FORETASTE HEAVEN
Heaven can’t be described, but we can get a first taste of it. We can’t reach it with our mind, but it’s hard not to desire it. If we speak of heaven, it’s not to satisfy our curiosity, but to revive our desire and our attraction for God. If we bring it to mind, it’s in order to not forget the final yearning that we carry in our heart.
To go to heaven isn’t to get someplace, but to enter forever into the Mystery of God’s love. Finally, God is no longer someone hidden and inaccessible. Though it seems incredible to us, we can know, touch, taste, and enjoy God’s most intimate being, God’s deepest truth, God’s infinite goodness and beauty. God will always be in love with us.
This communion with God won’t be an individual experience. The Risen Jesus will accompany us. No one goes to the Father if not by means of Christ. «In him, in bodily form, lives divinity in all its fullness» (Col 2,9). Only knowing and enjoying the mystery enclosed in Christ, will we penetrate to the unimaginable mystery of God. Christ will be our «heaven». Seeing him, «we will see» God.
Christ will not be the only mediator of our eternal happiness. Enflamed by God’s love, each one of us will be changed in our own way into «heaven» for others. From our limitation and finitude we will touch the infinite Mystery of God, enjoying it in God’s creatures. We will enjoy God’s unimaginable love, tasting it in human love. The joy of God will be given to us incarnate in human pleasure.
The Hungarian theologian Ladislaus Boros tries to hint at this indescribable experience: «We will feel the warmth, we will experience the splendor, the vitality, the overflowing wealth of the person we love today, with whom we enjoy God, and for whom we give thanks to God. All their being, the depth of their soul, the greatness of their heart, the creativity, the fulness, the excitation of their loving reaction will be given to us».
Kindness, communion, the joy of love and friendship that we’ve known here, will reach that fulness in God. With what intensity will we love each other then, whoever loves each other now so much on earth. Few experiences allow us to foretaste better the final destiny that we are drawn to by God.
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
