Choosing Heaven

Anyone who loves me will keep my word, and my father will love him, and we shall come to him and make a home in him¹

A few years ago, I asked one of my friends about the Catholic doctrine of purgatory. I was very anxious to avoid it. I was aware that some kind of recompense has to be paid in purgatory for the sins committed on earth for the purification of souls. I feared it. I inquired about the means to avoid purgatory which were ranging from prayers to good works which all came down to love. I also learned why the purification is necessary and whether I can be assured that purgatory is a transition to heaven and not hell. I realized years later, much with sadness, what C.S Lewis writes about too, in the Problem of Pain.

A good fellow starts a club for people he loves who also love him. This club has members who love the founder of the club and indeed their very membership is hinged on their amount of love. Their membership is revoked if their love for the founder is any less than what love is demanded. The peculiar thing about this club is that the founder is unheard of and just an ordinary man in the world.

No one would happen to know the founder until one seeks him. In direct contrast, everybody, including children, know all about the club. It is as old as Santa Claus or perhaps predates it too. The club they say, 'is the place to be in' in equal queerness. Surprisingly, they neither know a person in the club nor what it involves. All they know is that people in the club are happy and if they can't be in the club, they rather not be anywhere else.

People leave no stone unturned to enter the club but keep deceiving themselves. For, true membership is for those who try to love its founder. They can only begin to love the founder if they have any knowledge of the founder. People are neither interested in the founder nor the criteria he has charted. Everybody, everywhere and everyday claims to have seen the founder and reveal to others, the revelations the founder has made.

But it is plain from the founder’s charter that he expects lots of changes from potential members to be worthy of the soil of his club. But potential members are not looking or willing to change themselves but rather only wish to avail the benefits of the club. Those, that people have since time immemorial attributed to the club as eternal happiness, peace and life among others.

Man often treats God just like this founder. He chooses God not out of pure intention but because he fears hell. He wishes to be in heaven, the 'club to be in' because it is popularly considered to be a happy place. What exactly he expects to find in heaven as his happiness, he does not know. All he knows is a parallel, an analogy here and there or a notion suited to his way of life. Man enjoys women and wine and dine and fast cars and bull fights and excursions and poker and glory. Perhaps he thinks heaven is the continuation of this.

May be he did not have any woman and was advised by the doctor to not have wine. May be he was poor and couldn't afford the luxury of a car. So he thinks he's suffered enough in the world and when he finds out that hell is a place of eternal suffering too, he tries all his might to avoid it or thinks that because he suffered here, in heaven, he would have all that he was deprived.

From all of these perceptions of Heaven, of receiving what one was deprived, continuation of the worldly pleasures, there is a crucial thing missing: Love of God. Love of God and realizing that man’s truest happiness is to be found only in God and he may run behind women, fame, money, materials and other pursuits that are momentary and pass away like the wind but his heart will never be at rest until it finds its rest in God².

The day when man’s heart has taken its refuge in God, every other material thing he possesses will not suddenly be renounced or destroyed for making way for God. These possessions will neither become less sinful nor more virtuous but find its proper order and place in creation and in the mind of a human soul, the highest of Creation, who finds himself in love with God.

While for the man who chooses heaven in essentially choosing God on earth, God chooses heaven for him as a continuation of man's choice so he may rest in Him and His vision. You don't have to love any president, King or founder in order to enter the country, Kingdom or club respectively. This applies to any Kingdom but Heaven. Heaven is the only place where you have to love the master for entering it. And below is perhaps, one of the best arguments I can place for those who claim to be good, nice, kind, loving, living without harming others, minding their business, never interfering with others, peaceful and never really thinking of Heaven or Salvation or God while doing all these and yet think they are entitled to Heaven too.

Nobody chooses heaven and really gains it. It is the same as I can’t enter a house if I don’t know the owner. I can’t appreciate poetry if I don’t know what the Poet is trying to say. I can make of poetry what I wish but that still won’t be an objective truth. It will only stand as my perception. Nobody chooses heaven and really gains it. Unless God wished me to be in heaven against my will which is against God nature to destroy man’s freedom for that God is not a God of mercy and love but a tyrannical God.

