Last week we began a 3-week homily series on the Last Things — Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell. Last Sunday, we talked about death. We talked about how death is actually the just punishment due for sin. We also talked about how healthy and productive it is to meditate on our own personal death — Memento Mori! It helps us to better prepare for eternity… It motivates us to pursue heaven — and avoid hell.

And that’s what we will be talking this week as we continue our series: Heaven and Hell.

Now I’ll warn you, this homily is a little bit on the long side… but then again, Heaven AND Hell are pretty long too.

So buckle up.

Our first reading this weekend from the book of Daniel gives us an apocalyptic vision of the End of the World, and it gives us a glimpse of what that Last Day will look like — It will look like a separation. 

The prophet tells us: “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake; some shall live forever, others shall be an everlasting horror and disgrace.”

Jesus confirmed this prophetic vision when he said: “The hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear [the Son of Man’s] voice and will come out, those who have done good deeds to the resurrection of life, but those who have done wicked deeds to the resurrection of condemnation.”

There will be a separation.

In other words, some will go to Heaven, and others to Hell.

It’s ultimately an either-or situation for us.

Up or down…

The Good Place or the Bad Place…

In our gospel today, Jesus said that in those days of tribulation, when the sun is darkened and the moon does not shine, and the stars are falling from the sky, and all the powers of heaven are shaken… he will come with power and glory upon the clouds, and he will then “send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the end of the earth to the end of the sky.”

The elect will be gathered. The wheat will be harvested and brought into the barn of Heaven… and the weeds will be burned. Some will go in… some will be locked out, saying: “Lord, Lord!” And he will say: “Depart from me, I never knew you.”

Archbishop Fulton Sheen once put it in not so subtle words: “Each and every one of us, at the end of the journey of life, will come face to face with either one or the other of two faces… And one of them, either the merciful face of Christ or the miserable face of Satan, will say, “Mine.”

That’s kind of a horrifying thought, isn’t it?

But you know what? I think sometimes today we sort of shove that possibility out of our heads, and just sort of assume that basically everyone will see the face of Jesus — that pretty much everyone inevitably goes to Heaven.

Dr. Ralph Martin calls this tendency of ours… the “virus of universalism.”

Universalism is the idea that everyone, no matter what, goes to Heaven. 

Universalism is very subtle and attractive.

How often have you heard somebody say something like this…?

“I dunno… I just can’t believe that a truly merciful… truly loving God would ever send anyone to Hell, and so… Hell must either not exist, or it must be empty!”

That’s an example of universalism. And it’s the rampant religion of today, even among people who don’t really even believe in God.

And of course… like every good heresy, there is at least a grain truth to this statement. Our loving, merciful God does not actually send anyone to Hell… He doesn’t want anyone in Hell. The Lord wants us all to go to Heaven wayyyyyyyyy more than we want to! Sacred Scripture tells us that God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”

So…if that’s true… then why would anyone still be in Hell? 

Well, as CS Lewis and others have rightly pointed out: The doors of Hell are locked from the inside. 

It is a choice…(a terribly permanent choice)… and though it may be hard for us to even imagine, a soul that locks him or herself in Hell would not even want to be in Heaven if they could… 

They’ve made their choice!

Heaven… would actually be hell to them.

Because Hell… at the end of the day… is opposition to God.

It’s also opposition to yourself. 

Hell is a self-destructive posture towards reality. What makes Hell so miserable is that you hate yourself, hate God, and hate everybody else around you. As the great atheist philosopher Satre famously said: “Hell is other people.” 

To be in Hell is basically to throw a violent, eternal temper tantrum against everything that exists… and what makes it even worse somehow is that once you die and find that you have locked yourself in Hell, you also realize what you missed out on. You realize that Heaven was within your reach all along, but you still freely chose otherwise! And now there is no hope. You are utterly against Heaven… And so you stubbornly double down and refuse joy… Reject life… Turn away from Truth… They are eternally separated from the All Good, All Perfect, All Holy God!!!

It’s an unspeakably sad, lonely, pitiful state to find oneself in. We shouldn’t wish it upon our absolute worst enemies! 

When the Blessed Mother showed a vision of Hell to the three little children at Fátima, they were struck white with fear and sorrow. “You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go,” Mary told them…then she shared that little prayer with them that we pray after each decade of the Rosary: “O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell. Lead all souls to heaven, especially those in most need of Thy mercy.”

Save them, Lord, from the pain, the sorrow, the disaster of Hell! From eternal separation from God!!!

As one Catholic author put it: “The only real tragedy in life is to not become a Saint.”

