Eternal Happiness

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

Mother Angelica, the founder of EWTN, tells a story of how one time in her convent they needed to raise money.

They decided to bake some peanuts and to sell them outside a big ball game that was taking place somewhere nearby.

These nuns made these peanuts, and they went off there with little bags to sell them outside the ball game.

Very soon they were approached by what could be called the local mafia, telling them that if they wanted to sell things there, they needed to pay some sort of a “bribe,” in inverted commas, to the local mafia, to be able to sell things there.

They weren't very happy about this, and they got together and they discussed this issue. They decided in that case they weren't going to sell the peanuts—because, she said, "If we're going to go to hell, it certainly is not going to be over peanuts.”

This was a very practical way of putting into practice the doctrine of hell.

Christ speaks very clearly about hell in Scripture.

“Depart from me, you cursed ones, to the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you did not give me to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me” (Matt. 25:41-43).

Our Lord identifies Himself with every single person and says, for a lack of charity we may be condemned to hell.

He invites us to have that possibility before our mind always: we can still go to hell.

Christ has not programmed us like robots to go to heaven. He has given us freedom. We are free to go to heaven or we are free to go to hell.

We would be crazy to want to go to hell, but there's a little bit of that craziness in each one of us.

We need to be careful to keep ourselves far away from the pathways to hell, so that we keep ourselves firmly on the pathway to heaven.

There was a samurai warrior once in Japan who saw a little Catholic monk walking along the street, a Catholic friar. This samurai warrior had often heard about heaven and hell but didn't really understand what these things were.

He went to the Catholic monk and asked him, could he tell him what heaven and hell meant. This little, small friar looked up at this enormous warrior, said to him, “You, I couldn't tell you anything. You're a disgrace to the warrior class” (which is a very respected class in Japan). “You're this, you're that, you're no good, you're et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,” insulting him to the high heavens.

The samurai warrior was furious. He had never been spoken to like this before. Such impertinence from this little Catholic friar!

He drew his sword, and he lifted it up above his head in order to bring it down and slay this impertinent little monk in two. When he was at the top of his swing, the friar said, "That's hell.”

Suddenly the samurai warrior realized: this little friar has risked his life to teach me what hell is. In the moment of that anger and fury, he suddenly understood that he was full of the flames of hell and anger, about to kill this guy. Now he understood what hell was.

A new calm began to come over him. He calmed down completely. All the bad feeling and bitterness and hatred sort of drifted away and was replaced by a great spirit of gratitude to this little friar who had risked his life to teach him what hell was.

A new calm came, he brought down his sword, and he began to smile. The friar said, "And that's heaven.” The samurai warrior was very, very happy.

There was a parish priest who was coming in off the altar, having said Mass in Kansas City one time. There was a tremendous heat wave at the time.

He said to his assistant priest, who was about to go out onto the altar, "Better if you don't give any homily because it's too hot in this tremendous heat. People are very uncomfortable, so maybe, just skip the homily.”

But the second priest had prepared his homily. He was very interested to give it. He remonstrated a little bit with the parish priest.

He decided to give in, and he said, “Okay, but just keep it very short.”

He went out; he started the Mass. Eventually he came to the moment of the homily: “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

And he said to the people, “I expect that you are very hot in this tremendous heat, very uncomfortable.”

People were fanning themselves down through the church. They were shifting uncomfortably in their seats, and they were nodding their head in agreement.

He said, "Well, just make sure that you don't go to hell. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” That was the end of the homily.

Hell is a very uncomfortable place. It is a place where we are denied the vision of God forever. We experience what's called the pain of loss. That for which we have been created is denied us.

If you ever lose your glasses or your keys or your pen, or something that you're trying to find, or a paperclip—you're looking everywhere for it and you're looking under the chair and you can't see it. You can't find it.

That frustration of not being able to find that for which you're looking: that frustration—multiplied by eternity—is what hell is.

The frustration of not being able to achieve that for which we have been created: that's what the pain of loss is.

We have been created for God. “Our hearts are restless, Lord, until they rest in you” (St. Augustine, Confessions).

To be deprived of that is an enormous frustration. That's the greatest pain of hell.

Together with that pain there is the sense pain: the pain of the senses, the flames, the burning.

Hell is a place that's worth avoiding. It's worth doing everything we can to avoid going there.

Often, we think of hell as a place. The Catechism of the Catholic Church refers to hell more as a state: a voluntary state of loss of God, of being without Him.