We can’t really choose Heaven until we don’t choose what Heaven is all about and choose the source of its entire splendor. When a movie is a roaring success, the directors and actors are probed on how they shot one scene or the other. We all wish to understand how the graceful scenes actually got their nature of grace. How the actors converted their mere skill into a graceful scene . Understanding their reasons helps us better appreciate the movie.

Or think of the Band like The Beatles. There would not be many who devour their music without knowing who the band members are, how they came together, what difficulties they faced, what the songs mean, who their inspirations were and how their music evolved.

Love follows knowledge and knowledge is fostered by love³. When you enjoy the Band, you wish to ‘know’ more about the creators. And this makes you cultivate more knowledge in order that you can love it more perfectly. Knowledge leads Love and Love drives Knowledge. You can’t really choose Heaven until you choose the splendor of Truth of its own creator through Whom Heaven receives its splendor

A man who has never been in love chooses marriage as he has some idea it is a good thing. Two people in love don't choose marriage. Marriage chooses them for marriage is the continuation of their love. Another way it could be understood that a home owner hangs a painting according to how well it lights up the room. A painter chooses a room according to how well it lights up the painting. The home owner chooses the painting for he has some idea it is good but not like the painter choosing the painting because it is the continuation of his love for the paintings whether in the exhibition hall or at home. We should believe in love and in marriage and not only ‘take’ it up because it is believed to be good things.

There are consequences then of destroying the dignity of good things. Heaven too, should be chosen not simply because it is a good place or a good dream of fantasy to entertain. It should be chosen primarily because in Heaven lies the real purpose of life, the consummation and fulfillment of all the answers and the triumphant entry into the final purpose and vision of facing up to the Creator for the eternal life.

These same good things in Heaven can be lost if we destroy the dignity of good things here on earth in all that God allows us to choose in choosing Heaven. That is why for a lot of bitter things we undergo; we can await our answers in Heaven. For a lot of talent but not success, for a lot of success but not talent, for a life which had its own story and melodrama, the real purpose of how God uses us in accordance with our will, awaits its consummation in Heaven.

Heaven after all is the continuation of love you have for the love you show here on earth. God will make for you a house in Heaven if you make a little house in your heart for him on Earth. This is the promise of Jesus Christ when he taught the Jews. The Jews are the center of the act of Salvation and Jesus came to save ‘His’ People but yet implied to them that to every man who loves him and keeps his word, the Father and He will come and make a house in the man and dwell in him. Heaven then becomes the continuation of love we have for God here in our dwelling but achieves its fuller expression in the house that God builds for us in His dwelling, Heaven.

1. John 14:23

2. Writings of St. Augustine

3. Writings of St. Augustine

The Purpose of Man and the Nature of God

I have been learning to ride a bike of late. It has been quite a learning experience. I have often have had these airs about me: Rickson reads good books; Rickson watches critically acclaimed classic movies. Such little notions of self-pride are daily little struggles. In lieu of bike-riding, this is especially essential since it humbles me that I am no good. I look with envy at others who have mastered driving.


Finally, there is something, among other things, that I can struggle, not in the sense how we struggle with daily battles of nobility, purity or conscience but struggle in the sense, how a pupil struggles with his violin in his second class. I can struggle and pray that God helps me to be perfect as my heavenly Father is perfect. For we try to learn one thing well or another, cook well or design well or paint well for there lies in us, a little glimpse of our Creator.


Somewhere deep inside us, we desire perfection. We desire not leaving a statue carved shoddily but to achieve beauty. Deep inside us, we desire beauty and desire perfection and God is beauty, God is Goodness and God alone is Perfection. We all have in us thus, an implicit, inherent desire for God for we desire goodness, we desire beauty and we desire perfection. And God is all this.


I don't want to thank God for giving me the opportunity to ride a bike as much as I want to thank him for nourishing my friendship through it. My friend has shared with me the woes of losing opportunities to get good deals, the excitement of checking a new bike, the anxiety of doing the payment, the keenness in fixing faults. At times, I have confessed, in my weakness and despair, to never be able to put the bike on its stand. He has shared my agony of being unable to do it. He has shared my helplessness of not knowing exactly what to do in order to learn it. I have asked God in prayer to learn it and today, when I could, he has shared with me the joy of achievement.


