Lectio
“I either get to choose heaven, life with God forever because of what Jesus has done for us, or I get to drift to hell.”
— Fr. Mike Schmitz, The Catechism in a Year
Meditatio
God does not force us into heaven. Nor does He condemn us to hell. His love is an invitation in our hearts, prompted by the Holy Spirit, which we are free to either accept or reject. No matter our choice, however, God’s love remains, eternal and unchanging, the very essence of life itself pouring itself out as life itself.
Our lives are not a test wherein if we pass we go to heaven or if we fail we go to hell. Rather, our lives are an opportunity for us to choose heaven, to choose love, and to choose everlasting life with the source of all life. Our lives are an invitation to receive God’s love freely given, an opportunity to accept forgiveness for our sins against love, and an opportunity to join God, even if imperfectly now, in perfect union for all of eternity to come.
God loves us so much that, in order that we might join Him in heaven, He descended to earth to be with us, to live with us, and to die for us so that we might know Him, so that we might choose Him, and so that we might be one with Him, unbroken and unconditionally, now and forever. God loves us so much that He became us, giving Himself over to persecution, betrayal, and crucifixion, for our sake, for our salvation, and for our unification with Him.
Hell was never a threat for misbehavior. It was never a conviction borne down in judgment. It was and is a warning of what we will have chosen if we choose to deny our need of God, to reject love, and to abandon the call to our divine right to participate in His glory. Rather than a place we are sent, hell is a place we choose to go, whether implicitly through willful inaction or indecision, or explicitly through hard-hearted defiance and self-sufficiency.
Hell is not a place devoid of God’s love and presence, for there is nowhere in creation that God, who is love, is not present. But hell is a place where God’s love is felt and His presence known for all eternity from a posture of rejection of that love and abandonment of that presence, such that we will suffer eternally knowing and feeling that we have given up or thrown away the only thing that could ever satisfy our soul’s longing, our hunger for the bread of life, our thirst for living water, and the burning within our hearts for the very thing we have not chosen.
But this was never God’s intention. He has always wanted for us to choose Him. He has always wished for us to join Him and to never turn away. God’s intention, His deepest longing, is that we not be alone, that we not suffer, and that we find the eternal peace, joy, and fulfillment that only a relationship with Him can give. But God loves us so much that He leaves this up to us to choose, a divine invitation extended to us that only we can accept.
Oratio
Together Become We
heaven with You
You within me
turning toward You
together at last
united in love
love within me
nothing without You
me tortured by me
refusing to receive You
freely given to me
that I may join You
together forever
where You and I become we
Contemplatio
Nothing you have done has made you unloved. Nothing you have withheld has made Him withhold Himself. The only distance between you and heaven is the turning you have not yet made — and even that turning is not something you must accomplish alone. Rest here a while longer, offering no resistance to His presence, and let Him do with you what only He can do.
Related Scripture
“I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live”
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like Crucified Desire: Ignatius of Antioch and the Murmur of Living Water Within (Lectio Divina), which turns to a different register of the same thirst this post names — Ignatius’s living water that will not be quenched by anything less than God.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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