Daily Archives: March 8, 2012

YOUCAT Series 9 – What We Believe: Heaven and Heavenly Creatures

Questions 52 to 55
In this section we delve a bit deeper into the realities of Heaven, Hell and the Angels.

Q. 52
Here the philosopher Peter Kreeft looks at all those tricky questions that one asks about Heaven with some interesting insights;

Thus, we must learn detachment to enter Heaven. Willy-nilly, death detaches us from everything, even ourselves. We must learn to “die before you die. There is no chance after.”[58] Learning detachment from the world, which can be possessed, is our training for learning detachment from the desire to possess Heaven, which cannot be possessed. Asked whether he thought he would possess any of his beloved library books in Heaven, C. S. Lewis replied, “Only those I gave away on earth.[59]

Q. 53
From Heaven we now look at Hell.

Again I’m using one of Peter Kreeft’s articles because I find him so easy to understand.

This time he warns us not to be complacent about Hell;

We desperately need to hear this truth about hell again, simply out of honesty, because it is there. And also out of compassion. For when an abyss looms ahead, the least compassionate thing to tell the traveler is “peace, peace, when there is no peace”. Out of love for God and man, let us tell the truth about hell!
Sure, we’ll be mocked as vindictive, manipulative, or fundamentalist. Let it be so. Sometimes it seems that we’re more afraid of sharing our Lord’s holy unrespectability than of hell itself. It’s a small price to pay for the salvation of a single infinitely precious soul. And that is the business we’re supposed to be in.

Q. 54
This is a summary of the teachings on the Angels from St Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica.

Here’s an excerpt;

5. By natural love, angels love God more than they love themselves. All creatures belong absolutely to God; they naturally tend to God as their ultimate end or goal. Freely loving creatures must recognize God as their end or goal and tend to him before all else. Hence love of God comes naturally (in free creatures) before love of self, and is the greater love. If this were not so, natural love would be a contradiction, for it would not be perfected by attaining its true object, but would be fruitless and self-destroying.

Q. 55
St Gemma is well known for her devotion to her Guardian Angel.

Here is the Prayer to Our Guardian Angel;