Where Are You Going?

Pope Francis: What Happens in Heaven When a Sinner Enters a Confessional?

The following comes from Zenit:  

Confessionals are generally quiet, darkened places. But what does heaven look and sound like when a soul enters a confessional?

Pope Francis today invited the faithful to think about the rejoicing and celebrating in heaven when a sinner repents.

He made this invitation before praying the midday Angelus with those in St. Peter’s Square today, as he reflected on the heart of God as revealed in the three parables from Luke 18 recounted in today’s liturgy.

“A common element in these parables is expressed in the verbs that mean rejoice together, make a celebration,” the Pope noted. “Mourning is not spoken of; there is rejoicing, there is celebrating. The shepherd calls his friends and neighbors and says, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep’ (v 6). The woman calls her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found the coin that I lost’ (v. 9). And the father says to his other son: ‘now we must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found’ (v. 32).

“In the first two parables, the focus is on the joy that is so uncontainable that it must be shared with ‘friends and neighbors.’ In the third parable, the focus is on the celebration that springs from the heart of the merciful father and expands to the whole household.”

The Pope said that with these parables Jesus is presenting us with “the true face of God, a God with his arms always open, a God who deals with sinners with tenderness and compassion.”

God is waiting for us to get back up again, to rise up out of sin, the Pope explained. And “he awaits us with patience, he sees us when we are still a long way off, he runs to meet us, he embraces us, he kisses us, he forgives us. That is how God is. That is how our Father is.”

“And,” the Pope continued, “his forgiveness cancels the past and regenerates us in love. To forget the past — this is the weakness of God. When he embraces us, he forgives us, and he loses his memory. He doesn’t have memory. He forgets the past. When we sinners convert and bring ourselves to be re-encountered by God, reproaches and sternness do not await us, because God saves, he welcomes us home again with joy and makes a celebration.”

Beautiful

Jesus himself speaks of the rejoicing in Heaven, the Pontiff noted. It is Jesus who says, “there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance.”

In this light, the Pope proposed a question: “Have you ever thought about how each time we go to the confessional, there is joy and celebration in heaven?” he asked. “Have you ever thought of this? It’s beautiful.”

Francis said that we can be filled with great hope, since “there is no sin in which we may have fallen, from which, with the grace of God, we cannot rise up again.”

No one is so far gone they can’t be recovered, he assured, “because God never stops wanting our good — even when we sin!”

The Pope concluded with a prayer to Our Lady, under the title of Refuge of Sinners, asking that though her intercession, the confidence of the prodigal son might well up in our hearts: “I shall get up and go to my father and I shall say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you,” the prodigal son said.

“On this path,” the Pope affirmed, “we can give glory to God, and his glory can become his celebration, and ours.”

After Death I Saw HEAVEN by Billy Graham

Jesus Makes Heaven Present to Us Today

The following comes from the Catholic Exchange:

The Lord died and arose from the dead to a new life of an absolutely Godlike character. It was that life that was suddenly and mysteriously illuminated for a moment on Mount Tabor. When He was on His way to Jerusalem, where He was to suffer, this Godlike essence blazed up from hidden depths. True enough, it was only for one short hour, and thereafter it subsided. Now, however, after He had walked through death, life broke through with almighty power. The Lord lived. Now He lived in a new way — alive from within, with a divine Lordship permeating His being, body and soul.

Now there was a strange interval of time. He was still on earth, and yet no longer so. He had a way of appearing, first in one place, then in another; making mysterious transitions from some other-where into the here, and then disappearing again. He had overcome the limitations of earthly existence. Gravity no longer bound Him. Space and the resistant quality of material substance could not interfere with Him. Yet He still lived on earth.

Finally He took definite leave of earth, for Heaven.

What is Heaven? When one asks a child that question, the child will just point upward: “Up there.” We should not be too swift to laugh. The child means more by those words than may be established by the metamorphosis of scientific investigation; that “up there” which cannot exist because there is no such thing as up and down in the last analysis — if the child were questioned more exactingly, the answer would be: “Heaven is where God lives.”