Today, I went ahead and thanked him for having taught me three things that he observed were wanting in my skill. It is then I realized what a fool I am. I believed I was being grateful and expressing gratitude for those three things. Can I really fully show gratitude for the innumerable minutes he has patiently waited so that I can put the bike on stand? Can I really thank him for sitting pillion and perhaps risking his life if he has an inkling of a judgment that I am not ready? Can I thank him for accompanying me for buying, bargaining, negotiating, testing, suggestions, tricks, ready reckoners and those innumerable little details that is a part of everyday friendship?


I could die out of exhaustion if I began to thank him. I rather come down on my knees saying, “Thank you, friend. My life is yours. May the best of my life be given to you for you have loved”


But I know now, how God works. He could have made a million little puzzles, amusements, thrills and machines and He has as he has made a bike. But He has made all these only so that through these we may learn to love each other. Through a house, we may learn to shelter, through hands, we may learn to hold and help and hug. Through money, we may learn to aid. Through words, we may learn to counsel and comfort.


God, the Good God is all this as the Bible expresses in various themes and events such as when Jesus is exhausted, God the comforter. When Moses does not know what to do, He is God the counselor. When Israelites are afraid of defeat, He is God the helper. When Israelites don’t know where to go, He is God the shelter. He uses these visible everyday miracles to bring forth his invisible love, grace and beauty of life. Some of his nature, the nature of his Goodness is reflected back in our everyday experiences.


And we desire more of these experiences, more of these friendships, this love and this bond. We don't realize that what our real desire, in desiring these ‘preview’ of the film is, God himself. God is the film. In desiring happiness and little comforts through relationships and things, we look for a satisfaction of a desire not realizing that all these should lead to the one desire as a river flows eventually into the sea. The desire of God is the stage of having no real desire for satisfaction of the desire but joy for having the desire itself. God creates the desire and we fail to desire the One that would lead to an end of trying to satisfy desires for to desire God would be to desire, desire.


We have all felt this when we love our mothers or love our children. We love them and it would be still OK if our child never gave us a little kiss. We love simply due to the desire to love unlike our professions and businesses. We desire God and us yet not know it. When we desire Him, we wish to glorify him in all things that happen for good to those who love God. Our relationships, choices, experiences take on a whole different meaning. We start looking at rain, shelter, food, money, teachers and friends, all as providence. We look at them, especially foreordained in our lives for God did not wish we suffer alone in the pursuit of happiness.


A mechanic who fixes your car doesn't simply remain an economic entity of the business chain of automobile industry. He essentially is an opportunity to glorify God that 'my car can be fixed simply because You have allowed the concept of a mechanic', 'there is a doctor because you want me to be healed so that through the doctor and his very existence and healing, I can glorify your providence, sovereign design and plan for Man and his salvation’


And this is where I begin to understand what the Church always has taught. Ask the church the purpose of Man and the Church says Glorify God. But a man works and a man loves and a man sings and a man writes. Where does glorifying God come into all this?

All things are made for the glory of God. I can never pay my friend fully for his love. This is essentially because it is not mine to give him and not entirely his to take. If a bike has helped me not so much to burn the road but to love my friend, the bike remains nevertheless a utility for all practical purpose but first to glorify God.


For God, through an act of desiring to buy a bike, allows me to experience what friendship can be. He teaches me how a friend can desire to will the good of the other through this friendship, which again is nobility. A nobility, which acquires its beauty by sharing in God's beauty, that he may be glorified through it.


And God is all this: his magnificence and love over pours onto earth and we get a iota of a notion of his love when we love in friendships, parenthood or brotherhood. God is all this, friendship, Master, lord and teacher. Anything can be enjoyed simply because God allows it by placing traces of Him into all things that we seek in purity and truth. Those that haven't understood this and still deem God as a judge, punisher of transgressions, and a cosmic force not only miss the point but miss life entirely.


