Description of Heaven

Sister Isabel, my freshman history teacher, use to say that heaven was a library.  That was her wish.  I pray

that she is immersed in a good novel, now.  She died a few years ago.  Many have speculated what heaven will be like.  Paul Claudel, the poet said:

Nothing that we possess here below will be destroyed, with the exception of our defects, but all will be restored and exalted to the highest degree, not only restored but illuminated, as it were, transported from the realm of empirical proof to the realm of intuitive understanding.

I've heard it said that we will be 33 years old and have perfect bodies.  I hope so, because I certainly don't want to be stuck an eternity in the body I'm in, presently.  Does it really matter?  We know that heaven is a good place and we trust God.  Sunday's First Reading, 2 Mc 7: 1-2, 9-14 has the cruel death of seven brothers.  And the very last of the seven brothers, after seeing what happened to the six brothers who were tortured before him, still proclaimed, "It is my choice to die at the hands of men with the God-given hope of being restored to life by Him;..."

Whatever heaven is, it is better than here.  God promised.

All are Alive Before God

Looking over the Readings for Sunday, the Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time, I am reminded of my post from yesterday, on the Communion of Saints.  My point, yesterday, was the spiritual bond that exists among those living presently, those in Purgatory, and those in heaven.  This Sunday's Readings, 2 Mc 7:1-2, 9-14 and the Gospel of Luke 20: 27-38, mention this.

In Maccabees, seven sons were tortured to death.  They went willingly, rather than disdain Yahweh.  The fourth son said, while dying,

One cannot but choose to die at the hands of mortals and to cherish the hope God gives of being raised again by him...

In Luke's Gospel, the Sadducees, who don't believe in the resurrection, tried to trick Jesus by asking him a question about the widow of brothers.  Whose wife is she?  Jesus told them that our understanding of civil states of union won't matter in heaven.  It is so different.  In fact, Jesus says,

...He is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to Him, all of them are alive.

That's the Communion of Saints.  The dead aren't dead.  They are living their eternal lives with God.

Even John Lennon said, death is like getting out of one car and into the next.