about ‘pie in the sky,’ and of being told that we are trying to ‘escape’ from the duty of making a happy world here and now into dreams of a happy world elsewhere. But either there is ‘pie in the sky’ or there is not. If there is not, then Christianity is false, for this doctrine is woven into its whole fabric. If there is, then this truth, like any other, must be faced. Again, we are afraid that heaven is a bribe, and that if we make it our goal we shall no longer be disinterested. It is not so. Heaven offers nothing that a mercenary soul can desire. It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to. There are rewards that do not sully motives. A man’s love for a woman is not mercenary because he wants to marry her, nor his love of poetry mercenary because he wants to read it, nor his love of exercise less disinterested because he wants to run and leap and walk. Love, by definition, seeks to enjoy its object.”
At the end of the Apostle’s Creed, we say, “I believe in life everlasting.” Why? Because of Jesus’ promise in today’s Gospel, “My sheep hear my voice, I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.” If only we would listen to, know, and follow Jesus, we shall never perish, and that is the promise of eternal life.
Well, what is life everlasting, eternal life, the life to come, heaven? In his commentary on the Apostle’s Creed (found in the Office, Sat. of 33rd Week of the year), St. Thomas Aquinas makes several points.
1) First, he says, in eternal life, we will be united with God. “God himself is the reward and end of all our labors.” What does this mean? Well, St. Paul says, “At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known.” And whom shall we see face to face, whom shall we know? Jesus Christ, “the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” And what shall we do when we see him, when we are united with him in eternal life?
2) Well, next, St. Thomas says eternal life consists in “perfect praise”. In his great hymn of praise in Ephesians, St. Paul says, “we exist for the praise of his glory, we who first hoped in Christ.” In a sense, we were brought into existence in order to praise God, and we are not complete until we do so. But does God need our praise? The Eucharistic Preface says (Weekdays IV), “You have no need of our praise, yet our desire to thank you is itself your gift. Our prayer of thanksgiving adds nothing to your greatness, but makes us grow in your grace.” God does not need our praise, yet he created us out of nothing so that we could share in his glory and find our fulfillment in praising him.
3) Then, St. Thomas says in the heavenly home of the saints, “their glory will be even greater.” St. Paul says (2 Cor 3:18) “All of us, gazing with unveiled face on the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory.” Modern man, it seems, believes only in progress, not attainment, as if one gets more pleasure out of the journey than the arrival, more thrill from the hunt than the kill, more excitement from the climb than arrival at the summit. Enlightenment philosopher Lessing would posit this question: “If God held all Truth concealed in his right hand and in his left hand the persistent striving for the Truth, and while warning me against internal error should say, ‘Choose!’ I would humbly bow before his left hand and say, ‘Father, give thy gift: the pure truth is for thee alone.’” (Kreeft, Heaven, p. 85) But St. Paul would say, “All creation is groaning in labor pains even until now; and we ourselves also groan as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.” And he would compare the journey with the arrival (Rom. 8:18), “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us.” Like Lewis said, “Love, by definition, seeks to enjoy its object.”
4) Finally, St. Thomas says that eternal life consists in the complete satisfaction of every desire. St. Augustine would sum this up with his famous confession, “You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our heart can find no rest until it rests in you.”
The philosopher Josef Pieper, in his book “Happiness and Contemplation” puts it this way (Schall, p. 146): “Man as he is constituted, endowed as he is for a thirst for happiness, cannot have his thirst quenched in the finite realm; and if he thinks or behaves as if that were possible, he is misunderstanding himself, he is acting contrary to his own nature. The whole world would not suffice this ‘nature’ of man. If the whole world were given to him, he would have to say, and would say: it is too little.”
Yes, our desires can only be fulfilled by the transcendent God. But St. Thomas adds something interesting. In heaven, he says, “the blessed will be given more than they ever wanted or hoped for.” Basically, he is saying that even though we may see our human desires as vast and great, in fact, they are not great enough, and indeed they are nothing when compared to the infinite God. And St. Paul would anticipate this when he said, “eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and it has not entered the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him”.
James Schall puts it this way, “God exceeds all our other pleasures not by denying our other pleasures exist, but by maintaining that God is more delightful than even these.”