Could we have any better answer, any truer one, to the question of what Heaven is than this one: that Heaven is where God lives? When our Lord spoke of His forthcoming death, did He not say, “I leave the world and go to the Father”?

But if Heaven is where God lives, and God is everywhere, then it must follow that Heaven is everywhere. That is quite true. Heaven is everywhere. In every place, and here, too. That is the first and greatest answer: Heaven is right here.

Again, this was said by Jesus Himself: “The kingdom of Heaven is within you.” How is this so? God is supposed to live in the “inaccessible light.” That is true. By ourselves, we cannot get in. It is closed. Heaven is all about us, yet it is closed to us.  It was open around Jesus. He entered into this openness when He left us; and then He was gone.

Heaven is where God lives. Heaven is the presence of God. Now He has opened this presence to us.

Read the rest here.

St. John Bosco, St. Dominic Savio and A Dream of Heaven

Saint John Bosco had a vision of Heaven in the form of a dream, which he related to his boys during one of his famous “goodnight talks.”

In 1876, his recently-deceased disciple Saint Dominic Savio appeared to him in a dream. Saint John Bosco told his pupils:

As you know, dreams come in one’s sleep. So during the night hours of December 6, while I was in my room – whether reading or pacing back and forth or resting in my bed, I am not sure – I began dreaming.

Marvelous Garden
It suddenly seemed to me that I was standing on a small mound or hillock, on the rim of a broad plain so far-reaching that the eye could not compass its boundaries lost in vastness. All was blue, blue as the calmest sea, though what I saw was not water. It resembled a highly polished, sparkling sea of glass. Stretching out beneath, behind and on either side of me was an expanse of what looked like seashore.

Broad, imposing avenues divided the plain into grand gardens of indescribable beauty, each broken up by thickets, lawns, and flower beds of varied shapes and colors.

None of the plants we know could ever give you an idea of those flowers, although there was a resemblance of sorts. The very grass, the flowers, the trees, and the fruit – all were of singular and magnificent beauty. Leaves were of gold, trunks and boughs were of diamonds, and every tiny detail was in keeping with this wealth. The various kinds of plants were beyond counting.

Each species and each single plant sparkled with a brilliance of its own. Scattered throughout those gardens and spread over the entire plain I could see countless buildings whose architecture, magnificence, harmony, grandeur and size were so unique that one could say all the treasures of earth could not suffice to build a single one. If only my boys had one such house, I said to myself, how they would love it, how happy they would be, and how much they would enjoy being there! Thus ran my thoughts as I gazed upon the exterior of those buildings, but how much greater must their inner splendor have been!

An Enchanting Melody
As I stood there basking in the splendor of those gardens, I suddenly heard music most sweet – so delightful and enchanting a melody that I could never adequately describe it. … A hundred thousand instruments played, each with its own sound, uniquely different from all others, and every possible sound set the air alive with its resonant waves.

Blended with them were the songs of choristers.

In those gardens I looked upon a multitude of people enjoying themselves happily, some singing, others playing, but every note, had the effect of a thousand different instruments playing together. At one and the same time, if you can imagine such a thing, one could hear all the notes of the chromatic scale, from the deepest to the highest, yet all in perfect harmony. Ah yes, we have nothing on earth to compare with that symphony.

Deepest Pleasure
One could tell from the expression of those happy faces that the singers not only took the deepest pleasure in singing, but also received vast joy in listening to the others. The more they sang, the more pressing became their desire to sing. The more they listened the more vibrant became their yearning to hear more…

As I listened enthralled to that heavenly choir I saw an endless multitude of boys approaching me. Many I recognized as having been at the Oratory and in our other schools, but by far the majority of them were total strangers to me. Their endless ranks drew closer, headed by Dominic Savio, who was followed immediately by Father Alasonatti, Father Chiali, Father Guilitto and many other clerics and priests, each leading a squad of boys…

A Most Radiant Joy
Once that host of boys got some eight or ten paces from me, they halted. There was a flash of light far brighter than before, the music stopped, and a hushed silence fell over all. A most radiant joy encompassed all the boys and sparkled in their eyes, their countenances aglow with happiness. They looked and smiled at me very pleasantly, as though to speak, but no one said a word.

