What will it be like?

We’ve all seen pictures of heaven. Most of the time they show heaven as a place of clouds with saints doing very little except play harps.

Some pictures are apocalyptic: full of light, but stark and cold.

Some pictures are more schematic: a collection of stylized icons in perfect arrangement.

Many of us, when we think of heaven, have an image in our head very much like the place on earth where we have felt happiest, such as early morning in a beautiful park, a glorious sunrise over the open water, or atop a mountain in the cool air with nothing between you and a dazzling sun and a sky of the deepest blue.

These images may be useful, some more than others, but none of them are really adequate. St. Paul put it this way:

Eye hath not seen,
nor ear heard,
neither have entered into the heart of man,
the things which God hath prepared
for them that love him.
1 Corinthians 2:9

In today’s second reading, St. John puts it in a slightly different way.

Beloved,
we are God's children now;
what we shall be
has not yet been revealed.
We do know that when it is revealed
we shall be like him,
for we shall see him as he is.

We do not really know what heaven will be like, except that we shall see God as he is – Infinite, Eternal, Omniscient, Omnipotent, Pure Love.

In traditional theology, this is known as the Beatific Vision, a vision that the saints in heaven now enjoy. It is not like the vision of a painting or even a movie. It blows away all earthly forms of reference. It is utterly perfect and eternally involving.

In that direct vision of God, we will not be passive, but filled with the endless streams of God’s grace that will flow in us and through us.

As we celebrate All Saints Day today, we keep these things in mind: that unimaginable happiness and glory are prepared for us in heaven (if we follow the path of his grace), that our sisters and brothers who already stand before God - the saints in heaven - already have that grace flowing through them completely, and that even now we on earth are not cut off from those streams of grace.

Vessels and conduits of grace – such are the saints in heaven’s glory, such is the path that lies before us.

Saints of God, come to our aid.