If this description of heaven is a “pie in the sky” that really does exist, as Lewis would point out, then we must face it now... and what about “the duty of making a happy world here and now” as our detractors would accuse us of trying to escape? Well, we have looked at Jesus’ promise, “they shall never perish”, but right before that he says, “I give them eternal life.” Who? Those who listen to his voice, know him, and follow him. So, is he talking about the life to come? No, he is referring to those who know him now and follow him here. “I give them eternal life.” Christ is the Good Shepherd who not only leads his sheep to eternal life, but guides, protects, and shelters them on the journey. We are his people, now. The flock he tends, now. So eternal life does not begin simply when we pass from this life to the next, it begins now, here, when we know Jesus, follow him, and listen to his voice. How does this happen?
1) Well, St. Thomas says that in heaven we will be united with God. So we must be united with him now in some way. How? We listen to his voice in Scripture. We are the Body of Christ, so we know him through each other. We follow him by keeping his commandments (Jn 14:15), "If you love me, you will keep my commandments” and by serving his little ones (Mt. 25:40), “whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.”
2) Then, St. Thomas says that the life to come will consist of “perfect praise”, which means we must begin by praising him now. We praise him through the labors of our daily life, our prayers, works, supplications and sufferings patiently endured. We praise him by faithfully living our vocation and trying to make him known, heard, and followed. And we praise him preeminently in the sacrifice of the Mass, where we our united to his prayer of praise, obedience and sacrifice to the Father, when he offered himself on Calvary.
3) And St. Thomas says that in heaven our “glory will be even greater.” How do we live this now? By following the model of St. Paul, who would say (2 Cor. 10:17), "Whoever boasts, should boast in the Lord." If we have any gifts to glory in, then let us do so, not for our own sake, but for the sake of the one who gives such great gifts.
4) Finally, for St. Thomas, eternal life consists in perfect happiness, the complete satisfaction of every desire and indeed the surpassing of every desire. But what about happiness in the here and now? If we seek happiness, will we be accused of the “happy heresy”? Well, St. Thomas maintains that every human action is geared towards one thing: the sumum bonum, the greatest good, perfect happiness, which is God himself. So, all of our actions are geared towards happiness. Even in our sinful actions we are seeking good, just in the wrong place or the wrong manner. And that is how St. Thomas distinguishes himself from the “happy heretics”: for he says, we can seek happiness wrongly.
But St. Thomas also said, “the blessed will be given more than they ever wanted or hoped for”, and this same principle applies to us now when we seek that which is good. Look at the life of Christ: at Cana in Galilee when they needed wine, he didn’t ration his gifts; instead he turned the water into wine, filling 6 stone jars to the brim with the finest wine. When he fed the five-thousand, from five barley loaves they collected 12 baskets full of fragments, because there was more than they could eat. And after the Resurrection, when the disciples were fishing and catching nothing, Jesus told them to cast again, and they were not able to haul in the net because it was full to the breaking point with large fish. When Jesus gives gifts, even in this life, he gives them superabundantly, if only we would be open to his graces and trust him.
So how should we seek happiness in this life? How should we make a happy world of the here and now? Since we know that the happiness in this life will always be tempered with sorrow, incompleteness, imperfection, then we cannot seek after some man-made utopia like the opponents of Christianity. Then what can we do? Well, J.R.R. Tolkein offers this prayer, which should be the model for our prayer and action: We should pray that “what should be, will be.”
And if you think about it, that is a bold prayer of trust, but St. Paul says (2 Cor. 3:12-18), “since we have such hope, we act very boldly.” And where is our hope? In the promise Jesus made, “no one shall snatch them out of my hand.” What is it that should be? That we should declare the Word of God to the ends of the earth, that all peoples, indeed all creation, should find salvation and know and follow the Lord. What is it that will be? As St. John saw, “A huge crowd which no one could count from every nation and race, people and tongue... standing before the throne and the Lamb... never again knowing hunger or thirst... for the Lamb on the throne shepherds them... and leads them to springs of life-giving water... wiping every tear from their eyes.”
Fr. Paul D. Williams, Jr.