Dominic Savio stepped forward a pace or two, standing so close to me that, had I stretched out my hand, I would surely have touched him. He too was silent and gazed upon me with a smile…

At last Dominic Savio spoke. “Why do you stand there silent, as though you were almost devitalized?” he asked. “Aren’t you the one who once feared nothing, holding your ground against slander, persecution, hostility, hardships and dangers of all sorts? Where is courage? Say something!”

Loving Warmth
I forced myself to reply in a stammer, “I do not know what to say. Are you Dominic Savio?”

“Yes I am. Don’t you know me anymore?”

“How come you are here?” I asked still bewildered.

Savio spoke affectionately. “I came to talk with you. We spoke together so often on earth! Do you not recall how much you loved me, or how many tokens of friendship you gave me and how kind you were to me? And did I not return the warmth of your love? How much trust I placed in you! So why are you tongue-tied? Why are you shaking? Come ask me a question or two!”

Abode of Happiness
Summoning my courage, I replied, “I am shaking because I don’t know where I am.”

“You are in the abode of happiness,” Savio answered, “where one experiences every joy, every delight.”

“Is this the reward of the just?”

“Not at all! Here we do not enjoy supernatural happiness but only a natural one, though greatly magnified.”

“Might I be allowed to see a little supernatural light?”

“No one can see it until he has come to see God as He is. The faintest ray of that light would instantly strike one dead, because the human senses are not sturdy enough to endure it.”

Here ends the narrative of Saint John Bosco’s dream.

No Obedience, No Heaven

The following comes from Fr. Dwight Longenecker:

Where there is no obedience, there is no virtue; where there is no virtue, there is no good; where there is no good there is no love; where there is no love, there is no God; and where there is no God, there is no Paradise”  – St. Padre Pio

I became a Catholic because I came to believe in the authority of the church. I had really come to believe that the Lord Jesus Christ delegated his authority to Peter and that the Bishop of Rome was Peter’s successor. Furthermore, I believed that the validly consecrated bishops of the Catholic Church were the successors to the apostles, and the priests were their “fingers”.

So what to do then when these bishops did not conform to my wishes? I will tell you what happened to me–not because I wish to toot my horn, but simply because it happened and I learned from it and you may learn from it too.

In 1995 I left my post as a minister in the Church of England to be received into the Catholic Church. I had no other training and a wife and two children to support. I got a job as an editor at a small video production company and tried my hand at freelance writing. At the same time I applied to the local Catholic bishop for ordination as a Catholic priest under the pastoral provision. At the time, in England, some 750 Anglican priests converted to Rome. The  vast majority were accepted for ordination as Catholic priests including the married men. 

My Catholic bishop accepted me for training and envisioned a role in the diocese as a communications officer. I began my training, but the bishop was promoted. We waited eighteen months for his replacement. I waited another nine months before obtaining a meeting with his successor. I waited another six months for a reply to my application. It was refused because the bishop “Could not think of any way to use me in the diocese.”

I was offered a part time job in a Catholic charity as a fund raiser and this required us to move. So we moved to a new part of the country and I met with my new bishop about ordination. He said “yes” and said they would pick up my paperwork which had already been sent to Rome. We waited six months and learned that “the paperwork had been lost.” We waited another six months and learned that the bishop had changed his mind. He was about to retire and did not want to burden his successor with a priest who had a wife and four children. So we waited for another year until he retired. Then we waited another eighteen months for his successor to be appointed.

Read the rest here.

Pope Francis on the Last Things

Pope Francis: What attracts our hearts 'like a magnet?'