It is something we choose. We could have chosen to get to heaven: to do everything right, to lead happy lives here in this world, and then to go to heaven and be happy forever and forever and forever.

Or we could have chosen the opposite and end up in hell. Human freedom is a very dangerous thing. It's easy for us to use our freedom badly.

This world invites us to love things and to use people. Christ invites us to use things and to love people. One is a pathway to hell; the other is a pathway to heaven.

If we look around us, we might see that there have been many hells on earth: in concentration camps, in prisons, in all sorts of places of injustice, of persecution.

But those places, when they're lived with God, history tells us, are also bearable. God can give us hope. He can keep us looking up. He can help us to remember what this real world is all about.

Many years ago, I was going out to say Mass early one morning in Manila. It was the early 1980s, the marathons had just begun, and there was a marathon in that city that I didn't know about.

It was taking place that morning, and I had to cross the main street of the city. I had to wait and let the marathon pass. I was delayed by ten minutes.

I was late for the Mass, but I got a bird's eye view of all the runners in this marathon.

Some people were running very badly. Some people were running very well. Some people looked as though they should have stopped running in marathons about twenty years previously.

Roughly, you could divide all the people there into three different groups:

Those who had not done any training for the marathon; maybe who had entered it over a joke the previous night, or over a beer the previous night.

Those who had done some training, but maybe hadn't really pushed themselves.

And those who had trained very well.

The ones who hadn't really done any training—they were the ones that really quickly got a pain in their side. They dropped out of the race very quickly.

Those who had done some training, they still got a pain in their side, but they were able to keep going because they had done some training, although they hadn't pushed themselves too much. They were the ones with the looks of agony on their faces.

The third group were those that had taken the race seriously.

They drank all the right fruit juices. They had gone over the course before. They knew where to turn left, where to turn right. They knew where there were hills, where they had to conserve their breathing, all this sort of little details.

They were pacing themselves through the race. They were cruising along in the middle of the road. They were running like champions, and these were the people that were going to cruise home and win the race.

Roughly, you could say that those three types of runners represent those who go to hell, those who go to purgatory, and those who go to heaven.

Those who go to hell have not taken the race seriously. They have not lived their life well. They have lived a life purely attached to the material things of this world, not aware of their soul, not taking any care of their soul.

Those who go to purgatory are those who maybe have taken a little bit of care, but perhaps not as much as they might have.

The third type of runner is the runner who has taken the race seriously. They have looked after their spiritual life. They have cherished the sacraments.

They have made the effort to grow in their spiritual life through prayer, through formation, through listening to the things that Scripture and the Church tell them.

Those are the people who run well. They run like a champion, and they cruise home to win the race.

Not only that, but they run so well that God wants them to have a little bit of air in hand so that they can draw close to those who may be a little bit behind and help many people over the finishing line.

God wants each one of us to run like that third type of runner, to run like a champion.

“Be you perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). We are destined to live that type of life.

If you go fishing some time and you find that there's a fish that comes out of the water; and if you’re fishing in a place that's hot and you find that the sun is burning down on that place, on the grass, on the sand, on the rocks; and you take the fish up out of the water, and you place it among those rocks—then you’ll find the fish will jump all over the place, because the fish was not meant to be out of the water.

For the fish to be on that rock, that maybe is now very hot, that's hell for the fish, because that's not the way he was supposed to be, or not the place where he was supposed to be.

Even if you take that fish and hold it one inch above the water, that fish will still wriggle like mad. He may be very close to the water, but that's not where he is created to be.

It's only in the water that the fish will swim around happily. That is the environment, its natural habitat. That's where it has ease of movement.

Just as the fish has been created to be in the water, we have been created to be with God.

Any loss of that is hell, just like the loss of the water is hell for the fish. That's what the pain of loss is all about.

If we go to purgatory, that loss is not eternal; it's temporal. It's still pain of loss. There's sense pain there also.

We know it won’t last forever, but we also know from the saints that the pains of purgatory are something to be avoided. Something very serious.

“The least pain of purgatory,” says St. Thomas Aquinas, “is greater than the greatest pain on earth” (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Appendix I, Question 2).

You can imagine what the greatest pain on earth might be, and then to think that purgatory is worse than that. Then it's worthwhile staying out of purgatory.

We shouldn't have a mentality that says, ‘As long as I get to purgatory, I'll be okay.’

You've got to aim at heaven. That is why the Church says the goal of our life is holiness and apostolate.

