BITE-SIZE THEOLOGY (99) – How does one qualify for heaven?

Rev José Mario O Mandía
jmom.honlam.org

Jesus told his apostles that “many, I tell you, will seek to enter [heaven] and will not be able” (Luke 13:24). So what are the requirements that will qualify us for eternal happiness? The CCC (1023) answers: “Those who die in God’s grace and friendship and are perfectly purified live for ever with Christ.”

There are two aspects in this requirement.

(1) “Die in God’s grace and friendship.” At the moment of death, one should be aware of not having any unforgiven mortal or grave sin, because one mortal sin is equivalent to the complete rejection of God, and everything else that He has promised to give us.

Sanctifying grace is like a passport that identifies us as citizens of heaven. By sinning gravely, we throw away that passport. We need to recover it through the Sacrament of Reconciliation before we can claim the right to be admitted to heaven.

(2) “Perfectly purified.” It means that one should have been cleansed of all the consequences of sin. We have many chances to be purified: either (a) here on earth, passively or actively, or (b) in the afterlife (purgatory). We shall talk more about this in the next essay.

We will need to be purified because heaven is a direct experience of God. “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood”  (I Corinthians 13:12). Unless the soul is purged and cleansed of imperfections and blemishes, it will not be capable of enjoying this direct vision, much like a man with poor eyesight cannot appreciate a landscape or a painting.

In order to understand beatific vision, we need to distinguish four levels in our knowledge of God:

(1) The first level is knowing him through our reason. This way of knowing God is indirect, and goes by way of God’s creatures. We get to know the Designer through his design, the Creator through his creatures. (Cf BST 1)

(2) The second level is knowledge through faith (lumen fidei). God gives our mind the capacity to accept and know truths which human reason alone cannot discover. Faith can be compared to night-vision goggles that make it possible for the user to see things which other people cannot see in the dark. This is also an indirect knowledge of God, by which we know Him through Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition as explained by the Magisterium. (Cf BST 1)

(3) We advance further in our knowledge of God through the gift of wisdom, one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit that makes us “experience” God and his wisdom, goodness and power. This knowledge is a direct kind of knowledge, similar to being introduced to someone in person. (Cf BST 76)

(4) The highest kind of knowledge is the light of glory (“lumen gloriae”) or beatific vision, attainable only in heaven, by which we are given the ability to contemplate God face to face. It is like being given a special type of eyeglasses that permit us to look at the sun directly. “Because of his transcendence, God cannot be seen as he is, unless he himself opens up his mystery to man’s immediate contemplation and gives him the capacity for it. The Church calls this contemplation of God in his heavenly glory ‘the beatific vision’” (CCC 1028). (Photo by Robert Collins on Unsplash)