The Difficult Road to Heaven

The Difficult Road to HeavenThe key to living the Catholic life is keeping your eye on the goal. The goal is obvious: the Kingdom of God, eternal life, the fulfillment of our destiny as those created by God, fully human and fully alive. One does not get there on a skateboard. It is not that we have to live on a prairie in the 1600’s to get to Heaven, which likewise would be a hard life; it is that at times the Christian life can be hard as it is.

Today, we hear Paul and Barnabas warn the new disciples that they would have to experience tribulations to enter the Kingdom of God and that is the point.

Hear this homily as it was delivered

We make a great error when we feel that our journey to the Heavenly Kingdom should be easy. Rather it can be a struggle filled with unavoidable difficulties, painful moments, times when we are tempted to despair and even worse. St. John Chrysostom reminded his parishioners that it is exactly at those moments, when we embrace the Gospel nevertheless that not only do we grow closer to Christ, we evangelize others to the kingdom through those moments.

He was speaking about those who were looking for signs and miracles as indicators of the presence of God The great saint explained that really true preaching of the gospel is not through such supernatural events as much as perseverance through trial. That speaks more loudly of the truth of Christ. It is in our most difficult times that we may be tempted to give up and despair, but we,  instead, embrace Christ, bring our pain to prayer and we grow stronger.

Fr. Roger Luis of Canção Nova in Brazil teaches that the most important thing we must do is to persevere at all times.

This can be difficult. There are trials, difficulties, stresses and, of course, demands on our time and we can focus on them more than on Christ.

St James admonishes us to consider it pure joy when that happens: “for you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. And let perseverance be perfect, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” (James 1:3-4 NABRE)

It his book on Acedia, Benedictine Abbot Jean-Charles Nault, O.S.B. teaches that another reality is that we have a calling to live Christian joy. He explains that is to focus on Christ even in our most painful or darkest moments. He quotes a Carthusian Monk when he writes: “Sadness is looking at oneself; Joy is Looking to God.”

It is through our painful times when we focus on Christ, that we learn the deepest wisdom of God and, as the Bible says, clearly it is through suffering we learn obedience. When we are obedient to Christ we learn the wisdom of God to its highest level. In fact, if there is any temptation that the devil wants to give you, it is to run from trial and tribulation and to run from suffering at all costs. When we do that, we actually run from the very tools that Christ uses to lead us to Him.

The saints often reminded many of their hearers that just as Jesus had to suffer prior to enter into his glory, so too may we.

What do we do with suffering? We don’t just experience it, we bring it to Christ. We bring our sufferings into our prayer and we ask the Lord to help us with this suffering, but also we offer it up for the benefit of others including our loved ones,  family and those most in need of prayer. When we bring our suffering to the Lord, we can embrace it in a way that it helps us and others in their salvation.

The saints also taught that those who suffer in Christ also find consolation for their suffering from Christ Himself. It is in our deepest pain that we can say: “Lord may your will be done,” and we see a whole different side of that same suffering. It may not go away, but there may come a time where we do not rejoice in the pain but rather in the conquests that God uses through this pain for our salvation and that of others.

But there is more any time we embrace the gospel over drowning our sorrows or pain, we grow in Christ and we grow closer to salvation. You may be suffering from many trials that may tempt you to leave the faith, other loved ones may have already done so, but do not despair. Your darkest moments will bring you to the brightest light in Christ.

It does not matter what it is, whether it is a loss of a job, an illness, a divorce, a severe trauma, even a long term trauma, the tragedy of the loss of a child. Our tribulations will lead us closer to Christ if we just bring Christ our pain and ask him to help us persevere.

St. Rose of Lima taught if we knew how much our pains led us to Christ we would ask for more of them. For she knew the truth. We will have to suffer many tribulations to enter the Kingdom of God. They are after all a gold ticket to the glory of the Kingdom.

This whole take on trial and tribulation is not only the key to Heaven, it is at the very bottom of good and evil. The irony is that we must suffer to enter into Heaven in which there will be no more suffering as our second reading teaches, however, if we reject Christ and run from suffering, then our destiny is the exact opposite, eternal suffering separated from Christ and His Kingdom.

This simple reality, the Catechism teaches, is at the base of the battle for our final salvation. What is it that the atheistic forces are seeking to create in our world? It can be summed up in the word “Imagine”: John Lennon’s song which is really nothing more than Karl Marx’s vision. What is all this called? Utopianism. The belief that we do not need God and that we can build a perfect world without Him.

The Catechism teaches: Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the “mystery of iniquity” in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. (CCC 675)

In other words, there will come a form of political philosophy that will promise freedom from all suffering and the exaltation of humanity in exchange for rejecting Christ and the entire hope of eternal life He offers us. (Sound familiar by the way)

Saints Paul and Barnabas speak a powerful truth. When we embrace the unavoidable tribulation that comes our way and bring it to Christ, we will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. When we run from it and seek only our own exaltation we will be denied that prize. Sin leads us away from the Kingdom by promising us, falsely, freedom from suffering; Christ leads us to the Kingdom by following Him after we pick up our cross and carry it until such time as we lay it down in the Glory of the Kingdom of Heaven.

 

God bless you,

Fr. Robert J Carr

Fr. Carr is member of the Segundo Elo  of the Canção Nova Community. He is the pastor of Holy Trinity Quincy, MAand is the editor of this blog. He is the author of several books, blogs and hundreds of videos all of which you may find on Youtube You can follow him on twitter as @frbobcarr and on Google plus as+FrRobertCarr. Thoughts, comments on the homily? Let us know at Facebook

Bibliography:

Nault, Jean-Charles, O.S.B.The Noonday Devil: Acedia, The Unnamed Evil of Our Times (San Francisco; 2015; Ignatius Press [Kindle version])

John Chrysostom. (1889). Homilies of St. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, on the Acts of the Apostles. In P. Schaff (Ed.), J. Walker, J. Sheppard, H. Browne, & G. B. Stevens (Trans.), Saint Chrysostom: Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistle to the Romans (Vol. 11, p. 230). New York: Christian Literature Company.

Catechism of the Catholic Church (2nd Ed., pp. 176–177). Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference.

Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New American Bible, revised edition© 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All Rights Reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner.