Heaven, Hell and the Spirit of Christmas

Eternity has been on my mind lately. That’s kind of like saying that you had a fleeting thought about a classical work of literature or caught a quick glance of the Sistine Chapel I suppose. How much can we really understand about something so vast and far reaching even if we devoted our entire lives to it? Not surprisingly, my thoughts feel incomplete and a bit underwhelming, but that’s never stopped me from sharing what’s in my head before :-)

I think these thoughts come from a few quotes I read in book recently. The Book is “Looking for God in Harry Potter” by John Granger. At one point the author talks about how at the end of the first HP book, the villain’s hands and skin burn when coming in contact with Harry Potter who is protected by love. “Rowling (the HP author) tells us in graphic story form here the traditional Christian doctrine concerning God’s judgment and the nature of heaven and hell,” Granger writes. He then offers a couple of quotes from Christian theologians that I found interesting…

God is Truth and Light. God’s judgment is nothing else than our coming into contact with truth and light. In the day of the Great Judgement all men will appear naked before this penetrating light of truth. The “books” will be opened. What are these “books”? They are our hearts. Our hearts will be opened by the penetrating light of God, and what is in these hearts will be revealed. If in those hearts there is love for God, those hearts will rejoice seeing God’s light. If, on the contrary, there is hatred for God in those hearts, these men will suffer by receiving on their opened hearts this penetrating light of truth which they detested all their life.

--Alexandre Kalomiros, River of Fire (Montreal: Monastery Press, 1982), 18

God himself is both reward and punishment. All men have been created to see God unceasingly in his uncreated glory. Whether God will be for each man heaven or hell, reward or punishment, depends on man’s response to God’s love and on man’s transformation from the state of selfish and self-centered love, to God-like love which does not seek its own ends…The primary purpose of Orthodox Christianity, then, is to prepare its members for an experience which every human being will sooner or later have.

-- Ioannes Romanides, Franks, Romans, Feudalism, and Doctrine (Brookline, Mass.: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1982), 46

I just thought these were very insightful in contemplating the concept of Hell. Basically it is misery not because God wish’s it to be so, but because we were created to be one with God’s love and if we choose to live for ourselves, apart from Him, then his love will be nothing but wasted potential. Mom and Dad used to quote Monsignor O’Brain as saying, “Love goes out” and I would that “Sin stays in.”

The kids and I just finished reading “A Christmas Carol” and of course this holiday favorite also deals with eternity and how the lives we choose to live affect our forever destiny. One part that jumped out to me was just after Marley leaves Scrooge and he looks out his window and sees all kinds of destitute spirits in the air. The book reads…

“He [Scrooge] had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.”

--Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

Of course that book has a happy ending in which Scrooge comes to a realization of what life is about and the good we choose to do or leave undone. What’s so inspiring to read is that while he initially changes out of fear of his future, Dickens shows what a more joy filled existence he experiences once he embraces the spirit of Christmas. I’ve had small tastes of this in my life as well. In a way I think we all go through Scrooge’s story to one extent or another, likely many times in our lives and that is why the story resonates with us. It gives us hope. While the story depicts the misery that can lie ahead of an unfulfilled existence, it also shows us that Heaven and Hell aren’t realities that simply greet us when we die. We experience them right now in a way through how we live our life each day. Scrooge was miserable in the beginning and on cloud nine in the end not because of something God or others did, but simply because of the choices he made. Eternity starts now for each one of us.

I know this is getting long but I had another question in my head that spawned from thinking about all of this and I’d love to get all of your thoughts on it as I really don’t have a good answer. If Heaven is a perfect place where God’s love is perfectly fulfilled, then how is this achieved if all of His creation is not united there together? Paul says we are each a unique and important part of the body of Christ, so if one of those parts is missing, isn’t part of God’s love less then it could or should be? I’ve never really considered this till just now and it’s a bit deep so no worries if I’ve lost you, but it’s perplexing in my mind. I suspect that the answer may be found in how our existence in this life is never everything it could be and yet God raises up what we give Him and makes it perfected. I think again Paul said something to this extent as well. Our Heavenly Father is the master at bringing beauty from ashes and I’ve seen Him do this many times. In many ways I would argue it’s the greatest miracle he could give us. Still it’s a mystery and I don’t fully understand it and thought it was something worth pondering for a bit.

 

Best not worry about it too long though. Today is in front of us and full of potential. Don’t wait for Christmas. Choose to live in the spirit of Christmas today and always.

