I’d like to wrap
up this series of reflections about the nature of heaven with a meditation on
the necessity of humility for entrance into eternal peace and reconciliation
with God.
In my last full
post (Part VI) on repentance, I noted that, in order to enter heaven, we will
have to repent of all our sins.
Every sin is a choice of not-love and not-God, and the will cannot
continue to be attached to that which is not-love and not-God when we are in
the fullness of God’s presence. That means we will have to let go of each and
every sin against God, ourselves, and others if we want to live with God for
eternity.
Relinquishing all
that sin, and admitting that we were wrong in choosing it, is going to require
a tremendous amount of humility. I
really wanted to write and post this meditation on this past Sunday, which was
the 22nd Sunday in OT C, and could almost be called “Humility Sunday”
because the Readings highlighted this virtue so strongly (Sir 3:17-29 and Luke
14:7-14, “the one who humbles himself will be exalted”).
Lack of humility
is going to be a major impediment for many to enter into heaven. Can we really imagine Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong,
Pol Pot, and other dictators who were virtually worshiped while alive and
caused the violent deaths of millions of persons to stand before God and the
cosmos and admit they were wrong: that there actually is a God, that human beings
are in his image, and their political programs were all but completely opposed
to human dignity? I would hope they
would be, but I’m not sure why we should expect that figures like this would be
inspired in the next life to undergo a radical change in mentality from what
they maintained in this life. Men like
this who enjoyed godlike dictatorial power (or better, Satan-like dictatorial
power) in this life will experience great difficulty—I suggest—in mustering the
humility to acknowledge before God that their lives inflicted untold evil and
suffering on so many persons made in God’s image. It seems to me more likely that, rather than
undergo that kind of humility, they would choose to maintain their own version
of reality, in which they were the champion of utopian progress for mankind,
rather than enter heaven, where the truth must be acknowledged by all.
Of course, it’s
easy to use evil dictators as examples, but humility is going to be an
impediment for the entrance to heaven for far more people whose sins never made
headlines. There are so many people who have been so cruel to their spouses—to the
very person they swore to love and cherish until death, and with whom they
brought children in to the world—and yet have rationalized their actions and
live in denial of what they have done.
Millions have done this—will they have the humility at the particular
judgment to do that which they were never willing to do in this life, namely,
admit their infidelity and seek reconciliation—at least in principal—with the
spouse they sinned against? This is one
of the reasons that the collapse of the institution of marriage within society
and within the Church is such a catastrophe.
The wreckage of failed marriages leaves so many people in tangled webs
of unreconciliation with persons with whom they are so intimately connected—and
yet to enter heaven it will be necessary to repent of all the pain we inflicted
on persons who were so close to us. The
truth of what we did will have to be acknowledged because in the presence of
God, who is the Truth, no non-truth can be maintained.
I know a Protestant
clergyman who had an affair with a woman in his congregation. When it was
discovered, he blamed his wife for the failure of his marriage and divorced
her. After marrying a third woman much
younger than himself, he continued to pastor churches, explaining his life
history to people by insisting his first wife had “left him.” Is such a man going
to have the humility on the day of judgment to admit that it was his
infidelity that was at the root of this chain of events, and that contrary to
the teaching of the very Jesus he claimed to preach (Matt 19:8-9), he had
abandoned his true wife and lived in adultery with another?
Or let us consider
the many cases of priests and even bishops who have committed sexual abuse against
multiple minors and been removed from ministry, yet maintain their innocence
and never apologize to their victims or make any external sign of repentance
even up to their death. Will these men
do in the next life that which they refused to do in this one, namely: admit
the gravity of their wrongdoing and seek reconciliation with their
victims? Yet, is it possible for them to
enter eternal blessedness and peace without admitting this wrongdoing
and seeking to be reconciled with God and with others?
I think it will be
very hard for those who enjoyed prestige and power in this life—whether in
society or in the Church—to muster the humility to acknowledge before God and
the world the depth of the evils they committed, yet without such repentance it
would not seem possible to plunge into the ocean of transparent self-giving
love that is heaven.
The private person
who never claimed to be much is going to have a much easier time acknowledging
his sinfulness before God than the great political and ecclesiastical leaders
who considered themselves the heralds of a new utopia for mankind, but were
actually vain, self-seeking, and deluded, to the great harm of those they lead.
Nonetheless, only
the saints will have an easy time of this.
The rest of us so rationalize our sins against others, especially if we
consider those others to be persons of little worth—whether because they are
children, or a different race, or a different political party, etc.—that when
we are confronted with the reality of our sin against such persons, it will be
a great trial of our humility to admit that “I, yes, I” committed something so
evil against a fellow human being.
Pride is
traditionally understood as the root of the downfall of Satan, who rebelled
against God because it did not seem just to him that he, a higher being, should
serve lowly humans. The true God is
humble, and does not shrink from serving lower beings; indeed, he does not
shrink from taking on the nature of his creatures and suffering abuse and death
at their hands. That is the difference
in humility between God and Satan. God is
humble. But this truth is part of the
uniqueness of Christian revelation.
There are many theistic religions, but few in which God is humble. Many hold humility to be incompatible with
the dignity of the divine nature. But we
claim the greatest revelation of the Triune God is in Jesus Christ, who humbled
himself to take on a human nature and suffer for our salvation. Yet it is truly remarkable that so many of us
who claim to follow him are so resistant to embracing his model of
humility. This is a failure to embrace the Holy Spirit, who is able to infuse in us this divine virtue.
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