Heaven, our final destination
Someone said that not all trespassing is bad. Remember, in college, in a scale of 1-5, when you got a “tres” (3) for a grade, that was passing grade. “Tres,” passing!
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In today’s Gospel (Lk. 13, 22-30) Jesus tells us to “strive to enter through the narrow gate” to heaven. There is no way we can control or manipulate our salvation. There is no trespassing to heaven! There is no way we can gatecrash nor buy our way to heaven.
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Heaven cannot be bought. But there are some people who think that through their good works, they can merit heaven. There are even those who think they can buy heaven with their money, or with their religion. Good works, money and religion are useless if they are without personal obedience to God’s commands, and the grace and mercy from Him who alone can save us and has already saved us.
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Some people refuse to go into the heaven-bound escalator, or keep getting off it because of worldly agenda and attachments. The vehicle is there for us, but all too often we do not take it because we would rather go somewhere else, or we think we can avail of it some other time, someday.
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Many of our people were affected again some weeks ago. We salute our rescue teams whose members literally went out of their way to save others with their crude and meager equipments. We can’t help but ask, where have all the flood control money gone? The funds went somewhere else’ and are in someone else’s pockets! No flood control because of no greed control of our public servants. I hope people who earned so much because of corruption will realize that it is a big, big sin to deprive other people of their rights, and make them suffer while they enjoy without shame the fruits of their greedy corruption. Greed control is what we need most especially those in government!
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It seems that the “narrow gate” analogy in today’s Gospel would fit well in how government money flows in trickles to the poorest of the poor. Elsewhere, the Gospel description of dogs eating crumbs falling from the table of the rich also fits well on how our politicians and government leaders continue to feast while majority of our people continue to fast.
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The rich and the powerful, the so-called “privileged” in this world, should not expect the same privileges in the next life. In other words, we cannot buy heaven. The final reckoning will be clean, honest, clear, and it will not be up to us, but it will be all in God’s wisdom, justice and love.
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Neither can our goodness and whatever merits we have (or think we have) guarantee our entry into heaven. We must go beyond the concept of heaven as a reward for our “merits,” or a final destination. To live and to love in the presence of God now, in good or bad times, in grace or in sin, in happy or sad times, is already heaven, and, in itself, already our reward.
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In humility, only in humility, can we understand who God is, and what heaven is. The proud and the confident belittle God and scorn heaven. On the same count, neither can the self-righteous claim exclusive access to God and heaven by virtue of their own merits. None of us is entitled to go to heaven.
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Aug. 25 is National Heroes’ Day. Let the hero in each one of us come alive and come out. Our leaders are not our heroes. They have been “trespassing” us for the longest time. We must believe and see, and show the hero that is in each and in every one of us.
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Aug. 27 is the Feast Day of St. Monica who continuously prayed for the conversion of her son, Augustine. St. Monica, pray for us, and pray for our country and for the conversion rich and powerful in our country so that they may be kind and compassionate to the people, especially to the poor.
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Aug. 28 is the Feast of St. Augustine who gives hope to us sinners, that there is no sinner without a future, and that there is no saint without a past.
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A moment with the Lord:
Lord, remind us that it profits us nothing if we gain the whole world but in the end, do not make it to heaven, our final destination. Amen.
