Citizen Columns

Citizen Columns >> Answer (February 17th, 2008)

Question

What does your faith group teach about heaven? Will we see our loved ones there?

Answer

We teach that heaven is both a state of existence we look forward to, and which we can experience now.

Life is so brutal and short for so many that most human beings instinctively rebel at the thought that this is all there is. Some never had a chance. Others have long, fulfilling lives with deep personal bonds.

But in both cases, if there is any sense of cosmic justice, life must continue. What a waste of the universe's effort to have life exist for a tiny flash and then die forever. Or for bonds of love to be broken with no hope of being reunited. It is in to this longing for more that prayers for the departed play a big role in Orthodox Christian belief and practice. We ask God at every memorial service to give rest to the departed in a place of brightness, a place of rest, where there is no sickness, nor sorrow nor sighing, but only everlasting, abundant life.

St Irenaeus (+ c. 200 AD) even included the family dog in his vision of loved ones reunited in heaven. The Book of Revelation takes the image further and pictures heaven as a purified city, the New Jerusalem, with all the relationships a city implies. It's not a solitary hermitage, or even a loving family, but a vibrant community united by the love of God. Nothing of love can be lost in this vision of heaven.

Wishful thinking? Maybe. But Christians believe that they are witnesses to the first confirmation of these hopes, in the resurrected Christ. And that's why, every Sunday, we continue to sing, "I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come."

Father John Jillions