This is at the Heart of Christian Hope and Christian eschatology. Today, as we enjoy the comfort of a house and can glorify God. We enjoy eating a nice meal outside and can glorify God for a hotel or for food as a delicacy and hospitality, an art. In reading a good book, that God puts great tales and fantasies into the minds of authors and allows them to recite it as a masterpiece.


The promise and Hope that all our little joys, if we glorify God through them for it pours out from His being as God is Love. All these joys will culminate and find its fullest expression when it ends in its source, God. That just as we can now enjoy hints of joy according to our senses, so also, these joys will find its climax in contemplating the face of God proper to our vision in Heaven.

The best movie of all times

You were not made for comforts. You were made for greatness

-Pope Benedict XI



We all know how winning a football world cup feels like. We don’t have to be the players on the field. The team is received with roaring adulation and jubilation. In another scene, Imagine yourself walking out of an airport in a foreign country and scores of unfamiliar people take hold of you, greet you, cover you with the choicest bouquets exalting your books



Now imagine a bee line of a thousand people thronging for a movie ticket. You already have a pass by the virtue of sharing the same name as the title of the movie. You find that strange and yet oblige to watch it after their persuasion. When you enter, they are watching a show you are quite familiar with; the scenes feel as if they have been experienced. The melodies are also your favorite songs. The dialogues are what once you have expressed, delivered and dispensed. It all seems like you have met the characters and perhaps been the very protagonist of this movie. And then it dawns on you: they are screening the movie of your life. Today they are showing your life as a movie. And theatre is packed till the last seat.



Angels are trying to force themselves in from the windows. St. Peter and St. Paul are buying pop corn and finding their seats quickly much to the discomfort of those who are being hindered by the constant noise. St. Thomas Aquinas has bought along another secretary with a quill in case he finds some inspiration to pen down a psalm. St. Monica has come along with her son. Some of them are sitting on the floor lucky just to get in to see your life? What is so enigmatic in the movie?



They say this man lived a life of honor. He loved the church. He let his faith radiate into his life. He was a man who modeled his love for God on King David, of whom God said, “is a man after my own heart”. A man who found in others something to love and like Christ tried to wash each other's feet and bore his cross to enter his own Glory. A man who tried to share the good news with others.



They have all come from far away to see the flame he held within, a flame never to be extinguished until his last breath. They have come to watch that flame, incandescent, burn into a thousand different experiences on the screen today. Do our lives burn with such vigor that someday the same saints we pray to, would be making a beeline for the tickets to watch a movie, a movie of how you go about life with cheerfulness and a touch of grace?

Heaven: It's all worth it

Dave and Mikhail are walking out of their classrooms. They have just finished their Calculus exam. Dave looks at Mikhail with a grin. Mikhail asks: What’s the matter? I didn’t know calculus was so easy? Dave responds: I did write my paper well. It doesn’t reflect my grasp over calculus. It’s just that I watched a good movie yesterday while I should have been studying. All morning I was wondering if I would regret watching that movie. But my paper went really well. I could savor stealing an hour or two to watch the movie. I feel its all worth it.

And Mikhail says:

When you indulge in something and are afraid wondering if the indulgence will be too high a price to pay. Tomorrow when things go your way, you realize that it’s all worth it. Heaven will be something like that. You don’t understand the pain. You don’t understand how your suffering has value. You don’t understand why you fall face first in spite of trying so hard. Why do you feel dry instead of praying so hard? Why does the world seem not to transform in spite of pouring all the optimism. Why does the world still feel material and shallow even when you try to feel supernatural as if everything counts: all your effort. But one truth will come, heaven will not pass but will prevail and it will all be accomplished. Everything you did- the leaf you picked up, the people you succored, the neighbor you lent a hand to. The kid you helped with mathematics. The lunch you skipped. The expensive racket you let go to buy your brother a shirt. It will all have accomplished their ends. Heaven will make every sacrifice, a jewel in the crown. Heaven will make every moment of trial, a triumph. Heaven will make every moment of effort, an eulogy.