At the end of his book, “The Problem of Pain”, C.S. Lewis talks about heaven. He says, “We are very shy nowadays of even mentioning heaven. We are afraid of the jeer about ‘pie in the sky,’ and of being told that we are trying to ‘escape’ from the duty of making a happy world here and now into dreams of a happy world elsewhere. But either there is ‘pie in the sky’ or there is not. If there is not, then Christianity is false, for this doctrine is woven into its whole fabric. If there is, then this truth, like any other, must be faced. Again, we are afraid that heaven is a bribe, and that if we make it our goal we shall no longer be disinterested. It is not so. Heaven offers nothing that a mercenary soul can desire. It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to. There are rewards that do not sully motives. A man’s love for a woman is not mercenary because he wants to marry her, nor his love of poetry mercenary because he wants to read it, nor his love of exercise less disinterested because he wants to run and leap and walk. Love, by definition, seeks to enjoy its object.”
At the end of the Apostle’s Creed, we say, “I believe in life everlasting.” Why? Because of Jesus’ promise in today’s Gospel, “My sheep hear my voice, I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.” If only we would listen to, know, and follow Jesus, we shall never perish, and that is the promise of eternal life.
Well, what is life everlasting, eternal life, the life to come, heaven? In his commentary on the Apostle’s Creed (found in the Office, Sat. of 33rd Week of the year), St. Thomas Aquinas makes several points.
1) First, he says, in eternal life, we will be united with God. “God himself is the reward and end of all our labors.” What does this mean? Well, St. Paul says, “At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known.” And whom shall we see face to face, whom shall we know? Jesus Christ, “the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” And what shall we do when we see him, when we are united with him in eternal life?
2) Well, next, St. Thomas says eternal life consists in “perfect praise”. In his great hymn of praise in Ephesians, St. Paul says, “we exist for the praise of his glory, we who first hoped in Christ.” In a sense, we were brought into existence in order to praise God, and we are not complete until we do so. But does God need our praise? The Eucharistic Preface says (Weekdays IV), “You have no need of our praise, yet our desire to thank you is itself your gift. Our prayer of thanksgiving adds nothing to your greatness, but makes us grow in your grace.” God does not need our praise, yet he created us out of nothing so that we could share in his glory and find our fulfillment in praising him.
3) Then, St. Thomas says in the heavenly home of the saints, “their glory will be even greater.” St. Paul says (2 Cor 3:18) “All of us, gazing with unveiled face on the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory.” Modern man, it seems, believes only in progress, not attainment, as if one gets more pleasure out of the journey than the arrival, more thrill from the hunt than the kill, more excitement from the climb than arrival at the summit. Enlightenment philosopher Lessing would posit this question: “If God held all Truth concealed in his right hand and in his left hand the persistent striving for the Truth, and while warning me against internal error should say, ‘Choose!’ I would humbly bow before his left hand and say, ‘Father, give thy gift: the pure truth is for thee alone.’” (Kreeft, Heaven, p. 85) But St. Paul would say, “All creation is groaning in labor pains even until now; and we ourselves also groan as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.” And he would compare the journey with the arrival (Rom. 8:18), “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us.” Like Lewis said, “Love, by definition, seeks to enjoy its object.”
4) Finally, St. Thomas says that eternal life consists in the complete satisfaction of every desire. St. Augustine would sum this up with his famous confession, “You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our heart can find no rest until it rests in you.”
The philosopher Josef Pieper, in his book “Happiness and Contemplation” puts it this way (Schall, p. 146): “Man as he is constituted, endowed as he is for a thirst for happiness, cannot have his thirst quenched in the finite realm; and if he thinks or behaves as if that were possible, he is misunderstanding himself, he is acting contrary to his own nature. The whole world would not suffice this ‘nature’ of man. If the whole world were given to him, he would have to say, and would say: it is too little.”
Yes, our desires can only be fulfilled by the transcendent God. But St. Thomas adds something interesting. In heaven, he says, “the blessed will be given more than they ever wanted or hoped for.” Basically, he is saying that even though we may see our human desires as vast and great, in fact, they are not great enough, and indeed they are nothing when compared to the infinite God. And St. Paul would anticipate this when he said, “eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and it has not entered the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him”.
