Jesus Christ - Joy Eternal
By scientist and priest Emmanuel M. Carreira, S.J.

Emmanuel M. Carreira, S.J.

The love of Christ towards his members requires the union with them, forever: "Father, I want that where I am they also be with Me, to let them see my glory, that you gave Me, because you loved Me before creating the world". This is how Christ at the Last Supper ends his marvelous prayer, his last will and testament, as He freely and bravely goes to his redeeming death.

"I left the Father and came into the world; I now leave the world and go to the Father". The Lord thus sums up his visible presence among us that will come to an end at the Ascension. After his departure, a time of growth will follow for the Church -his Mystical Body- until the time when his Truth and Life reach the ends of the earth. When the harvest is ready "again I will come and take you with Me, so that where I am you also will be". A new kind of existence with Christ is announced, in the eternal glory that, as God, He essentially has and that his Humanity merited for us with his Death and Resurrection.

His entrance into Heaven sets his Humanity in the very throne of glory of the divinity, in that Light that no created being can access, higher than any angel can go, where Christ reigns as the First-born of creation, Head of the Church, the perfect summation of God's work. Heaven, the dwelling of the Almighty, is the proper place for the Son in whom the Father has his full happiness, and who existed eternally as the Word in the bosom of the Father, as we can read in the inspired statements of John's Gospel.

To that throne He goes by his own right and thus we see -entering into the way of existence exclusively proper of the Trinity- a Man who will know the Father with a human intellect and will love him with a human heart, in the most intimate union that divine Omnipotence can provide.

Heaven is not "a place" set in any kind of space, just like eternity is not an interval of time. In his Resurrection Christ begins to exist free from the space-time framework that limits matter and its activities, and "heaven" is the name for a new kind of life for which all our images -born from sense impressions- are inapplicable. "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, what God has prepared for those who love Him", and any effort to imagine this new kind of life will always be inadequate. Christ's own teaching regarding this subject really does no more than underline the concepts of peace, happiness, rest, with the symbols of a banquet, a kingdom, a family home.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that heaven is "the blessed community of all who are perfectly incorporated into Christ" (no. 1026) and that it consists of "the ultimate end and fulfillment of the deepest human longings, the state of supreme, definitive happiness" (no.1024).The way to obtain that total happiness is "to be with Christ"…"to live in Christ" while retaining the proper identity (no. 1025).

Once more, the words of Christ apply: "nobody goes to the Father except through Me", and we cannot otherwise recover the gift of immortality lost by sin but regained for all of us by Christ's Resurrection. The deep human desire not to disappear, that instinctively refuses to consider death as total destruction, finds its fulfillment in the life we receive from the One who lives forever.

There is more to reflect upon. If "all human longings" are to be satisfied, this must imply our essential search for Truth, Beauty and Good, at all levels of external realty and according to each person's internal abilities. It is frequently said that nobody develops in this life more than a minimal part of the possible growth in the areas of intellect, affectivity, artistic endeavors: we write very few lines of our own on the blank pages that we receive at birth, and rarely does somebody reach old age with the feeling that all the youthful dreams have been fulfilled.

They would require many lifetimes of full dedication to many different fields, and even those who obtain fame for their deep knowledge of some branch of science will recognize that their success is due to being "specialists" in a limited area of their own interest. All of us leave behind many "unfinished symphonies" when our time is over and we go into eternity.

In heaven, all our most optimistic dreams will be overwhelmingly realized. In the union of life with Christ, all our potentialities will be reinforced, without limit, by his divinized Humanity. No fogs or mysteries will be impenetrable for our mind: we will know as God knows, without the painful effort of using reasoning and imperfect analogies, of hunting for bits of truth hidden in so much complexity that seems incomprehensible. The infinite simplicity of God will be open to our "intuitive" regard that will see the intimate reality of the Trinity and, in its light, everything that can be known, be it something existing or possible, material or spiritual, even the very essence of God.

"We will be like God forever, because we will see Him as He is, face to face" "with intuitive vision, without the mediation of any creature" (Catechism, no. 1023). No philosopher could ever dream of this and it will be possible only through the union in one Person of the Divinity and the Humanity of Christ: He is the bridge that spans the infinite distance between Creator and every creature.

