I am not a person who spends much time thinking about Heaven, other than at the Gloria and the Sanctus, and that’s more about what happens at Mass than general-purpose Heaven-contemplation. I attempted a round of “think about Heaven!” the other week as a mind trick to push aside some unwanted thoughts (the way you can sing a different, better song to drive out an earworm) and it was a struggle.
What is Heaven like? No wrong answers! I prompted myself with my inner teacher voice.
Best answer I could come up with at the time was: Um . . . Wyoming?
And I mean: Wyoming’s pretty good. Maybe I’d be holier if I spent more time there. Will test that theory and report back.
Meanwhile, there was a thing that happened to me on Corpus Christi.
It was the Sunday that the feast is often observed, and I was out at a tiny country parish on the eastern edge of nowhere. After Mass (lovely) there was a Eucharistic procession around the churchyard. As we processed, we cycled through a handful of well-known communion hymns, primarily the contemporary classics.
Some of you know I can be fussy about music. I was not fussy that morning (so some of you have your eucharistic miracle right there).
Indeed, I was moved to tears by “One Bread, One Body” and some of the other hymns that have a central focus on the communal nature of the shared faith among those gathered at the Eucharist.
I held it together, but if I hadn’t been doing my fake-stoic routine, I would have been totally bawling. It was just so beautiful. There I was, this random person who’d shown up, total stranger, plonked down far from home . . . and it was my Church. Other people who believe the same things I do, who set aside some portion of their lives for the same things I do . . . those lyrics hit me hard. Hard and good.
We don’t go to church to worship ourselves. It would be a grave mistake to think that the Catholic faith is about the Catholic people. But actually? The central mystery of the Catholic faith does happen to involve the salvation of people who otherwise had no hope. It is about people getting into Heaven. So yeah, it’s all about Jesus, but also? Jesus has a Bride.
Photo: Cattle drive near Pinedale, WY, courtesy of the US Fish & Wildlife Service, CC 2.0 / Public Domain, via Wikimedia. I’m not saying all cows go to Heaven. I’m saying the preponderance of evidence suggests there are cattle there. Fight me.