Heaven is often thought of as a place, but in defining the Assumption of Mary Pope Pius XII referred only to her having been “taken up to heavenly glory.” (CNS photo/Crosiers)
“Our Father, who art in Heaven” is the Christian prayer that
Jesus himself gave us to converse with God. My last article was about the
teaching of the Church on hell and purgatory, and now I want to explain the
theology of heaven. First, I will deal with heaven as the culmination of the
salvation of our souls, and then the state of heavenly glory.
The theological explanation has nothing to do with the childish imagination of fantastic castles with sublime decorations and palatable delicacies that I dreamed of as a little boy.
Heaven is the state of happiness experienced by those who have died in Christ. Although it is often thought of as a place, when defining the Assumption of Mary in 1950 Pius XII referred only to her having been “taken up to heavenly glory” without making any express reference to her going to a place. Mary’s Assumption is modelled on the Ascension of Jesus Christ into heaven.
We exist to give God glory and to find our happiness, but we find our happiness only in giving God glory, and it is only in Christ that we can give God glory as we pray during Holy Mass: “Through him, with him, in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honour is yours, forever and ever. Amen.”
Heaven is the fulfillment of the life of grace begun already on this earth, that life of union with the Blessed Trinity though Christ. It is the fulfillment of God’s salvific plan for the whole world. Hence, heaven exists in the fullest sense only after the parousia of Christ at the end of the world. Together with this will come the resurrection of the dead in their glorified bodies.
As the understanding of the nature of heavenly bliss developed, there arose doubts in the minds of some Fathers as to whether it is only on the last day that the good will enjoy this intimate union with God. Even St. Augustine waivered on this point. The general stream of teaching was that heavenly bliss is granted to the disembodied soul immediately after whatever necessary purification follows death.
To understand this, we must contrast our natural manner of gaining knowledge with the way in which we shall know the Trinity in the beatific vision. The normal human method of acquiring knowledge is by forming ideas from the impact of the external world on our senses. These sense impressions are the raw material from which our mind abstracts concepts or ideas. Even angels require these ideas, though in their case they are not abstracted from sense impressions (the angels being pure spirits), but are directly infused by God.
The basic nature of the beatific vision is the union with God that occurs before the last day, when the blessed will receive back their bodies. The essential part of heavenly bliss will not involve bodily activity, hence neither senses nor imagination are required for it. The beatific vision and love are the activity of the noble aspect of the human person, namely, the spiritual faculties.
The resurrection of the body is the most notable addition to the essential element of heavenly bliss as on the last day the body will be restored to the elect. This is a mysterious truth, raising many questions to which no certain answer can be given. Here, too, the principle applies that Christ’s glorification is the model for ours, although this does not mean that we shall necessarily have the complete perfection that Christ’s risen body had.
Will we have the same body as that which we had on earth? Scripture and the Fathers clearly teach that we will. Some theologians do not think that this will entail the restoration of the very same matter into which the mortal body disintegrated. They hold that, since the matter that constitutes the body exists purely by the presence of the soul in it, the soul is joined to all matter that constitutes the body.
All glorified bodies will have splendour, agility, subtlety, and impassibility. Splendour is that quality which will give the body supernatural radiance making it beautiful to behold. Agility is the property that enables the glorified body to move about without being impeded by the limitations our bodies impose on us now, though it will probably still have to pass through space to get from one place to another. Subtlety has been identified as the ability to pass through other bodies, as Christ passed through the closed doors of the upper room. Impassibility removes from the glorified body not only its liability to suffer in the way our bodies do now, but also its need to preserve itself from possible harm and wear from either inside or outside.
There will be no vegetative life, i.e. no need to eat or sleep. This was the teaching of the scholastic theologians.