(CNA/EWTN News) During his Sunday Angelus address from Rome, Pope Francis encouraged listeners to reflect upon the day's Gospel in which Jesus reminds his disciples to treasure the things of heaven.

“We can ask ourselves, where is my treasure? What is the most important reality for me, the reality that attracts my heart like a magnet? Can I say that it is the love of God?” Pope Francis asked the crowds in St. Peter's Square Aug. 11.

Sunday's Gospel reading, he said, tells us that a Christian “is one who carries within himself a great and profound desire” for “a meeting with the Lord.”

This is true for every Christian, noted Pope Francis. Some might protest, “but Father, I am a worker, I have a family, for me it is most important to manage my family and my work.”

“Certainly, it’s true, it is important. But what is the force that holds the family together? It is precisely the love of God that gives sense to the little daily commitments and also helps us to confront great trials,” the Pope said.

He added, “God’s love is not something vague, a generic sentiment; God’s love has a name and a face: Jesus Christ.”

“The love of God is manifest in Jesus. We can’t love the air, the atmosphere. We love people!  And the Person that we love is Jesus – the gift of the Father for us.”

The Gospel speaks of the desire for a “definitive meeting with Christ, a desire that makes us remain always ready, with an alert spirit, because we await this meeting with all of our hearts,” said the Pope.

Departing from his written text, Pope Francis asked the audience, “think and respond in the silence of your heart. Do you have a heart that desires, or a heart that is closed, asleep? Do you have a heart that is anesthetized towards the things of life?”

The love of God gives value and beauty to everything else in life, the Pope said. It even “gives sense to negative experiences, because it allows us to go beyond, to not remain prisoners of evil, but helps us move forward, opening us always to hope, to the final horizon of our pilgrimage.”

“It is at this horizon that we meet Jesus.”

The crowds cheered as Pope Francis exhorted them, “Go forward in life with love – with that love that God has planted in your hearts! With the love of God! This is the true treasure.”

Pope Francis: life is 'journey of preparation' for heaven

The following comes from the CNA:

“The whole journey of life is a journey of preparation” for heaven, Pope Francis said during his homily at Friday morning Mass.

The Pope reflected on the Gospel passage from St. John for today in which Jesus tells the disciples not to be afraid or troubled because he goes to prepare a place in the Father’s house for them.

“Prepare a place means preparing our ability to enjoy the chance, our chance, to see, to feel, to understand the beauty of what lies ahead, of that homeland towards which we walk,” he remarked.

Members of the Vatican Typography office attended the Eucharistic celebration on April 26, alongside the Vatican Labor Office and Vatican State Police inside St. Martha’s House chapel.

The Pope noted that Jesus talks “like a friend, even with the attitude of a pastor.”

“Let not your hearts be troubled, believe in God, believe also in me,” says Jesus, according to today’s Gospel.

“In my Father’s house there are many rooms, if it were not so would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” Christ asked the disciples.

The Pope called these “really beautiful words” and asked the congregation what they thought that “place” was like.

“What does prepare a place mean, does it mean renting a room up there?” he asked.

He explained that life is a journey of preparation that involves expanding our eyes, minds and hearts.

It means “beginning to greet him from afar. This is not alienation: this is the truth, this is allowing Jesus to prepare our hearts, our eyes for the beauty that is so great. It is the path of beauty and ‘the path to the homeland,’” he preached.

But sometimes “the Lord has to do it quickly as he did with the good thief.”

“He only had a few minutes to prepare him and he did it,” he affirmed.

“But Father,” the Pope said recounting a common objection, “I went to a philosopher and he told me that all these thoughts are an alienation, that we are alienated, that life is this, the concrete, and no-one knows what is beyond.”

“Some think this is so but Jesus tells us that it is not so and says ‘have faith in me,’” the Pope stated.

He compared Jesus to an engineer and an architect when he recalled Jesus saying he would prepare a place in his Father’s house.

“And Jesus goes to prepare a place for us,” he concluded.

