What Are You Living For?

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One

Heaven is Happiness

If you asked a Christian, “When will you finally be perfectly happy, perfectly at peace?” Almost every believing Christian would answer: in Heaven. But then suppose you asked that same Christian, “Well, what is Heaven?” In other words, what is it about heaven that will make you perfectly happy, and perfectly at peace? If you asked that, many Christians probably wouldn’t know how to answer. Because we’ve forgotten the truth about heaven. The truth that what makes Heaven to be Heaven is that God is there and that in Heaven we’re perfectly united with Him.

All happiness comes from having united ourselves to something good. All peace comes from resting in some present good. And because God is the ultimate, infinite good, when we’re perfectly united with Him, that will be the ultimate happiness and endless peace.

But, actually, the Church’s two greatest teachers on the spiritual life, St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila, have told us that we don’t necessarily have to wait to taste that happiness or to experience that peace until after death.

There is a kind of perfect union with God that is the beginning of Heaven - in this life. 

Two

Marriage – the greatest image of what God wants for us

John 3:2 tells us in Heaven we will be like God forever. That means we will share in His divine nature as His children. 

So God wants to unite us with himself in a union so perfect that we will think in a divine way, feel and desire in a divine way and choose, love and act in a divine way.

We reach this perfection by union with Jesus. The best symbol of this is marriage where two become one.

Marriage is the expression of the joyous union that awaits us when we are perfectly united to God. All of us have longed to be perfectly united with someone of the opposite sex. We’ve all experienced the sexual longing for physical union, but also just the aching desire of the other person’s goodness. We’ve all felt that we would be happy if we could just find the right person to build a life with, and be happy together forever with. And marriage is when you unify with another person as completely as its possible for two human beings to unite: your bodies, your possessions, your plans  – united till death do you part.

But, of course, human marriage is a transitional symbol. It’s transitional because it doesn’t last forever. Death does put an end to a marriage. And it’s a symbol, because even if at some points you do think that this other person can make you totally happy – you soon find out that’s not true.

But God offers us spiritual marriage, union with himself, the Perfect Person, who can make you totally happy. 

That’s why Jesus describes heaven as a wedding feast. It’s the celebration that the purpose of life has been reached, that happiness has been found. 

Do you see that marriage is the greatest symbol of love and happiness? And that the same kind of union with God would be not a symbol, but the real thing? 

Why would you put that off? Why not pursue that union now?

Three

Knowledge of Himself

In the Old Testament, the intimacy of marriage is often described as “knowledge.” So, for instance, Genesis says that Adam “knew” Eve, and as a result, she bore him a son.

Now the intimacy of Heaven is also described as a kind of knowledge. It’s called “The Beatific Vision,” when, as St. Paul says, we will see God face-to-face. 

In Heaven, we will know and experience God as He is. 

Listen to how St. Teresa describes the knowledge of the soul in Spiritual Marriage, “Our good God now desires to remove the scales from the eyes of the soul… the most Holy Trinity reveals Itself, in all three Persons. First of all the spirit becomes enkindled and is illumined, as it were, by a cloud of the greatest brightness. It sees these three Persons, individually, and yet, by a wonderful kind of knowledge which is given to it, the soul realizes that most certainly and truly all these three Persons are one Substance and on Power and one Knowledge and one God alone; so that what we hold by faith the soul may be said here to grasp by sight…” (Interior Castle, seventh mansions, ch. 1).

But if we want, we can experience God in this way in this life. 

Four

Spiritual Marriage = Heaven on Earth

Marriage is a union of two souls, two hearts, and two wills. But in that union, the goodness of the other is so overwhelming that it can result in an ecstasy of the body.

St. Thomas Aquinas says that heaven is something like this: after the resurrection of the body, we will see God with our souls, and the overwhelming joy that’s produced will flow over into the body in an overwhelming ecstasy (ST I-II, q.3, a 3; supp. Q. 82-85).

Listen to how St. John of the Cross describes the perfect union he experienced in this life, with spiritual marriage, “Sometimes the unction of the Holy Spirit overflows into the body and all the sensory substance, all the members and bones and marrow rejoice, not in so slight a fashion as is customary, but with the feeling of great delight and glory, even in the outermost joints of the hands and feet. The body experiences so much glory in that of the soul that in its own way it magnifies God, feeling in its bones something similar to what David declares: All my bones shall say: God, who is like you?” [Ps 35:10). (living flame of love, stanza 2, 22).

Do you see? The mystics have been able to experience Heaven on Earth. And they say it’s possible for many more.

So why wouldn’t we strive to experience Heaven now? 

Five

Why spiritual marriage doesn’t happen for more people

So why don’t more people experience this? Why is it only a few, like St. John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila?

Well, why don’t more people get married? Why do so many these days prefer to just stay single, doing their own thing, not committing?

In a lot of cases, it’s because they’re afraid to commit, afraid to sacrifice, and afraid of the immature lifestyle they’ll have to give up when they get married and start a family. It seems that perhaps the same thing is true for spiritual marriage. 

St. John of the Cross says, “And here it ought to be pointed out why so few reach this high state of perfect union with God. It should be known that the reason is not that God wishes only a few of these spirits to be so elevated; he would rather want all to be perfect, but he finds few vessels that will endure so lofty and sublime a work… he tries them in little things and finds them so weak that they immediately flee from work, unwilling to be subject to the least discomfort and mortification…” (Living Flame, stanza 2, #27).

Deciding you want to pursue union with God might scare you. Teresa says, “Even before we begin, it is His will that the soul, for the increase of its merits, shall be afraid.” (Autobiography, chapter 1). But Teresa encourages everyone, “Reflect on this truth: God gives Himself to those who give up everything for Him.” (Autobiography, Chapter 27).

Are we willing to do that? If so, then God will be ours, and happiness and peace will be ours – sooner rather than later.

Invite others to pray with you this Lent. Share the Rosary and win a pilgrimage with School of Faith!