To go to Hell is the absolute greatest tragedy… it’s truly the SADDEST thing… because everyone who locks themself up there was once destined for Heaven…

In Dante’s Inferno, we get perhaps the best picture of this sorrow and tragedy. Rather than depicting Satan as powerful, laughing maniacally, broiled in white hot flames of passionate hatred… Dante instead chooses to describe Satan buried at the very bottom of a frozen wasteland — an icy cold Hell…far from the heat of God’s perfect love… with his demonic tears freezing right on his face. 

This image of Satan… is miserable. He is isolated. He is forsaken.

I think another really good image for the reality of Hell is Gollum from the Lord of the Rings. 

Gollum loves himself and lusts after the power of the Ring more than anything else…it drives him totally insane!… but he also hates himself more than anything else in the world. He has torn himself apart. He is now literally split in two. And that… is the essence of the diabolic. The very word “diabolos” means: “To tear apart.” Bilbo and Frodo and countless others take pity on him and try offering him mercy and salvation along the way. They offer Gollum a way out… but time and time again, Gollum chooses self-destruction. And ultimately, he throws himself literally down  into Hell… into the liquid hot magma of Mount Doom…

But I’ll say it again: We have a choice.

We are not doomed. Our fate is not sealed until we draw our last breath… And until then, we can decide:

Are we going to be with God… or against Him?

Every little choice matters.

CS Lewis says it this way: “Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different than it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature.”

We have free will. And so each one of us has a profound responsibility: First, for the eternal fate of our own soul. And second, for those around us. 

We are responsible for each other! — We can either help each other go to Heaven… or we can help each other go to Hell.

Husbands and wives have the responsibility to help each other get to Heaven… and together, they help their kids get to Heaven.

Priests and bishops have even more responsibility. The Letter of St. James says pointblank that “not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you realize that we will be judged more strictly.”

St. John Chrysostom is credited as saying that “the road to hell is paved with the bones of priests and monks, and the skulls of bishops are the lampposts that light the path.”

St. John Vianney had similarly striking words to share: “A priest goes to Heaven or a priest goes to Hell with a thousand people behind.”

Yikes! What a responsibility!

…Let’s go to Heaven together, shall we?

And what is Heaven like, anyways?

Is it really just a series of golf courses and all-you-can-eat buffets in the clouds? Is it just a chance to see the family and friends we’ve lost?

Hopefully that’s part of it… but it’s not the point of Heaven.

Heaven is to be with God. And if you only had Him… and Him alone… that’s all you would need for eternity. Heaven is to choose the Lord over anything and anyone else…

It’s to PREFER the Lord…  “I prefer heaven” St. Philip Neri cried out.

And “Heaven is not a place but a person,” Pope Benedict XVI tells us.

Jesus… is Heaven.

I also like to think of Heaven this way:

Heaven — is an endless adventure. It is an active, beautiful, piercingly attractive and overwhelming never-ending gulp of Truth, Reality, Glory, Goodness, and Peace. It is a place without any tears, without any fear, and without any pain. It’s where ALL will be made new, and all the “sad things will be made untrue” as Samwise Gamgee put it. 

Heaven is TOTAL Perfection and Security. It is the greatest, longest, most relaxing sigh of relief. It’s like winning the lottery jackpot every single second and never getting tired of it. It’s like drinking out of a firehose of pure, liquid happiness. It’s like re-riding the best roller coaster on earth over and over and never waiting in line, and never getting sick. It will be a banquet! A feast! St. Bridget received a vision where Heaven was a gigantic lake of beer… !

In a word: Heaven will be awesome.

It will be totally worth it all.

Another amazing image for Heaven — and perhaps my absolute favorite one — comes at the very end of the last book of the Chronicles of Narnia, where CS Lewis describes the experience like this: “All their life in this world and all their adventures had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

That’s so much better than sin, isn’t it??? 

When you sin over and over, it just gets more and more boring. But HEAVEN… just gets more and more real.

Let that image motivate you! …because it’s still only an image!

The reality will be infinitely better! We CANNOT comprehend Heaven.

There’s no bottom to the Glory. No conclusion to the EXHILARATION… THE JOY… THE LAUGHTER…The PEACE…

And so… let’s ask Jesus for Heaven. He poured out His Blood to give us this greatest reward.

This world is NOT enough.

By a show of hands: Who here has been disappointed by this world?

…GOOD. 

I’m GLAD you’ve been disappointed by this world, because we were not made for this world.

Again, CS Lewis drops a final truth bomb on us: “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”

That’s us. — We were made for another world.

We were made for Heaven! …The New Heavens and the New Earth!

“Heaven is not a place but a person!”

So let’s start participating in Heaven right here at this Holy Mass… which IS a participation in the life of Heaven. We catch a glimpse of the endless praise and glory of our Lord when we worship Him in the Blessed Sacrament. The Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.

And we just pray: Jesus, I want to want You! — Jesus, I want Heaven!!!

Now let’s help each other get there.