So What Is Heaven Really Like?

Someone approached St. Paul one day with a question, “Paul, what will heaven be like?”  Paul replied, “Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it so much dawned upon the human mind what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor 2:9).  Paul answered it, yet left it unanswered as well!  He leaves much to our imaginations because he had not yet experienced heaven’s glorious new life.  Yet, he may have intuited what heaven must be like from his deep relationship with the Lord or knew that, as wonderful as this world is, it paled in comparison to the “new heaven and the new earth” (Rev 21:1) God is preparing for his faithful people.  

So what is heaven really like?

In his weekly audience on July 21, 1999, Pope John Paul II said that in the Bible, “heaven” is used as a metaphor (a symbol or image) for “God’s dwelling-place” (Ps 104:2f; 115:16; Is 66:1) compared to our dwelling place on earth.  God cannot be contained in heaven (1 Kgs 8:27).  Remember when King David planned to build a temple for God in Jerusalem, God told David that no earthly temple could contain God because the entire universe was his temple?  In the First Book of Maccabees, “Heaven is simply one of God’s names” (1 Mc 3:18, 19, 50, 60; 4:24, 55).  Thus, heaven becomes a symbol of our life in and with God.  

Pope John Paul referred to the Book of Revelation, noting that “the ‘heaven’ or ‘happiness’ in which we will find ourselves is not a physical place in the clouds, but a living, personal relationship with the Holy Trinity.”  In baptism, we already share in God’s Trinitarian life of the deepest union imaginable.  Our God who fills the universe makes His dwelling place within us.  We become temples of the living God (2 Cor 6:16) (Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta expressed it so beautifully – we are “tabernacles of God’s presence”).  (In the Baltimore Catechism, we called this “sanctifying grace” or “God’s indwelling”.)  Heaven, according to Pope John Paul, is our meeting with the Father, which takes place in the risen Christ through the communion of the Holy Spirit initiated in baptism and confirmation, and celebrated in each Eucharist.  This is consistent with the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which teaches that “Heaven is the blessed community of all who are perfectly incorporated into Christ” (no.1026). 

We must always remember that heaven and God’s other “eternal” mysteries will remain difficult for us to grasp.  As humans we always think in terms of space (this room, that city, here, there, far away) and in terms of time (yesterday, today, tomorrow).  These “constructs” or realities will pass away because time is a necessity in this world.  Only people occupy space because we have bodies (spiritual beings, even with glorified bodies, do not take up space.  But even that is difficult for us to understand, isn’t it?) 

When speaking of “eternal life,” we also must avoid thinking of a life that goes on and on “forever and ever” – because time simply does not exist in heaven.  Genesis 1:14-19 tells us that God created the sun and the moon to determine the times and seasons for life in this world.  In Revelation 21:23, 24 we read about the new creation – “The city had no need of sun or moon to shine in it, for the glory of God gave it light, and its lamp was the Lamb…and there will be no more night there.”