These are the serious things that God wants us to strive for, so that we can always look forward to the eternal wedding feast.

John Paul II used to say that marriage in this world is a preparation for marriage in the next. We're only passing through.

St. Josemaría said something similar, that marriage is a pathway to holiness (Josemaría Escrivá, Conversations, Point 91).

If something happens in our marriage, if there's some cross or some difficulty, or something we never expected would happen to us, or something went wrong, never mind.

The real marriage comes later. It's all a preparation for the eternal wedding feast.

God wants us to dream about heaven, think about it, foster in your soul the glorious hope of heaven.

Heaven needs us to hope, to be full of joy, to want to run like a champion, to do the will of God in everything that comes to us.

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven” (Matt. 7:21).

We have to try and do that will, and be very clear and very aware of the pathways that lead to heaven. We have to know the way to heaven.

Venerable Fulton Sheen tells a story of how one time he was going to give a talk in the town hall of Philadelphia, and he lost his way.

There were some kids in the street, and he stopped and he asked them the way to the town hall.

One kid looked up at him and said, "What do you want to go there for?”

He says, “I'm going to give a lecture.”

“And what about?”

The lecture was about some lofty, eschatological topic, but he didn't want to complicate the child's life too much. So he says, “It's a lecture about heaven and how to get there.”

And this gum-chewing, brash, American kid looked up at him and said, "How are you going to give a lecture about heaven and how to get there if you don't even know the way to the town hall?”

Very important for us to know the way to heaven. Certain pathways lead to heaven and certain pathways lead to hell.

There may be people around us who are on pathways to hell. St. Josemaría in The Way says, “There is a hell. … Echo it for me, at the right moment, in the ear of one friend, and of another, and another” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 749).

It’s a very important apostolate that we have, to try and help people to stay out of hell, so that they get on the pathway to heaven; that they look and see that this is where my life has to be directed.

There's something great: eternal happiness. “For every tear will be wiped away” (Rev. 21:4).

“Life is changed, not taken away” (Catechism, Point 1012). We are all destined to eternal life, eternal happiness.

I knew a young person in another country who did so well in their final school exams that they got into Oxford. They got into law in Oxford, which was even more impressive and more difficult. That was in December.

In February, at 19 years of age, they developed leukemia. They died in July. I helped them to die.

There was a moment when they were in the ICU—drips, heart monitors, tubes everywhere, all sorts of things.

There was nothing else that could be done. The doctors told the parents that it was time to turn off the respirator. The respirator was the only thing keeping this child alive. Now it was time to turn it off. There was no moral problem in that.

The parents could not bring themselves to give the decision to turn off the respirator. They had a family conference, and I was called in to try and help them to come to this decision.

There was a moment in the conversation when I said to them, "What else does this world have to offer your daughter? This world has nothing else to offer your daughter: ICUs and drips and heart monitors and respirators. It's over. There's nothing else in this world for your daughter.

“But what is waiting for her? Eternal happiness.”

I was very grateful to the Holy Spirit for that inspiration in that particular moment. I never really thought about it like that before.

Sometimes the eternal truths of our faith can bring great consolation: eternal happiness; death is not the end; we go to enjoy something wonderful.

“Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man the things that God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor. 2:9; Isa. 64:4).

There's a story of a missionary in China who got to know a certain family and was evangelizing some of the younger members of the family. The lawyer father was not very happy with this and banned the priest from coming or from seeing the children in his family.

But then the 18-year-old daughter, who had been attending his classes, got very sick—tuberculosis—and eventually died.

The missionary, out of respect, went to the wake and happened to meet the lawyer father. This lawyer father said to the missionary, "I want to thank you.”

The missionary said, “You have nothing to thank me for. I didn't do anything for your child. What would you be thanking me for?”

The lawyer said, “Look at the face of my daughter. Look at the smile that's there on her face. She knew that this was not the end. She knew there's something coming after this which is wonderful. You gave her that smile from the things you taught.”

What a beautiful thing if we can help souls to get to heaven.

That's why the apostolate of talking to people about Confession, of cleansing their soul, is so fruitful, so beautiful, and can be so important for helping them to enjoy and get to that eternal happiness.

There was a lady once in a parish, a single lady, who was diagnosed with cancer. She had a number of months in which to live out the cancer.

She was able to plan her funeral. She went to the parish priest and planned every aspect of her funeral.

She told the parish priest, “In my wake, in the last hours, the last Mass that you're going to say in my funeral, I want you to place a fork in my hand.”

