Then we stop, unsure what to say next, afraid of saying the wrong thing, sometimes bewildered by their questions.
Among adults, it's harder still. Heaven comes after death, and death is something we'd rather not discuss.
But the Jesuit padre Roberti, unlike us, is unafraid to reflect on this "other life," to imagine and offer us images that might foreshadow the "different world" that will welcome us—the world we hope for, because Christ, who conquered death, has promised it to us.
Faced with death, we find comfort in thinking of heaven—the unexplained, because it cannot be explained. Sometimes we think of heaven, sometimes of earth. BUT heaven is so "other" that we often abandon the comparison and look at heaven almost like an obstacle that would rob us of real life.
Yet heaven is earth continuing... in another way. It is life—the same life—but extended in another way. Another life, as Marie Bernarde of Lourdes said.
When we contemplate that immensity in which billions of human beings are immersed, we tremble. We feel disoriented. We have no stable point of reference anymore. We enter another world where we must accept different answers and embrace different realities. Heaven truly is "other."
Now and then in life, we are reminded that the other matters. This is meant to tell us that heaven matters even more. It cannot be thought of as a reward for good children, nor as a refuge from bombardment, nor as an imaginary escape to recover some sense of safety. No, heaven is where God's plan finally comes to fulfillment. All that He desired and willed for us, all that His Son died on the cross for—suddenly this takes on new dimensions and transforms how we see everything.
In heaven everything continues in another way. The young people gathered around our table, the scents of a summer evening, the delicious nectar poured into our glasses, and more than anything else, the tender presence of those we love... that, already, is heaven.
In a sense, that is how heaven will be. But it will also be so "other" in the presence of a God who did everything to love us, who risked everything with full knowledge of our freedom and His plan fulfilled!
Heaven is when there is no more separation between us on this earth. It is when someone is welcomed and loved for who they are. You cannot understand heaven until you grasp that it means God the Father gathering us together with His Son, restoring unity and an unbreakable brotherhood in a communion that has no end. Heaven is being forever "with" You! What on earth revealed itself as encounter, love, and sharing continues eternally. A father, a mother grieving the death of their child, knowing he is "in heaven" and struggling to believe in his happiness, can live no other way than with Him. With him, with her, with Jesus—it is all one, and it is the Father's house.
- Padre André Roberti, 2002