We will know all the marvels found in the material world, from its beginning to the activity of each particle in any star or microbe. We will understand the mystery of the origin of life, of Man, of God's plan and the Wisdom that chose in perfect detail all the evolutionary steps until the end of time: We will see that everything is ordered "with number and measurement" and that no "chance event" occurs, unforeseen by the timeless God who gives existence and proper activity to atoms and galaxies. The workings of Providence, so mysterious for us who are always impatient to put everything in order, will appear as shining with the Wisdom that can obtain good even from suffering and sin.

In our own personal history we will understand how God's fatherly Love was present at every moment. And we will gratefully rejoice realizing how Christ's coming into the world has changed all creation with its transforming grace, raising it to a super-natural life that, compared to natural human life, is higher in dignity than ours can be with respect to a microscopic cell.

We will enter into the deep mystery of Christ, and marvel at the reality of a Baby-God, who had to learn to speak, to write, to work as a carpenter. Through his eyes, we will see Mary's loving face and smile; we will share his joy when He learned to read the holy books, we will hear the questions of an intelligent Child to the Doctors of the Law.

"To live in Christ" eternally is not just a symbolic and poetic phrase, but a real sharing: it has to mean entering into his life of every moment, since everything that took place in his earthly experience has an eternal value and we will be able to find it in Him. "Lord, You know everything", said Peter: in Christ's intelligence we will find the full Truth that our mind is anxiously seeking.

We search for Beauty, the order that humbly shines in a flower or a face or in the starry heavens, in a poem, a symphony or a painting. At a deeper level, we enjoy the beauty of every generous, selfless activity, in human behavior, in the innocence of a child or the serene maturity of an old person. It would be an endless pleasure to appreciate the singing of a bird or the sounds of an orchestra with the sensitivity of a great musician; to see colors and forms with the eyes of an artist, to tune in to the thoughts and feelings of really admirable people.

In our intimacy with Christ we will find all of this: we will share the human experiences of the perfect Man, both in his daily earthly life and in his relationship of constant union with the Father. We will all be -in a mysterious way- One with Christ also in the fullness of his Mystical Body, and thus partake of Mary's thoughts and happy feelings, of all the great thoughts, loves and positive moments of saints and every human being of all times.

With Christ, we could say "hand-in-hand", we will be able to visit the entire universe and enjoy its endless beauty, past and present; God does nothing without a purpose, and whatever is knowable is meant to be known, and joyfully appreciated, by those whom God endowed with the ability to enjoy the harmony and perfection that reflects the Beauty of the creating Word. In God, this Beauty is the same as his Holiness and all his perfections: it is not a mistake that in the Mass we give thanks to God "for His great Glory" or that a poet says that he trusts "in Christ's beauty" instead of appealing to his Mercy.

In all of this we find -as a common thread in every joy- the happiness of attaining some Good. Truth and Beauty are also a Good that will satisfy our rational tendencies, that always seek order, harmony, intelligibility: everything that responds to what our nature needs, is a Good for a person. Its most direct expression is the search for Love, something almost impossible to define, that we describe with the symbol of an attraction, and that neither has nor wants another reward but love itself. To love and to be loved is the closest we can get to be "Image and Likeness of God" that describes our human nature. Because, using John's unique statement, "God is Love".

Everything we say about the Father's plan of Creation and Redemption, the mutual relations of the divine Persons, our supernatural sonship and our union with Christ in one Body, is finally the development of the consequences of a marvelous fact: God -essential Love- loves us, with an infinite generosity that is totally selfless and previous to any response we might give. This is the deepest mystery, where all deisms flounder when they try to exalt God by denying in Him the "weakness" of lovingly bending down towards us.

Others instead seem unable to accept that God has no other reason for creating than his love, not some kind of profit or benefit for Himself. Thus they illogically speak of a God who develops Himself and reaches a greater perfection by establishing a relationship to his creatures (Process Theology) almost with some kind of implied pantheism. Not so: Love is love precisely because it is something gratuitous and does not selfishly seek any profit.

"Love consists in this: not in our first having loved God, but in that He loved us and He sent his only Son as a remedy for our sins", as we read in St. John's first letter.

By Christ's love to the point of dying for us, and by our response of love towards Him, we enter into God's family life. This life is the constant point of reference when we want to say what eternal life is: to find ourselves joyously drawn to that center where everything is identified with the essential Love, where -through the will and Heart of Christ- we will be embraced by the Father and will live of his Spirit.

