 Eyes on Heaven: James Baxter
James
Baxter, 27, is a Sydneysider.
This will be his first World Youth Day.
“We should be homesick for heaven, since it is our home.”
With these words Father John
Sullivan, the great Irish Jesuit,
would encourage his spiritual children to fix their
thoughts on eternal life.
When we are homesick we miss the
presence of those whom we love and who love us. We long to be with them. The
Catechism describes heaven as “the
ultimate end and fulfillment of the
deepest human longings, the state of
supreme, definitive happiness.” (CCC 1024) In heaven that longing for
love will be fulfilled because God is love, as St John tells us (1 Jn 4:8), and in heaven we
will be immersed in His love.
There are a lot of questions people sometimes ask about heaven. Will we
be able to eat? Will we wear clothes?
What age will we seem to be? These questions and the
answers to them are interesting.
They remind us also how little has actually been revealed to us about heaven.
But the main and essential things
are known to us. We will meet Christ. That would be enough for us, but we will
also meet his Mother. We will meet the angels and the
saints and the blesseds. St Peter, St Augustine, St Catherine of Siena, St Thomas More, Blessed Mary of the
Cross – we will live forever in their company.
The thought of heaven can sustain us through our difficulties in life.
Life can be depressing, lonely, mundane, painful – a “valley of
tears”. But the knowledge that eternal life will follow, if we persevere
in God’s friendship and strive to the end to love him, helps us to consider
this present life as St Teresa of Avila
described it – one night in a bad inn.
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