Eternal Life

Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come. Give glory to your son, so that your son may glorify you, just as you gave him authority over all people, so that your son may give eternal life to all you gave him. Now this is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ. 

I glorified you on earth by accomplishing the work that you gave me to do. Now glorify me, Father, with you, with the glory that I had with you before the world began. “I revealed your name to those whom you gave me out of the world. They belonged to you, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you gave me is from you, because the words you gave to me I have given to them, and they accepted them and truly understood that I came from you, and they have believed that you sent me. I pray for them. 

I do not pray for the world but for the ones you have given me, because they are yours, and everything of mine is yours and everything of yours is mine, and I have been glorified in them. And now I will no longer be in the world, but they are in the world, while I am coming to you.” (John 17:1-11)

Eternal life is to know God, the only true God, and the one whom God sent, Jesus Christ. Sounds right, but how about a bit more definition about this life that is to come and never end.  Sitting at the right hand of God (or left) is still a bit unclear by what that means.

Bishop Shelby Spong provided a helpful perspective.  He said: “I have come to see this Jesus as the one who pushed the boundaries of self-consciousness so dramatically that he redefined both God and the meaning of human life.  That is why the Christian claim has always been that in Jesus God is met, engaged and known.  The issue here lies in breaking out of the traditional theistic definition of God, which blocks for so many the meaning of Jesus. It is the fully human one who makes the holy visible, the fully conscious one who enables us to see that the human and divine are one, and the fully alive one who enables us to see that death is ultimately a dimension of life through which we journey into timelessness.”

Bishop Spong’s perspective is provided in his 2009 book Eternal Life: A New Vision – Beyond Religion, Beyond Theism, Beyond Heaven and Hell.  His eternal-life definition will trouble some Catholics (and other Christians), perhaps many.  Nevertheless, he helps us better appreciate timelessness meaning when we die, time stops for us.  There is no more passage of time.  For example, when we sleep, we “die” and the passage of hours of sleep (death-like) is as the blink of an eye after we awaken.  

Father James Martin also is helpful.  He has said: (begin) “So we have Jesus’ word telling us about the afterlife, and the resurrection showing us. But let me share another way that helps those struggling with doubts about the afterlife.

Begin with a fundamental truth: God is in a loving relationship with you. That manifests itself in many ways. In peak moments, when God feels so close you could almost touch God: when you look at the face of your newborn child and can’t believe how much love you feel, when you see a sunrise and are overwhelmed by beauty, or when you hear a hymn that moves you to tears.

That relationship also reveals itself in more common daily moments too: when someone offers you a kind word in the midst of a painful time, when you feel the first warm springtime breeze after a seemingly endless winter, when you hear a line from the Gospels that hits your heart like an arrow.

As you look back over your life, you can see the presence of God. These are signs of God’s being in a loving relationship with you.

Here’s my point: Why would God ever destroy the loving relationship God has with you? That makes no sense. Do you think something as small as death would destroy that relationship?

By no means! As St. Paul says in the Letter to the Romans, not even death can separate us from God’s love. That relationship will last, as will our relationships with those who have gone before us.

In short, how could God possibly destroy that love? It makes no sense. No, our friends and family who have died will one day be reunited with us – in the place that God has prepared for us. God would never destroy love, and so would never destroy the loving relationships God has with us or that we have with each other.

Christians believe that one day they will be with Jesus in “paradise.” We have Jesus’ word on it. We have Easter as proof. And we know that God would never destroy the loving relationships he has with us.

And one day we will see that it is all true. (end)

Yes, we will.

Deacon David Pierce