Going for a Home Visit

I spent last Friday morning at Misericordia, a Catholic residential community for adults with developmental disabilities. As anyone who's ever set foot on that campus can tell you, its spirit is awesome. Truly, awe-some. The residents, whose disabilities range from mild to profound, are given the resources and freedom to flourish in a way that our oftentimes utilitarian society might never have allowed otherwise, and they are treated with Christ-like dignity, compassion, and love. 

Upon walking into my usual classroom, I immediately recognized my friend, Brice. He was dressed in his usual khaki pants, collared shirt, and suspenders, and seemed to be his typically warm and cheery self. Except today, rather than pouring through an array of architecture magazines, he sat at his desk with a suitcase in his hand. When I greeted him, he bounced up in his seat and beamed, 

"I'm going for a home-visit this weekend!"

Every time someone he knew walked through the classroom door, Brice was bursting with excitement and couldn't help sharing the happy news of his weekend trip back home. A short while later, when his mother walked through the door with a smile and outstretched arms, he hopped out of his seat (the suitcase was already in his hand) and flung himself into her arms. His love and joy for seeing her was palpable to everyone in the room. As much as Brice may have loved his friends and life at Misericordia, he  was infinitely happy to be going home. 

While watching Brice's thrill at the prospect of going home, I caught a glimpse of what it might be like for a soul going to our real Home: Heaven. A few years ago, a parishioner in the Church parking lot was walking into Mass with a big smile on his face, and he explained that he "had his ticket punched." When I asked what he meant, he beamed and said, "I've got my ticket punched; I'm ready to go Home whenever God calls me!" 

That's a far cry from the attitude most of us seem to take toward Heaven. As Kenny Chesney sings, "Everybody wants to go to Heaven, but nobody wants to go now." And unfortunately, he's right; it's all too easy to put eternity on the back burner when there's plenty to concern us here and now. As a Theology student, the thought of Heaven actually started to scare me. I'd heard many descriptions of what this eternal paradise might resemble, and none of them sounded much like "paradise" to me. Professors described the joy of the Beatific Vision (CCC 1028) as if it were an unending Mass, which sounded, um, boring. Eternity itself sounded monotonous and tiring. Needless to say, unlike Brice, I had a few questions that needed answering before I could ever fling myself into Heaven's embrace. 

But as a dear friend shared of her conversation with then-college-professor Fr. Barron, "You are unnerved because what you are thinking about is actually unending time, which is hell. Heaven is the absence of time. We cannot comprehend it here because we are temporal beings, but we can experience what it is like. The moments in your life when you are least aware of time passing, when you are wrapped in a rousing conversation, when you witness something truly beautiful, when you completely forget yourself? Those are the nearest you can get to heaven here on earth."

Something so beautiful, a moment that wraps you so tightly in love, that you forget who you are and how criminally elusive time can be. That's Heaven. When I stop and try to recall heavenly moments in my own life, I see that it's cherishing a bond with a non-verbal Misericordia resident. It's sharing an ordinary dinner with my boyfriend and wishing we wouldn't have to say "good-bye" in a few, quick hours. It's every visit I spent with my Grandma during her terminal battle with cancer. Heaven is found in those little moments where the overflow of love is so powerful that it seems to encapsulate time and replace the typical stresses of daily life with the deepest sense of peace and joy. 

When thinking of Heaven as a deeper extension of those precious moments, who wouldn't want to go now? In It Is Well, Chris Faddis describes the paradox of surrendering a short life on earth to the hope of one not yet seen (Romans 8:24). As he recounts the heartbreaking journey of his thirty-two-year-old wife's passing from colon cancer, he shares a letter that he read to her shortly before her death: "Oh, that this [wedding] ring could keep you here longer. It is a mark of our commitment; it is my promise to love you with my whole heart, and yet there is a greater love than mine that will take you soon. How could this mere piece of gold compare to the love of God, which loves you completely, wholly, and perfectly?"

If our bags aren't packed and our tickets aren't punched, it isn't entirely because we simply aren't ready (cue Brad Paisley's "Waiting on a Woman"), but rather because we don't trust that the life to come is infinitely more beautiful and fulfilling than even the most cherished and awesome moments here on earth. It's because we don't trust that the complete, whole, and perfect love of God will truly live up to its promises. We forget that, as Faddis writes, we were created for a "fountain of love so great and so vast that the [earthly] love… will barely seem like a drop of water on the tongue in comparison." If the most precious moments here on earth are just a drop of what awaits us in eternity, then Brice has unknowingly said it perfectly; we should all be beaming with a hope that rings not just, "I'm going for a home visit," but rather, "I'm going Home!"

Carter, Rozann. "Marriage and the 'Fear of Forever.'" Word on Fire. Viewed 20 March 2014. <http://wordonfire.org/WoF-Blog/WoF-Blog/March-2014/Marriage-and-the-Fear-of-Forever.aspx>.

Faddis, Chris. It Is Well. Higley: Solace Books, LLC, 2013.