Everything else we can say or imagine is secondary to the overwhelming reality of the infinite Love of God: each one of us, in our small and limited personality, is loved and sought as friend, member of his Body, by Jesus Christ, the Son of God made Man. We cannot add more to this faith, and we confess our inability to understand what almost sounds like an irreverent boast. God wants my friendship, deeply and truly: He does not want to be away from me in his eternity.

Because we are spirit and matter, love reverberates in our affectivity with organic effects that are described in almost every culture by referring to the heart. Christ experienced those effects, and -in some way- his corporal nature must still vibrate in response to his infinite love of union with the Father. By our incorporation to Christ we will also find that -in the words of the Psalms- even "our flesh jumps with joy in the living God" after a resurrection that gives life to our bodies, and changes them according to "the power that Christ has to transform all things", as St. Paul says.

We are unable to describe how a material, organic structure -the body- will have true life outside the framework of space and time. Christ's own resurrection proved the undeniable reality of his Body -the same one that suffered the Passion and still keeps the marks of the wounds- together with the fact that now that Body is free from any physical constraint. This is what we also expect from our rebirth at the end of time, when we will be like Christ by the union -even of our bodies- to his holy and life-giving Flesh and Blood.

The Book of Revelation speaks of a New Heaven and a New Earth under the symbol of a new heavenly Jerusalem where the Lamb is its light source and there is no sin, suffering, or death. In this new holy city, built from living stones and full of God's glorious presence -not limited to any kind of Temple but rather like the air that breathe the blessed- material creation reaches its redemption an its full freedom.

It would be myopic and foolish to try to translate these biblical symbols into cosmic structures or physical processes: we do not know -nor need to know, for our Faith- the fate foreseen by God for cosmic evolution. As said before, if space and time boundaries no longer limit what happens, it isn't truly important whether the stars shine still or are extinguished, or to know if a planet like Earth will hold organic life. Material creation has been redeemed and glorified in Christ's Body and it will similarly reach glory in our own.

"I live without living in myself, and I hope for such a wonderful life, that I am dying because I am still living", poetically writes St. Therese of Avila. Mystical writers point to this eternal life so that death is rather described as a new birth into eternity. Therese again says: "I want to see God, and to see Him, I must die". Her daughter Therese of Lisieux agrees: "I am not dying; I am entering into life".

The Liturgy, in the preface of the Mass for the dead, states: "For your faithful ones, O Lord, life does not end, rather it is transformed". In different ways that was said repeatedly by St. Paul, Ignatius of Antioch, many saints who reached a level of union with Christ such that heir earthly living was a constant thirsting for the eternal union with their one and only source of life and happiness.

The death of those who have no Faith can be described as truly tragic in its black and terrible emptiness. To support the instinctive refusal to accept a total annihilation, they can't find any hope but the possible memory -also limited in time- remaining in their relatives or friends. Or, still more demeaning, the absurd hope of endless reincarnations that will give lasting value, even in animal bodies, to the senseless limited existence that is seen as basically unacceptable. Finally, even those new cycles appear as a punishment, and the total destruction is seen as a deliverance from the slavery of being tied to matter.

No punishment would be worse than immortality if life were only the daily experience of endless tasks, infirmities and deceptions. But this is not what Christ promises for our eternal life; rather, in a unique and only one earthly existence, all our actions in union with Him are important for eternity. And "a small load of suffering" -carried with Him- earns for us an immense treasure of glory.

God's infinite generosity is shown when to the poor thief, dying on a cross next to Christ, and simply honest enough to admit his sins and daring to proclaim Christ's innocence, our Redeemer replied: "Today you will be, with Me, in Paradise". This was the only moment of joy that Christ had during his atrocious agony, and the miserable wretch found himself, without knowing how, in a togetherness of everlasting friendship with the Just One who died as his co-sufferer on the cross.

God wants the salvation of every human being, to make all of us sharers in his Life, his Love, his essential and unimaginable happiness. The only thing that can nullify God's plan to bring together all things in Christ is our conscious refusal -ultimately, our pride- to accept our dependence from Him and his generosity.

The Creator of the Universe and of Man will carry to perfection his work by our membership in Christ's Mystical Body. It is only in the God-Man where everything finds a meaning in the most sublime way: living in the joy of God´s infinite and loving intimacy.