1/16/2024 0 Comments Limbo hell heaven![]() Therefore comfort one another with these words" (1 Thes 4:17-18). St Paul emphasizes our meeting with Christ in heaven at the end of time with a vivid spatial image: "Then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air and so we shall always be with the Lord. After the course of our earthly life, participation in complete intimacy with the Father thus comes through our insertion into Christ's paschal mystery. The fatherhood of God, who is rich in mercy, is experienced by creatures through the love of God's crucified and risen Son, who sits in heaven on the right hand of the Father as Lord.Ĥ. ![]() It is worthwhile listening to what the Apostle Paul tells us about this in a very powerful text: "God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus" (Eph 2:4-7). Since believers are loved in a special way by the Father, they are raised with Christ and made citizens of heaven. To show that the Redeemer's sacrifice acquires perfect and definitive value, the Letter to the Hebrews says that Jesus "passed through the heavens" (Heb 4:14), and "entered, not into a sanctuary made with hands, a copy of the true one, but into heaven itself" (ibid., 9:24). ![]() The New Testament amplifies the idea of heaven in relation to the mystery of Christ. In this sense Jesus speaks of a "reward in heaven" (Mt 5:12) and urges people to "lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven" (ibid., 6:20 cf. Thus heaven becomes an image of life in God. The depiction of heaven as the transcendent dwelling-place of the living God is joined with that of the place to which believers, through grace, can also ascend, as we see in the Old Testament accounts of Enoch (cf. 1 Kgs 8:27) and this is true, even though in some passages of the First Book of the Maccabees "Heaven" is simply one of God's names (1 Mc 3:18, 19, 50, 60 4:24, 55). ![]() However the biblical metaphor makes it clear that God does not identify himself with heaven, nor can he be contained in it (cf. Ps 113:4-9) and comes down when he is called upon (cf. He sees and judges from the heights of heaven (cf. Metaphorically speaking, heaven is understood as the dwelling-place of God, who is thus distinguished from human beings (cf. Heaven is the transcendent dwelling-place of the living God Scripture says about creation: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Gn 1:1). In biblical language "heaven"", when it is joined to the "earth", indicates part of the universe. Today we will try to understand the biblical meaning of "heaven", in order to have a better understanding of the reality to which this expression refers.Ģ. Heaven is the ultimate end and fulfilment of the deepest human longings, the state of supreme, definitive happiness" (n.1024). When the form of this world has passed away, those who have welcomed God into their lives and have sincerely opened themselves to his love, at least at the moment of death, will enjoy that fullness of communion with God which is the goal of human life.Īs the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, "this perfect life with the Most Holy Trinity this communion of life and love with the Trinity, with the Virgin Mary, the angels and all the blessed is called "heaven'. It is our meeting with the Father which takes place in the risen Christ through the communion of the Holy Spirit," the Pope said.ġ. Heaven "is neither an abstraction not a physical place in the clouds, but a living, personal relationship with the Holy Trinity. Heaven as the fullness of communion with God was the theme of the Holy Father's catechesis at the General Audience of 21 July 1999. "Incorporeal things are not in place after a manner known and familiar to us, in which way we say that bodies are properly in place but they are in place after a manner befitting spiritual substances, a manner that cannot be fully manifest to us." In this he is applying the philosophical categories used by the Church in her theology and saying what St. This language of place is, according to the Pope, inadequate to describe the realities involved, since it is tied to the temporal order in which this world and we exist. In three controversial Wednesday Audiences, Pope John Paul II pointed out that the essential characteristic of heaven, hell or purgatory is that they are states of being of a spirit (angel/demon) or human soul, rather than places, as commonly perceived and represented in human language.
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