Hope and the Desire for Heaven

One

Hope is the virtue whereby we strive towards heaven, towards perfect union with God in whom alone our ultimate happiness will be. The key to hope is both striving for and desiring union with God.

Hope requires that we understand that heaven is both possible, but not guaranteed.

If heaven were not possible, why bother striving for it.

If heaven is already guaranteed, why bother striving for something that’s already in the bag.

With the sin of despair, we fail to hope that heaven is possible.

With the sin of presumption, we think heaven is guaranteed.

To which of these are we tempted: to despair or to presumption?

Two

Hope is the choice, the decision, the act of the will to continue striving for perfect union with God and heaven.

The virtue of hope is aided by the passion of hope. These are two distinct things.

Recall from earlier meditations that there are three powers of the soul: the intellect, the free-will and the passions. The passions are the God-given desires, feelings, or emotions to propel us toward what is good and away from what is evil.

There are eleven fundamental passions: Love, desire, joy, hate, aversion, sorrow, hope, despair, fear, courage and anger. You can go back and listen to the Rosary Meditation on the Purpose of the Passions.

The passions are a source of energy to propel us toward good and away from evil.

The passion of hope is the desire to pursue an arduous good, a good that is remote, that is not immediate and not easy, but is possible.

I think many people don’t really look forward to heaven.

They are not excited at the prospect of dying and going to heaven. They are not eager for it. They think it is better than the alternative- they would rather go to heaven than hell, but they are not moved at the prospect of heaven – they have no passion for heaven. They do not have the passion of Hope. That is the question – do we passionately long for heaven? What prevents you from longing for heaven?

Three

How do cultivate the desire the passion for heaven – which is Hope?

Cultivating the right passion for the right goal is the work of the imagination – which means we need good images of heaven.

In other words, how do we foster in ourselves and others the desire for heaven? How do we get people excited about it when they are not already?

The same way you get them to desire anything else. You use your imagination and you get desirable images which will fire up your desire for heaven.

Fortunately, we don’t have to look very far for great images of Heaven. Scripture tells us  Heaven will be a “New Heavens and a New Earth” in which the whole universe is raised up and transformed. 2 Pet. 3:13

“New Heavens and a New Earth” means everything good will be in heaven, all the good things of this life, but none of the troubldees of this life,

Imagine all the great things of this life. Then imagine them without any imperfection, without any limitation and without any end – they are everlasting. That is heaven.

Four

The fear of death is overcome by imagining the good of heaven.

We don’t only live once. We live twice, and the second time is forever.

Its also false to say “You can’t take it with you” which seems to imply you must use every opportunity in this life or you will miss out forever. That is silly, right. You can take everything good with you. Just none of the bad stuff. Heaven is all gain – no loss.

Our energy to strive after heaven comes from our passions, our desires which should propel us toward heaven.

Therefore, we must be careful and deliberate in crafting images that will help us desire heaven – which is hope. The desire for and striving after heaven.

Five

We need to keep striving towards heaven but to help do that we need to cultivate our desire for heaven. And we do that by meditating on the glory that heaven will be. And we do that by thinking about all the good that has been given to us here as a foretaste of heaven, and then realizing that heaven will have all that pleasure, all that joy, all that goodness multiplied exponentially, without any evil, suffering, imperfection or ending.