By Joel Padgett
Connecting Creed and Life
Editor’s note: For 2025, the weekly Connecting Faith and Life column will be renamed Connecting Creed and Life. To celebrate the 2025 Jubilee Year and the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, the columns will consist of reflections on the Nicene Creed, corresponding with related paragraphs in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC).
“And the Life of the World to Come” (cf. CCC 1020-1029).
There’s a philosophical principle that states that we should “begin with the end in mind.” In fact, Stephen Covey lists it as his second habit in “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.” However, its roots run through St. Thomas Aquinas, and at least as far back as Aristotle, although their way of expressing it may sound a bit complicated to our ears: “The end, although first in intention, is last in execution.” In other words, when we set about working toward a goal, the goal is the last thing that we actually reach, even though it’s the first thing that we have to have in mind if we ever hope to arrive.
I think that this principle sheds a lot of light on why our contemporary world (and perhaps many of us) struggles so often through life. One of the greatest crises of today’s world — I believe — is a crisis of purpose. What is our purpose in life? As Christians, we believe that we were created for heaven. So I guess we could actually say that one of the greatest crises of today’s world is a crisis of heaven! And from the way that heaven is sometimes presented — if presented at all — it kind of makes sense.
First, how often is heaven actually talked about? Or, more personally, how often do I really think about heaven? Do I sincerely yearn for it? Is it the motivation behind my every action, or at least the vast majority of them? If not, why?
Secondly, what is my understanding of heaven? It seems like typical descriptions of heaven can tend to fall into two equally unattractive caricatures. On the one hand, there’s the “saccharine” heaven, which tends to be the equivalent of a glorified Candyland that lacks all substance beneath its fluff. On the other hand, there’s a sort of “boring as hell” heaven, as if someone were frozen for all eternity, staring — in a cold, near lifeless fashion — at an equally frozen divinity.
If either of these caricatures are in any way part of our conception of heaven, it’s no wonder that people neither have a burning desire to be there, nor an ardent longing to tell others about it. Yet, almost everything in our lives rides on our belief in and understanding of heaven. Why? Because there is a God, and this God is a Trinity, and we were created by the Trinity for a purpose, which is to have a perfect life, consisting in a “communion of life and love with the Trinity, with the Virgin Mary, the angels and all the blessed” (CCC 1024). This is what heaven is, and it is “the ultimate end and fulfillment of the deepest human longings, the state of supreme, definitive happiness” (CCC 1024). In creating us, the “end in mind” that God had for us was to give us a share in his very life, living in perfect communion with him and with all those in heaven in perfect beatitude. If my “end in mind” doesn’t line up with God’s “end in mind” for me, my life will ultimately be frustrated.
That being said, it is a challenge to present the reality of heaven in both an attractive and accurate way, but I do think that allegories sometimes get at the beauty of heaven in a more memorable manner. In the final book of the Chronicles of Narnia, “The Last Battle,” the joyful exultation of those approaching heaven is: “Further up and further in!” The beloved Mr. Tumnus would go on to compare heaven to an onion, “except that as you continue to go in and in, each circle is larger than the last.”
In terms somewhat reminiscent of the conclusion of St. John’s Gospel, the story of Narnia comes to a close as heaven opens up before its main characters, whose earthly lives had just ended: “The things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us, this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them, it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”