MORE THAN YOUR HEART DESIRES AND COULD EVER DESIRE

I wish ye all a blessed and joyful All Saints' Day. Let us cry out to them, "All you Holy Saints of God, pray for us!"

On this auspicious day, we celebrate every citizen of the celestial kingdom, all those beautiful souls who are in Heaven. All those Saints who enjoy eternal ecstasies. Those who bask in the bliss of being before the Face of God! 

To have some sense of the joy of the Saints, I'm giving myself to meditating on the glories of Heaven. Too often, I have excluded myself from contemplating Heaven because I have taken St Paul's words too literally, "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for them that love Him." True, we will not experience Heaven on this dry earth, but doing our best to contemplate Heaven can be one of the best ways to inspire and rouse us to do our utmost to make it there; this life with all its difficulties is temporary, Heaven is forever and it will be glorious. Perhaps we may ask for the grace that we may meditate on Heaven. 

The famed spiritual writer, Thomas a Kempis acknowledges that, "the joys of Heaven are beyond our present comprehension" but he allows that, "it is both possible and helpful to try to imagine them". It is a Kempis's insights on Heaven that guide me, I'm trying to let my visual senses be consumed by the sight of Heaven as, "a great city miraculously constructed from the purest gold and the most precious gemstones. Each of its gates is miraculously fashioned from a single, immense pearl." 

a Kempis invites us, "consider, my friend, the infinite and unutterable joy which shall arise from the pure and direct perception of the Most Holy Trinity! For the Holy Trinity, mysterious and beyond all conception, is the perfect archetype and ultimate epitome of all that is beautiful, all that is good...you will know all ther eis to know, and you shall possess all that your heart desires - rather, even more than your heart desires and could ever desire". WOW - the mere thought is dizzying - that if we get through the pearly gates we will have all our desires met but also, too, desires that we cannot desire in this life. This could be our perpetual seat in eternity; because we will be "united with the boundless power, the infinite glory, and the perfect immortality of the Godhead itself." 

If we reach Heaven, we will have, "immortality...complete with unimpaired liberty and agility and celestial beauty...all of this you will enjoy with absolute and perfect security."

We may also entertain how much joy there is to be had in the company of Our Lady, the angels, the apostles, the martyrs, the virgins, and the confessors and the husbands and wives who had holy marriages. To be among the perfect! a Kempis delights us with his wisdom, "each will delight ecstatically in the beatitude of the other". This alone caused my heart to soar because in this world, so few are happy with the happiness of others. In Heaven, it is the opposite. In fact, if I may add anything as to how to meditate on Heaven, it is to think of the worst aspects of this life, and then imagine them as their opposite; from wholly bad to wholly good. Jealousies and resentments are gone, replaced by elation at another's good fortune, anger and discord are replaced by peace while broken relationships are no more; there is only unity and harmony. 

Of course, while we are in this exile, we may have recourse to the Saints, who while they no longer suffer as we do, can use their place before the Heavenly Throne to win us the graces to get through this grim passage from which they have escaped forever. They want us to have their joy. 

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This post was informed by the marvelous, Meditations on Death, Preparing for Eternity by Thomas a Kempis. Raphael's masterpiece, Disputation on the Holy Sacrament furnishes this post.