Our Heavenly Hope

A thing most of us find annoying is being told to smile and rejoice when we are pensive and worried. Such an invitation is insensitive to our real state of mind and to how we feel. 

However, it is different with our God!

He knitted us in our mother’s womb; he reads every thought crossing our mind and he feels all we treasure in our heart. Therefore, we heed his order: “Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad because of her…” (Isaiah 66:10) and we listen to Jesus as he tells us: “but rejoice because your names are written in heaven.” (Luke 10: 20)

This order and this invitation are totally consistent with the Lord’s desire to extend his Kingdom of justice, peace, love and joy all over the world and across the millennia. Looking at us collectively, the Lord sees us pensive, and worried, if not already prostrated due to repeated setbacks, and tempted to give up on bearing witness to his Kingdom.  Indeed, compelling issues might have taken over our minds and hearts to such an extent that we seldom look forward to the Kingdom’s fulfillment with firm hope.

Yet, our God insists on urging us to find solid reasons for rejoicing and for strengthening our hope. The Lord is sure that, on the day we become convinced that he, the Almighty, has established his Kingdom among us, and that he is wholeheartedly determined to make it triumph, we are bound to erupt in spontaneous jubilation or, at least, to experience abiding serenity.

The conquest of evil of all sorts generated by the Resurrection is unstoppable and irreversible. It is the timeless guarantee of the triumph of God’s Kingdom. The assurance that we shall have a share in it should be for us a constant reminder that the rejoicing we are called to experience is due to much, much more than to the little successes, the meager breaks of good fortune, the modest accomplishments that are recorded by news channels. God’s Kingdom is above also the greatest human achievements in the entire history of humankind.

What the Lord has promised and set in motion is something so astonishing that we will be consoled in the way he alone can; we will have our fill of its delights, and we will never grow tired of it. Even those who feel withered and older than their chronological age will flourish like the new grass. (Isaiah 66: 14) Hence, as true believers, we must expect from our Lord something that has no second term of comparison in what mere human beings can promise and, even less, deliver: i.e., more joy not only in heaven but also already here on earth.

But what about the skeptics and those who very seldom are sustained by the hope of what awaits us in heaven?

Realistically, on this Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, to live out the order given by God in the first reading and the invitation mentioned by Jesus in our gospel passage (Luke 10:1-12, 17-20), you, lay people, must do your part in supporting each other and in preaching with your life. As you painfully know, the number of priests (laborers) is woefully insufficient to convince people to find reasons for rejoicing already on this earth.

The jubilation generated by the Kingdom of God among his people would be slow in coming even if all the priests left were to preach only about this. However, if a mother of numerous children, a father struggling to make ends meet, a menial worker, a retired person on fixed income, humble, devout, suffering, confused individuals proclaim precisely that with their lives, with the choices they make, with the sacrifices they endure, the impact is guaranteed and lasting. And the preaching by the laity will be most efficacious if done without “money bag,” “sack” and “sandals,” that is without those many things that the world of chronic sadness considers important and indispensable for happiness.

What impresses people is a life of fidelity when it is easy to follow the script of soap operas. What impacts people is the courage of those who endure a lot of pain sustained by the presence of their Lord. What moves people and nudges them towards a serious commitment to Christ and, therefore, to lasting serenity is the example of those of live the Gospel in heroic fashion.

We know very well that worries, sadness and apprehension can assail us anytime. So is the temptation to wonder if the Lord is aware of our pain; if he cares and, if he does, why he allows so much evil and pain to mar our life; why he “wastes” so much time before correcting the situation. Hopefully, with every Eucharist we celebrate, we find in the Cross the proof that our Lord cares infinitely about our plight and, in his Resurrection, we find evidence that his victory is complete over all sorts of evil.

We then should concentrate on doing our very best as his laborers and harvesters with our gaze fixed on his infinite love and our hearts filled with unwavering hope. This will be the best guarantee that we can lead serene lives and look forward to the lasting jubilation that, in heaven, will fill our hearts completely.