The priest was a bit surprised. This was a very unusual request. “Now, why would you want a fork in your hand?"

She said, “In the course of my life, I have attended many parish dinners. And, you know, when the waiter comes around, the person who's serving, and says, ‘Keep your fork,’ it's always very good news.

“Keep your fork because there's dessert coming. Keep your fork because there's something very good coming. Or keep your fork because the best is still to come.”

“I want you to be able to tell people, when they ask you, 'Why did this lady want to have a fork in her hand?’ I want you to be able to tell them: ‘Because the best is still to come.’”

That's doing apostolate on your deathbed and at your funeral—helping people to know that the best is still to come.

Part of the Christian witness that we've been called to give is precisely that: to help people to hope. Hope is a very powerful virtue. It keeps us looking up.

The opposite of hope is discouragement. We need to be very careful with discouragement.

One spiritual writer says that discouragement is one of the most powerful tools of the enemy, of the devil.

There was an auction taking place once in hell, and the devil had put a price on all of his instruments.

There was a price on anger, and there was a price on pride, and there was a price on lust, and there was a price on laziness, and all the other instruments that the devil used.

But the price of discouragement was three times higher than all the other prices.

The person who was touring the auction asked one of the devils who was there, "How come discouragement is so expensive?"

The devil replied, saying, “Because it's my greatest instrument. And the greatest thing about it is that nobody knows it's mine.”

When you see violence or nudity on the television or in a movie, you know the devil isn’t far away.

But when you experience sentiments of discouragement, it doesn't come to you very clearly that this is the devil speaking. He doesn't appear with his horns and with a mask. It's one of his disguises.

We have to flee from discouragement and despair as from the devil himself.

The antidote to that is hope. Put our hope in God. Put our hope in the sacraments. Put our hope in divine grace. Put our hope in the apostolate, in the seeds that we sow.

Nothing is ever lost. “My chosen ones do not work in vain” (cf. Isa. 65:23).

We have to try and inject a great hope into society.

I heard an elderly priest in Asia one time saying that young people today are presented with a great pessimism, partly in the area of academics, partly in politics, partly in many areas, particularly in the area of purity and chastity.

The world seems to say, ‘Don't struggle against your passions. Give in. You can't win’—whereas the pathway to marital happiness is there: chaste, beautiful, conjugal love.

We need to inject hope everywhere. Build a whole new society of what St. John Paul called a “civilization of love” (John Paul II, Letter to Families, February 2, 1994); a “culture of life” (John Paul II, Encyclical, Evangelium Vitae, March 25, 1995), so that we help people to get to heaven.

This is the way of building heaven on earth. Somebody said once if we don't learn to be happy here, we won't learn to be happy later.

People who have learned how to be happy here and to build a happy life, a happy home, with authentic happiness that lasts—those are the people who are going to enjoy eternal happiness, because they are going to know how to win it and how to live it and how to enjoy it.

It is worthwhile thinking about heaven, thinking about the prize. It helps us to see on a daily basis that our struggle to lead good lives, to be holy, to be virtuous is worthwhile.

Struggle to be a good parent, a good mother, a good father, a good student; a person who lives by the commandments of God—it's worthwhile. Everything is worthwhile, because grace is so important; and also, because of the prize. We can look forward to that prize.

If we have grasped the significance of the prize, how many other people are going to be able to show the prize to them so that they too can have an idea of where we're headed, what it's all about.

Whatever crosses they're called to carry, God is at work. There's some other great divine plan taking place here.

Our Lady is the Queen of Heaven. Hail Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy.

The Litany helps us to invoke her under many titles: Comfort of the afflicted, Refuge of sinners, Morning star.

All these titles that we use to address Our Lady can lead us to see her as the gate of heaven.

There's a story told of St. Peter being told by Our Lord to keep the gates of heaven tightly closed, to be ‘very selective about who you allow inside.’

Then Our Lord went away for some time and came back, and He found heaven was full of people. He went to St. Peter and said, “I thought I told you to keep the gates of heaven tightly closed.”

St. Peter said, "Yes, Lord, but every time I go to close the gates, your Mother keeps opening the windows.”

Our Lady is the Gate of Heaven. She shows the pathway, how to get there.

She'll be beside us all the time as she was with the Holy Family, because she also earnestly wants our soul to go to heaven.

Mary, Queen of Heaven, may you help us to understand this great destination of our life on earth. Help us to be very focused and with a greater desire all the time to reach that great goal.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

JM