James Schall puts it this way, “God exceeds all our other pleasures not by denying our other pleasures exist, but by maintaining that God is more delightful than even these.”
If this description of heaven is a “pie in the sky” that really does exist, as Lewis would point out, then we must face it now... and what about “the duty of making a happy world here and now” as our detractors would accuse us of trying to escape? Well, we have looked at Jesus’ promise, “they shall never perish”, but right before that he says, “I give them eternal life.” Who? Those who listen to his voice, know him, and follow him. So, is he talking about the life to come? No, he is referring to those who know him now and follow him here. “I give them eternal life.” Christ is the Good Shepherd who not only leads his sheep to eternal life, but guides, protects, and shelters them on the journey. We are his people, now. The flock he tends, now. So eternal life does not begin simply when we pass from this life to the next, it begins now, here, when we know Jesus, follow him, and listen to his voice. How does this happen?
1) Well, St. Thomas says that in heaven we will be united with God. So we must be united with him now in some way. How? We listen to his voice in Scripture. We are the Body of Christ, so we know him through each other. We follow him by keeping his commandments (Jn 14:15), "If you love me, you will keep my commandments” and by serving his little ones (Mt. 25:40), “whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.”
2) Then, St. Thomas says that the life to come will consist of “perfect praise”, which means we must begin by praising him now. We praise him through the labors of our daily life, our prayers, works, supplications and sufferings patiently endured. We praise him by faithfully living our vocation and trying to make him known, heard, and followed. And we praise him preeminently in the sacrifice of the Mass, where we our united to his prayer of praise, obedience and sacrifice to the Father, when he offered himself on Calvary.
3) And St. Thomas says that in heaven our “glory will be even greater.” How do we live this now? By following the model of St. Paul, who would say (2 Cor. 10:17), "Whoever boasts, should boast in the Lord." If we have any gifts to glory in, then let us do so, not for our own sake, but for the sake of the one who gives such great gifts.
4) Finally, for St. Thomas, eternal life consists in perfect happiness, the complete satisfaction of every desire and indeed the surpassing of every desire. But what about happiness in the here and now? If we seek happiness, will we be accused of the “happy heresy”? Well, St. Thomas maintains that every human action is geared towards one thing: the sumum bonum, the greatest good, perfect happiness, which is God himself. So, all of our actions are geared towards happiness. Even in our sinful actions we are seeking good, just in the wrong place or the wrong manner. And that is how St. Thomas distinguishes himself from the “happy heretics”: for he says, we can seek happiness wrongly.
But St. Thomas also said, “the blessed will be given more than they ever wanted or hoped for”, and this same principle applies to us now when we seek that which is good. Look at the life of Christ: at Cana in Galilee when they needed wine, he didn’t ration his gifts; instead he turned the water into wine, filling 6 stone jars to the brim with the finest wine. When he fed the five-thousand, from five barley loaves they collected 12 baskets full of fragments, because there was more than they could eat. And after the Resurrection, when the disciples were fishing and catching nothing, Jesus told them to cast again, and they were not able to haul in the net because it was full to the breaking point with large fish. When Jesus gives gifts, even in this life, he gives them superabundantly, if only we would be open to his graces and trust him.
So how should we seek happiness in this life? How should we make a happy world of the here and now? Since we know that the happiness in this life will always be tempered with sorrow, incompleteness, imperfection, then we cannot seek after some man-made utopia like the opponents of Christianity. Then what can we do? Well, J.R.R. Tolkein offers this prayer, which should be the model for our prayer and action: We should pray that “what should be, will be.”
And if you think about it, that is a bold prayer of trust, but St. Paul says (2 Cor. 3:12-18), “since we have such hope, we act very boldly.” And where is our hope? In the promise Jesus made, “no one shall snatch them out of my hand.” What is it that should be? That we should declare the Word of God to the ends of the earth, that all peoples, indeed all creation, should find salvation and know and follow the Lord. What is it that will be? As St. John saw, “A huge crowd which no one could count from every nation and race, people and tongue... standing before the throne and the Lamb... never again knowing hunger or thirst... for the Lamb on the throne shepherds them... and leads them to springs of life-giving water... wiping every tear from their eyes.”
