“Do You Want to go to Heaven?” by Allison Provinsal
Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
H-e-double-hockey-sticks. I don’t know about you, but Hell isn’t something I think about very often. So when it comes up in one of the readings for Mass, I’m usually not expecting it.
In this week’s Gospel, we hear Jesus speaking to the crowds in parables. After the parables, the disciples ask Jesus to explain the man who sowed good seed, and Jesus explains that, “He who sows good seed is the Son of Man, the field is the world, the good seed the children of the kingdom. The weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels.”
The parable translated for us explains how Jesus sows good seed, that would be those trying to live a good and holy life and striving to get to Heaven. The enemy planting weeds would be the devil. At the end of our time here on earth, we will be divided into the “good” and “the evil”. Those who have lived good, holy lives will join God our Father in Heaven and eternal happiness. But those who have lived sinful lives, not serving and loving others as God has commanded, don’t have a nice Retirement Plan to look forward to in You-Know-Where.
Hell is real. Jesus is pretty clear on that. But this idea of Hell can be one many people struggle with. We’ve probably all met someone who doesn’t believe in Hell. It seems easier for people to believe we are all good people, trying to do GOOD, and will all end up together in the end. And God’s Mercy certainly is infinite, but God is also perfectly JUST. So if there is good and evil and we have FREE WILL, logically we have to be able to reject God’s Mercy, choose evil, and then spend eternity thinking about the consequences in Hell.
I have personally never doubted that there was a Heaven and Hell, at least not in a serious enough way to believe our lives were not meant for something greater, even if I could not quite grasp what that was exactly. I recently read a very convincing article, “You might not want to go to Heaven”, by Matt Walsh, where the he pointed out that it is simply not enough to live a good life and assume we will get to Heaven. Personally, this really hit home with me. I think it is very easy to assume, “I am not an evil person”, and” I am trying to be good and kind in the way I live my life”, so therefore I will end up in Heaven, right? Well this author pointed out to me that you must be actively trying to get to Heaven, and trying to get your friends and families there with you. But even more to the point, he said that those who go to Heaven WANT TO BE THERE. This sounds silly, who wouldn’t want to go to Heaven? But his point is, if we do not want to sit with Christ for an hour a week in Mass, or a few minutes a day in prayer, then what makes us think we will want to sit with him for an eternity in Heaven? He says, “We only want to go to Heaven if we want a life that is completely consumed by Christ and nothing else. If we want a life that is only partly Christ, we don’t want Heaven.”
This was a harsh reality check for me. I mean, wow! Here I was thinking I was doing alright, and after reading this article I realized personally, maybe I am not doing as great as I thought.
In the world we live in today, it is so easy to get distracted by those “evil seeds” planted in our fields. We get consumed by work, family and the pleasures of this world, that it becomes nearly impossible to have Christ be the ONLY goal. We need to constantly be checking ourselves, and talking with God. We need to evaluate why we are doing the things we are doing and if those things are necessary in getting us to Heaven. Without God and without the goal of eternity with him, why not live a life of lust, gluttony and self-indulgence? Why not steal and hurt others to get what we want in-the-now? Clearly, there must be good and evil, there must be Heaven and Hell, and I for one, want to choose Heaven and do everything I can to get there (with a lot of help from the Man Upstairs). So I ask you; do you want to go to Heaven?