Your Ultimate Destination

The Inspirational Story of Garvan Byrne

A Heavenly Promise of Don Bosco

Sister Colleen Clair is the vocation animator for the Salesian Sisters in the Eastern US. At her blog she posted this beautiful Salesain tradition that began with St. John Bosco himself. It is a wonderful promise that all of hope to see fulfilled:

I want to tell you about a promise that you can be “in on.” Yes, Don Bosco made a promise that you can share in. You see, he promised heaven…and all you have to do is one simple little thing – repeat the following prayer three times before going to bed every night:

Dear Mother Mary, Ever Virgin, help me to save my soul…
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners
now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

I hope you will take the challenge…a few simple lines, a simple request for aid, and a prayer we all know!

That’s a small price to pay for eternal happiness…and think of all the graces that God will work in your life through this simple entrustment to Our Mother. Heck, He loved her so much He even entrusted the care of His Son to her…so don’t you think we should ask for her help on our journey to heaven?

Pope Benedict speaks of Christian promise of eternal life in heaven

The following comes from the CNA:

The destination of Mary assumed is a reality founded on the love of God, taught the Pope on Sunday. The Christian promise of heaven, he said, brings great joy and encourages believers to work for the construction of the "world of God."

Pope Benedict XVI celebrated Mass in the intimate atmosphere of the pontifical parish of St. Thomas of Villanova for the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the town of Castel Gandolfo. During the celebration, attended by parishioners and a select few military, civil and religious leaders, the Holy Father spoke of the destination of Mary as she was taken from earth.

He explained that in the Assumption, "we believe that Mary, as Christ her Son, defeated death and triumphs already in the celestial glory in the totality of her being, 'in body and soul'."

Expanding on the idea of the "celestial glory" to which Mary arrived, Pope Benedict noted that people today are conscious that by "'heaven' we are not referring to just any place in the universe, to a star or something similiar" but "to something much bigger and more difficult to define with our limited human concepts.

"With this term 'heaven'," he said, "we wish to assert that God, the God made close to us, does not abandon us even after death, but has a place for us and gives us eternity…”

He explained that in order to understand this we can look to our own lives and the way loved ones live on in our hearts after they die but only as a "shadow" because also this memory is destined to expire with the death of those who conserve it.

"God, on the other hand," he taught, "does not ever pass and we all exist in accordance with His love. We exist because he loves us, because he has thought of us and he called us to life. We exist in the thoughts and in the love of God. We exist in all of our reality, not only in our 'shadow'."

The serenity, hope and peace of man is founded on God's thought and love, Benedict XVI explained, "he does not survive just in a 'shadow' of ourselves, but in Him, in His creative love, we are protected and introduced with all our life, with our being in eternity."

"It is His love that defeats death and gives us eternity, and it is this love that we call 'heaven' ..."

This is a truth, concluded the Pope, "that should always fill us with profound joy:" the Christian promise of eternal life in heaven, "not just any salvation of the soul in an imprecise beyond."

This gives Christians "a strong hope in a bright future and opens the way towards the realization of this future," he added.

"We are called, as Christians, to edify this new world," he said, "to work so that it might become one day the 'world of God,' a world that surpasses all that we ourselves can build. In Mary assumed in heaven, fully participating in the resurrection of the Son, we contemplate the realization of the human creature according to the 'world of God.'

"We pray that the Lord makes us understand how much our life is precious to His eyes; (that He) reinforces our faith in eternal life; that he makes us men of hope, who work to build a world open to God, men full of joy, who know how to see the beauty of the future world among the worries of daily life and live, believe and hope in this certainty."

San Chapelle

Today, Dr. Denis McNamara speaks of the Sainte Chapelle in Paris, which displays the breathtaking rose window and wall-to-wall stained glass that are prominently featured in Father Barron's theological writings and in the Catholicism series. Dr. McNamara provides the deeper theological perspective behind this captivating imagery.

Our Heavenly Home