Holy Reading Resources
/Heaven on Earth…
God help me to unite with You and to do whatever You want.
The Spiritual Instructions of St. Seraphim of Sarov
The Spiritual Doctrine of Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity
The Soul of Silence by Sister Elizabeth of the Trinity
The Consoling thoughts of St. Francis de Sales
Finding God in all Things by St. Teresa of Avila
St. Basil the Great - Rule of Monastic Life
The Mass is a gift from Heaven
*We need to see ourselves and understand our Church (which is the Body of Christ) as living and moving “throughout-the-whole,” as mutually building each other up (1 Thessalonians 5:11), and as welcoming all with open arms as Jesus did.
Mysteries of the Rosary:
Notes on Eternity: One can achieve Heaven only through the act of giving [oneself]. When one uniting oneself to Christ, the act of giving also becomes one of “receiving,” and true riches are found only in sharing what one has received with others.
Participation in Christ is Heaven.
Benedict XVI also emphasizes that Heaven is a “state” that is connected in some sense with the cosmos. Heaven is a power that manifests itself within the Body of Christ, meaning within the Communion of the saints
Heaven is turning to the powerful force of love. Therefore, Heaven should not be separated from the earth or treated as a separate, higher level [of existence]. The New Testament speaks about a new heaven and a new earth in order to emphasize that all of creation is destined for the glory of God, meaning unceasing and eternal happiness.
Christ’s presence in all its fullness will penetrate the soul of every person who is saved and—with them—the entire universe. The cross has made union between God and man possible and created what would later be known as and called “heaven.” As Joseph Ratzinger writes, through the complete redemption of the individual man will be freed from his internal limitations and will open up to the Fullness that completes that which is unique to every individual. This union will overflow with joy, and every question will be fully answered.
Pope Benedict XVI notes that the prospect of Heaven should fill every believer with deep joy. The Christian world’s proposition is very concrete. Everything that is important, precious, and valuable to particular individuals will not be destroyed after death; instead, it will find its fullfillment in God. As St. Matthew writes in his gospel: “Even all the hairs of your head are counted.”
Despite the hardships and struggles of his daily life, man must perceive the beauty of the world to come. For the one who believes, this certainty should be a source of unwavering hope and deep joy, thanks to which he is able to cope better with what is still imperfect in the world.
CS Lewis notes on Heaven:
“Heaven is reality itself” (chap. 9, par. 27). In a Platonic sense, this “heaven” is the place from which all the Images that appear in our world as “shadows” come. But even the need to say “place” betrays our inability to cope with something entirely beyond our range of conception: heaven is “where” God is, but that doesn’t refer to a place. Thus the utter reality is heaven and is God: to feel anything contradictory in saying that results from our difficulty in conceiving of anything existing that does not exist in a space.