A Preview of Heaven: 23rd Week of the Liturgical Year, September 4-10, 2011

Colossians chapters; 1-3; begin 1Timothy; Luke, chapter 6

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How many Catholics experience Sunday Mass as a “preview of heaven”? Would it make you feel sad, threatened or hopeful to hear that this is what it should be for you?

“Sad” would suggest you’ve given up. “Threatened” that you hear you aren’t measuring up. “Hopeful” that you are open to the good news that there is more in the Mass than you dream of.

And there is. If you don’t experience the Mass as a preview of heaven, it means that either 1. you don’t understand it; or 2. you don’t pay attention to it; or 3. you are not really participating “fully, actively and consciously.” That is, that you are not celebrating. Chances are, it is all of the above.

That is what this year’s Reflections should remedy. If you read the 87-page theme booklet that accompanied them (Experiencing the Mass) and have kept yourself focused through the Reflection booklets, you should be having a much different experience of Mass—if, of course, you are applying at Mass what you read.

Now we are beginning the last Reflection booklet for this year, and it’s focus is on the last part of the Mass: the Rite of Communion. This part of the Mass is most explicitly a “preview of heaven.”

It is designed to be a preview of the “wedding banquet of the Lamb.” The communal enjoyment of Jesus as “Bread of Life,” Bread of the heavenly banquet. This Bread is only served in a communal meal: no private room service, no take-outs. By nature it is Bread that Jesus “takers, blesses, breaks and gives to his disciples to distribute.” (Although portions can be taken to the sick). And to receive it we must gather with the community in total mutual forgiveness, reconciliation and love. In the “peace and unity of the kingdom” that characterizes this communal sharing and union with Jesus Christ we experience a preview of heaven.

That is not as far-fetched as it sounds. During the Rite of Communion all conflicts are set aside. We have all given the Sign of Peace to each other. Jesus has come to each and to all. If we pause in silence for a moment as the liturgy directs us to do, we can simply be aware of that peace and unity as foreshadowing the gathering of the whole human race together “in Christ” at the end of the world. All will be well. “There will be no harm or ruin on all his holy mountain.” All will be love; all will be peace. And Jesus will be “all in all.” We will all be one, rejoicing in God, rejoicing in one another, sharing the life of Father, Son and Spirit. That is heaven.

To experience a tiny taste of this in the Rite of Communion is to experience a taste of heaven. It should motivate us to go out and invite everyone to the wedding feast. Motivate us to transform social structures and renew cultures to “make straight the way of the Lord” for all to receive him. Motivate us to embrace each other in our sinfulness now as we will embrace each other in our perfection when Christ has “grown to full stature” in us all and there will be “but one Christ, loving himself” (St. Augustine). We in him, he in us, as he is in the Father and the Father in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit.

We just have to make ourselves aware of what we understand, of what is happening, of what it foreshadows, and let Mass be for us the “source and summit” of all we live and long for.

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