Roadmap to Heaven

A couple weeks ago, we talked about where we're supposed to go, where this great human journey is supposed to lead every human to ever live. And, to waste no time, every human is created with the purpose of reaching the Beatific Vision – that is, the final destination on our great human journey is seeing God as he is, and therefore being transformed to be like him (as much as a creature can be), and so to know and love and enjoy God forever as only someone made like him can. Or, as John puts it: “What we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). But last Sunday, we wondered how this great human journey could even get started. First of all, our natural powers and their works are by definition incapable of reaching God, no more than it's possible for you to run to the moon. And to make it worse, we're sinners, which puts us in debt (and so under arrest), deformed in will (and so unable to run), and dead in our sins (and so unable to achieve anything). For all those reasons, we can't start.

But, as we said, our mercifully rich God sent his Son into the world, so that by his cross and resurrection, he could overcome all these obstacles. “The reason the Son of God appeared,” says John, “was to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8). “You know that he appeared in order to take away sins” (1 John 3:5). Jesus makes alive, pays the debt, renews our will, even bestows us with supernatural powers capable of reaching God. From the moment we're born again, we share in his death and resurrection. The grace God gives us in that instant both justifies us and sanctifies us. Now his grace is our new operating system. With it, God promptly installs the key system features we can call the theological virtues: faith, hope, and love. They're dispositions to know God, look to God, and unite to God. These are supernatural powers, basic principles that remain when we're spiritually alive, abiding in Christ. God also installs other supernatural programs, infusing us with virtues that can actually implement faith, hope, and love in exciting ways. And, since we'd be naturally clueless at running any of these supernatural programs on our lives, God gives the Holy Spirit as tutorial, guide, and helper by his gifts. God installs all this from the very beginning so as to make us fit for our supernatural destiny.

But it's one thing to set up a computer and have everything installed, and another thing entirely to actually use it for something, isn't it? It's one thing to be equipped as an astronaut to fly to the moon, and another thing to take off or get there. God gives us startling grace the moment we're born again – so much so that, if you got fried by lightning coming up from that water, there's not a shred of doubt you'd wake up to the Beatific Vision the very next instant. But actually having to live out of that grace, out of those virtues, out of those gifts – well, that can be a messier prospect. “No one who abides in him keeps on sinning,” John tells us (1 John 3:6). “No one born of God makes a practice of sinning” (1 John 3:9). “Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil” (1 John 3:8). John does not mince words. If we choose not to cooperate with God in the use of his grace, virtues, and gifts, if we choose to live in ways that steer us off course, then Houston, we have a problem! Some sins deviate from the course just a bit and call for constant course correction, lest they add up and make us miss our goal. Other sins mess with the machinery, placing us in mortal peril, calling for even more radical intervention. The point is, the sins we carry out, the vices we allow to form, are obstacles that must be overcome in order to see God as he is. Otherwise, it's possible to still lose out (2 John 1:8), to fall short of the destination (Hebrews 4:11). We are saved by the faith God gives us, but it must be a living faith working by love, it must be kept alive in us – and sin has the power of death. Don't “be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (Hebrews 3:13).

What are we called to instead? Listen to John: “Everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure” (1 John 3:3). This is the key, this is the hinge between what he said before and what he says after. Before those words, John dazzled us with the hope of the Beatific Vision. Afterward comes his discourse on the devastating nature of sin. What he's saying is that someone who persists in sin, someone who embraces sin, someone who refuses by sin to live out of what God has given, is canceling out their hope of the Beatific Vision. As we live in the world, as we take those steps from the water where we rose to new life, we must stay spiritually alive, rather than give in to death's alluring call by sin. And as even small sins inevitably stain us and take us just a little bit off course, we must course-correct, we must purify ourselves, we must cooperate with God's grace. “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us,” but “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:8-9).

Faith, hope, and love – and the other supernatural virtues that implement them – must be put into actual practice by the gifts the Holy Spirit gives for turning them into real acts, in much the same way that astronauts on a space shuttle have to cooperate with NASA and use the programming in the shuttle's systems. If they refused to train, they wouldn't make it. If they refused to course-correct when they got off course, they wouldn't make it. If they refused to carry out maintenance when something goes wrong, they wouldn't make it. But if they really live out of what they've been given, then they'll make it. “Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous” (1 John 3:7). By cooperating with God's grace, we allow it to shape us and fuel us. By acting out of the virtues we're given – and that's what John means by “practicing righteousness” – we not only make it easier for us to do so, but we allow God to increase those virtues in us, making us righteous by conforming us more and more to the image of Jesus who is our goal.

And Jesus is our goal. So let us decide this year to “lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us [fly] with endurance” on our supernatural voyage to him. Spurning the sin that kills, let us abide in Christ who is our life. Course-correcting daily from the sin that deviates, let us by repentance stay on target. Let us put righteousness into practice by acting out of the supernatural virtues God gives us, most supremely faith and hope and love. By acting from God's grace, we live purely, and so purify ourselves as he is pure. Cooperating with God, we have a humble but confident hope of a successful voyage, until at last we see his face. And this is what we're living for. So let's actually live it, by the help of God, because by grace we can. Amen.

Prayer
God and Father of every grace, you poured into us your Holy Spirit, justifying us from our sinful deeds and wills, sanctifying us from our whole past life, infusing us with faith and hope and love so that we could be supernaturally empowered to reach you and know, love, and enjoy you forever. You've blessed us with more gifts than we can count. Now you ask us to live by them, cooperating with your work in us. Strengthen us to abide in Christ, that ours may be a faith and a hope that live by love, a faith and hope and love that reveal themselves in acts as your Holy Spirit leads and guides and gifts. Conquer every contrary disposition in us. Heal us of our sin, and forgive us where we've fallen short. Purify us of everything that hinders faith or hope or love, and root them more deeply in us as you help us practice them. Make us true practitioners of righteousness, as people genuinely born of God. Let us bear a family resemblance to you even now, as your children, and bring us daily closer to the full image of what we will be when we see you as you really are, if only we endure in the practice of righteousness that implements faith, hope, and love to the end. Make us worthy and fit for that blessed vision! For you move us to it. In Jesus' name: Amen.