We all want heaven. What are we doing about it?

Aquinas says our true end is happiness in God and that charity gives shape to every other virtue. If that’s true, then everyday life becomes deeply theological: how we answer emails, correct a misunderstanding, or hold a boundary is either training our hearts for heaven or dragging them away. Personal formation is not an add-on; it is the craft of becoming the kind of people who could bear the weight of glory. We often think about carrying a cross but how often do we think of the call to carry that sort of glory?

We taste heaven whenever truth is spoken (preferably kindly) but at least with clarity, forgiveness interrupts a spiral, or the most vulnerable are placed at the centre. We set our compass toward the Beatitudes and let them measure our success: Are the poor blessed here or is it those who are already in possession of so much? Do the peacemakers get room to work? God meets us in the real, not the ideal. God meets us in the mess, in the broken moments, in the alternate views (after all Jesus was pretty alternate in his time to the chief priests and many others). How dangerous is the world if all have to conform to one view, it is the different lenses in life that help us see things we would not see otherwise making us wiser, richer, stronger, kinder.

Three small fidelities for the week:

Begin with presence. Before your first activity, conversation, even your first coffee (scary thought I know), sit for a moment with God.

See with preference. In every decision ask, Who benefits? Who is left out? Tilt the table toward the person in your life who is most challenged and challenging.

Bless aloud. Name the good you see in a colleague’s patience, a child’s effort, a loved one’s courage. Heaven grows where gratitude is spoken.

‘Everybody wants to go to heaven’ is not a slogan about later; it is a charge for now. We contemplate and then hand on the fruits. Veritas becomes mercy in motion. In a Jubilee Year of hope as we continue our pilgrimage of life, we apprentice one another in love. And that, is what we are doing about it.