What is Heaven? It is life lived in the presence of God by doing His will. The Catholic teaching is that Heaven begins in this life at baptism. To test our faith, God remains partially veiled to us in this life whereas in the next He will fully reveal Himself. Nevertheless, in a real way, Heaven begins now, when we live in His presence and busy ourselves with whatever He asks.
For each person, God puts together a unique set of circumstances in this life that will be Heaven for them. This is their vocation, how God calls them to labor on His behalf and where He will meet them and make them super abundant in virtue and the fruits of the Holy Spirit. We all have different temperaments, hopes, dreams, and opportunities. God is putting it all together and waiting for us to step into that blessed space of Heaven for us (e.g. our vocation). When God puts something together we will notice two things:
- organic, a flow. There will be some things that will “just flow” organically, on a natural and supernatural level for each of us. There are so many things we take for granted about ourselves, but we are all more uniquely gifted than we realize. The truth is that we have our own way of doing things, and there are certain activities that we assume other people could easily do, but we actually do well and other people would do them less effectively. Those activities and pastimes are “a good fit” even if they challenge us. We can try pursuing another lifestyle, but we will find that there is a lifestyle that just flows and works somehow. It just works and feels right. This is a sign of a vocation.
2. Fruitful. God makes some things fruitful in our lives and not others. God opens some doors and not others. He makes different things fruitful in our lives and opens different doors for each of us. What worked great for us may not be beneficial for another person based on the different ways that God makes our lives fruitful.
Where there is an organic flow and we are fruitful, is our vocation and Heaven for us. That is the little corner of the Kingdom of Heaven that God has tasked us with and called us to grow and care for. There are as many different vocations, or Heavens, as there are people. We have each been formed and capacitated to serve and thrive in different ways.
One of the most tempting and toxic things we can do is “grass is greener” towards the success and well being of another person. They do something well that is our highest idea of fulfillment and achievement. We look at ourselves and ask, “why didn’t I achieve that?” or “why doesn’t my life look that way?” We may try, from sheer will power, to create the life we think we should have in imitation of the other person. If it worked so well for them and is so fulfilling for them, then we want it for ourselves. We try to claim someone else’s Heaven and make it our own.
While it’s true that we can and should be inspired by others, we should keep it to emulating their virtues, and not trying to replicate the actual circumstances of their lives. According to the Bible, human beings make plans, but God guides their steps (Proverbs 16:19). God is providential over circumstances. It is not for us to create our circumstances from scratch. God gets to decide what He wants to shape each of us into. He is the potter, and we are the clay (Isaiah 64:8). We don’t get to choose where God will meet us and prosper us. This is another way of saying that we don’t get to choose what will be Heaven for us. It is foolish to go chasing after someone else’s Heaven, or think that we can architect any particular Heaven for ourselves from sheer will power.
What keeps us chasing other people’s Heaven is sometimes FOMO, fear of missing out because we don’t understand what Heaven is. We think it is a particilar place or destination. We don’t understand that it is fundamentally a relationship with God, and an optimal state of being that flows from that. When we understand this, we will give ourselves full permission to rest in that place that Heaven is for us. We don’t have to be thrown off by the fact that Heaven is different for someone else. If wonderful things are happening “over there,” that is no threat to our Heaven. There is no need to abandon what we’re doing in case it’s even better elsewhere. It won’t be better: our best is our vocation, what God has put together uniquely for us. Our job is to thrive where God plants us. Mysteriously, this requires some discipline.
God decides what will be Heaven for us, and we can choose to embrace that and step into it, or not. In many ways, this is an extension of the moral choices God asks us to make. Heaven is a place of holiness, as summed up by the Beatitudes and the Ten Commandments. We can choose to live or not live virtuously, but that does nothing to change what Heaven is. Heaven will always be what it is, and to enter it, I have to conform myself to what It is. The same is true of our vocation. There is a path to Heaven, our vocation, which God has willed for each of us. We can choose to accept or not accept it, but that will not change the truth about our vocation. Our vocation, Heaven on earth for us, will always be what it is. It’s up to us to accept it and conform our lives to it.
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