What does it look like in Heaven?

Thinking about Heaven, the ultimate goal that every Christian should aspire to, is certainly a topic that legitimately arouses his curiosity. Even though the Scriptures said that the “eye has not yet seen, nor ear heard” what God has in store for his faithful, we do not necessarily have to resign ourselves to any thought speculation about Heaven. From the context of Catholic faith and philosophy, by observing the human psyche as well as by observing the created world, Catholic theologians tried to guess what Heaven might be like or the state of the human soul after death.

Of course, these considerations and subsequent knowledge about Heaven are not necessary for the salvation of the soul. It is enough for a Christian to believe that there is a Heaven and that the saved soul will be eternally in a state of bliss. Speculations about what Heaven looks like, what laws apply there, what its status is about the material world, or whether it is a part of the material world, all of this is rather something extra, which can be expected of course with individual faith, but it is not necessarily of interest to everyone. The important thing is to get to Heaven, then we will see. Conversely, unless we work to get there, it’s pointless to speculate about it, because we won’t see it anyway.

In connection with Heaven, certain errors are widespread even among many Catholics. They forget that Heaven is not just some state of the soul, but must be a concrete place where the resurrected and glorified bodies of men will dwell in space.

Another mistake is the idea that all saints will be equal in Heaven. It is a mandatory tax nowadays, but it is not. God is infinitely just and therefore cannot and does not want to disregard the quality of holiness. Some saints will be closer to God, as it was in their case already on Earth, and others a little further, and those who will come to Heaven only from Purgatory will be even further.

Many of today’s people infected with oriental mysticism have an idea of ​​Heaven as something like the state of nirvana in Hinduism and Buddhism, that is, it is some kind of immobility, impersonality, even dissolution in the universe. Christian Heaven is different. In it, a person will have his/her identity preserved, he/she will meet other people, members of his/her family, etc.

The idea of ​​”getting rid of being” that is widespread in the Orient is foreign to Christianity. There, God’s very act of creation is seen as something negative, as a violation of harmony, and human existence is also seen as just a series of sufferings and desires to be rid of. The goal is the annihilation of being.

In Christianity, it is, on the contrary, an elevation of being to a higher quality level and an even greater participation in God’s grace. Therefore, even the Christian Heaven is not a negation of space and matter, but its promotion to a new, more beautiful, and better quality.

Where is Heaven? Heaven is where God is. God is omnipresent, so the position of Heaven can be everywhere. What is necessary for the soul to be in Heaven, that is, to enjoy infinite bliss? She must look at God and participate in Him. This can happen anywhere. Saints and angels are finite beings and they must be located somewhere, especially after the resurrection, where the saints will have a real body, not an ethereal one. The Council of Constantinople in canon no. 10, from the year 543 says: “noncorpus aetherum et figuresphaericam” (it will not be an etheric body, nor spherical. But this does not say what this place is for these bodies, but, naturally, we mean the real place.

Theologians believed that this place, e.g. some star, is already in a glorified state and that the rest of the universe will be similarly transformed at the end of the world. This heavenly world forms the surface of the upper hemisphere, which embraces the Universe from above. We would be below the surface of this hemisphere and the highest sphere of Heaven – the empyrean, above it. St. Thomas believed that Christ ascended above this Heaven with his glorified Body. The other saints, according to the size of their merits, are placed at different distances from Him, in ascending order, that is, in all directions. According to these opinions, Dante’s Heaven is also compiled.

All these are not strictly theological opinions, but rather astronomical and contemporary. It is certain, however, that at least Christ’s Body (certain matter) is in a glorified state and that our Earth will also be transformed into a glorified state one day. Wanting to establish astronomically from the fact that Christ the Lord ascended to Heaven, where he is, is childishly naive. Medieval views about Heaven are astronomically naive and flawed, but ideologically correct.

We are sure that God exists, that Christ and Mary are glorified according to the flesh, that therefore a certain part of the former matter is in a new state, and that souls are in bliss. This invisible world must be found somewhere. Schneider writes: “The spiritual world does not begin where the material world ends, but on the contrary: it dominates it without coming into conflict with it regarding space”.