Baptism and Original Sin

Recently my wife and I took a Baptism class through our local church and unfortunately we left wondering just how much we could trust the deacon who lead it. He helps with most of the Masses and activities in the parish and listening to his homilies he's always seemed like he knows his stuff, but as he lead the class he laid out a very different view of Baptism and Original Sin then what I was familiar with. He said that Vatican II changed the way we understand Original Sin and that we needed to get the idea of our child's sole being stained with it, as portrayed in the old Baltimore Catechism, out of our head. To quote the handout material he gave us....

Modern theology defines original sin as follows;
"Original sin is the condition of being born into a sin filled world."
A. It is not a stain on the innocent child's soul.
B. The following can counteract the negative things in our world.
FAMILY
LOVE
CHURCH/FAITH

He expounded on this saying that Baptism is mostly about starting a faith journey and said that there was a big long document on Baptism that came out of Vatican II and goes into detail on this. To a degree this makes sense to me, but if this is the new official definition of original sin then what does it really mean when we say that Mary was conceived Immaculately (without Original Sin)? She most definitely was born into "a sin filled world." Also if original sin is diminished this way it also seems to diminish the whole sacrament of Baptism and ultimately the concept of our redemptions.

What really made me question the authenticity of what this deacon was saying though was that when one woman at the class asked the deacon what would happen to a baby who died without being Baptized, he told her that the churches "official stance" is that the child is completely innocent and would go straight to heaven. It may seem like nitpicking but salvation is a pretty important matter and what he said seemed to fly directly in the face of what I've read in the Catechism of the Catholic Church so I looked it up and it pretty clearly states in so many words that we have every reason to hope in God's Mercy for such a child but we can't know for sure.

This all lead me to our main concern which was how soon we need to have our child Baptized. We did ask the deacon and he said there is no rush or recommended time table. In fact they only do Baptisms twice a month at our church due to the size of the parish. This sounded like good news to us as we've asked my brother to be the Godfather but he is going to be studying in Europe this August through December so will most likely be gone for the first few months of our baby's life. We would love for him to be able to participate in the Baptism and think it would mean a lot to him so it would be great to have the baby Baptized in December when he gets back. At the same time we want to make sure we are putting our baby's salvation ahead of what would be nice for us.

With all this confusion I turned to my Great Aunt who is Notre Dame Sister and has been involved in Catholic education for many years. She was the perfect person to talk to as she teaches a similar class at her parish every month and has dealt with all of these issues. She told me that she always explains Original Sin this way; She takes off her glasses and tells people that she has poor vision and that this poor vision is something she inherited from her parents. She didn’t do anything wrong to merit her poor eyesight but it’s just something she was born with. Now she says thanks to modern wonders she can use eyeglasses and which help her see clearly. She still has the same genes but thanks to the glasses she doesn’t have to suffer the effects of bad eyesight that were passed down to her.

This analogy made a lot of sense to me as it’s easy to see relate her inherited poor vision to the original sin and her glasses to Baptism. My aunt went on to tell me that our deacon was partially correct in that we are born into a sinful world and baptism helps us counter that, but she said a better definition for Original Sin is that it is simply our inherited tendency towards sin. While we are all born good and innocent we do inherit this tendency from our first parents’ sin. In a way we our soul is stained though not in an evil way. Through Baptism we receive grace to counter this tendency towards sin and become a child of God.

Now as far as when we should Baptize our child, my great aunt explained to me that while the Catholic Church can’t declare for a fact what happens to a child that dies prior to being Baptized, the Church does teach that there are three ways we can be Baptized. The most common is by water but lesser known ways include Baptism by blood (as when someone is martyred) and Baptism by desire (which is when a person wishes to be Baptized but dies prior before they can be). It would only make sense that this Baptism by desire would apply if a child passes away who’s parents desired Baptism for that child. With that in mind she didn’t see any reason why waiting for my brother to be there would be a problem as long as our baby is healthy.

All this has really made me look long and hard at something I’ve taken for granted most of my life. I’ve always seen Baptism as something that was important but never really stopped to ponder what it really theologically speaking was about. It makes so much more sense now and I’m glad I’ve had the opportunity to learn more about my Faith. Hopefully as our child grows up my understanding about my Faith can also continue to grow.

Chalk it up to God's Mercy

The other night my wife and I attended a Lenten mission put on by our local parish. The priest who was leading it was talking about God's mercy and started off by telling about a dream he had the night before. He dreamt he was standing at the pearly gates with St Peter. Beside him he saw the top of a spiral staircase which went all the way down to hell. St Peter gave the priest a piece of chalk and told him that getting into Heaven was really quite simple. He simply needed to take the chalk and write down each one of his sins on a separate step. If he ran out of sins before reaching the bottom, then he could come back up to Heaven. So the priest started writing down his sins on each step and after a while he saw our parish priest heading toward him up the stairs. "Don't worry, I'm just going up for more chalk," our parish priest said. At this everyone broke into laughter.