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This lecture was given on July 17th, 2023, at St. Peter's Church on Capitol Hill.

Speaker Bio: Fr. Andrew Hofer, O.P., grew up as the youngest of ten children on a farm in Kansas and studied history, philosophy, and classics at Benedictine College. He then went to St Andrews, Scotland for a Master of Letters in medieval history. He entered the Order of Preachers as a son of the Province of St. Joseph and was ordained a priest in 2002. After finishing his S.T.L. and serving as an associate pastor for a brief time, he was sent to Kenya as a missionary for two years. He taught at the Tangaza College of The Catholic University of Eastern Africa and other institutions in Nairobi. He returned to the U.S. and completed a Ph.D. in Theology at the University of Notre Dame, with the primary area of history of Christianity, specializing in patristic theology with additional studies in medieval theology and the secondary area of systematic theology. His research appears in such journals as Vigiliae Christianae, Augustinianum, International Journal of Systematic Theology, New Blackfriars, Nova et Vetera, Pro Ecclesia, The Thomist, Communio, and Angelicum and in books published by Catholic University of America Press and Ignatius Press. He is the author of Christ in the Life and Teaching of Gregory of Nazianzus (Oxford Early Christian Studies), Oxford University Press, 2013, and the editor of Divinization: Becoming Icons of Christ through the Liturgy, Hillenbrand Books, 2015.
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I'm so grateful for the invitation from the Timisic Institute, young professionals of Washington, DC, and the young adults here of St.

We'll begin with a reading from Matthew 13 and a prayer.

The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field, which a person finds and hides again, and out of joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant searching for fine pearls.

When he finds a pearl of great price, he goes and sells all that he has and buys it.

Almighty God, we praise you for the kingdom of heaven.

We ask you now to pour forth your Holy Spirit upon us, that we, in this passing world, may long more to be with you forever.

We make this prayer in the name of Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, forever and ever.

Our Lady, Gate of Heaven, in the name of the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit.

This evening's lecture is titled, What is Heaven Like?

And we're going to be looking at that question of what is heaven like.

I'll give this talk and afterwards we'll have some time for Q&A.

The passage that I read to you from Matthew 13 has a comment from St.

He says, Gregory says that this is heavenly glory, because the good is naturally desirable, and man always wants to exchange a lesser good for a

this, he should abandon all things for it.

Thomas quotes the psalm, 1 thing I have asked of the Lord, this I seek, that I may dwell in

the house of the Lord all the days of my life.

Our life has many things and we live in a world that passes away.

this talk may be a time of great grace where we are touched by God to be lifted up and to think about things eternal, about the possibility of always being with God, of having happiness forever.

The first 1 is simply our need to think about heaven.

And then the second 1, Seeing God, the beatific vision.

The third section is the resurrection of the body.

And the fourth, the society of angels and saints forever.

We begin with our need to think about heaven.

All sorts of people on this earth don't know exactly how to answer the question of what's life about?

And if they do answer the question, the answer could be something that passes away.

to the image of God in our immortal, immaterial soul.

And this life on earth which passes away is precisely the time where we can accept God's plan and to be able to accept the grace

of our Lord Jesus Christ, to be headed to the Father.

In His great love for us, God sent His only Son so that

And heaven is that everlasting life of peace, of being with God, of always having that joy of possessing God.

Now, during this life on earth, we have free will where we can determine where we go.

You determined to come here this evening, to be here to listen about what is heaven like.

Ultimately, the big determination is, where do you want your life headed?

It's like an archer who is having an arrow and wants to shoot the arrow.

God wants us to know that there is an aim, that we can go to Him.

Now, our Lord Jesus Christ, who suffered, died, and rose for us, is now seated at the

He has sent his Holy Spirit to fill the earth, so that

way, filled by the Holy Spirit, we may, in Christ, go back to the Father.

We have the Catholic Church and the sacraments that Christ instituted and entrusted to the church, so that way we may get to heaven.

But there are all sorts of people on this earth that really don't have much in appreciation for heaven.

And I want to share with you now something comical from Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 1.

Well, listen to Huckleberry Finn talk about the widow Douglas's sister, Miss Watson, and think about his attitude to heaven.

Huckleberry Finn says, Miss Watson, a tolerable slim old maid with goggles on, had just come

to live with her and took a set at me now with a spelling book.

middle and hard for about an hour, and then the widow made her ease up.

Then for an hour, it was deadly dull, and I was fidgety.

Miss Watson would say, don't put your feet up there, Huckleberry.

And don't scrunch up like that, Huckleberry.

And pretty soon she'd say, don't gap and stretch like that, Huckleberry.

Then she told me about the bad place and I said I wished I was there

She said it was wicked to say what I said.

Said she wouldn't say it for the whole world.

She was going to live as to go to the good

I couldn't see no advantage in going where she was going.

So I made up my mind I wouldn't try for it.

But I never said so because it would only make trouble

Huckleberry Finn does not express the Christian faith.

But he has encountered the widow of Douglas's sister, Miss Watson, who likes to teach about the Christian faith.

And Huckleberry Finn doesn't want to go where she's going.

All sorts of people have heard only a little bit about heaven and frankly

We have a lot of people here this evening who are interested in heaven, but there are a lot of people in this world

who have heard a little bit about heaven, no thank you.

So the very first thing is to think about our need to consider what is heaven like.

We're talking about forever and ever and that the Catholic Church says that this is all happiness.

The next section is seeing God, the beatific vision's happiness.

the Catholic Church says, those who die in God's grace and friendship and are perfectly purified, live forever

with Christ." So notice how to get to heaven we must die, We must die in God's grace and friendship, and we must be perfectly purified.

If you're living here on earth, you're not in heaven.

And then we must die with the grace that Jesus won for us by his passion.

His own suffering, death, and resurrection is what opens up the gates of heaven for us.

And then if we have not been perfectly purified, God in his mercy allows us to

Now Saint John says in his first letter, chapter 3, Beloved,

We do know that when it is revealed, we shall be like him, but we shall see him as he is.

Everyone who has this hope based on him makes himself pure

So notice that we are already God's children and what we shall be has not yet been revealed.

That there's something very mysterious about

the life of God's children in heaven, something even more wondrous.

And then this is the time of the theological virtue of hope and that our hope then is based on Him so that way we may be pure just as He is pure.

Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 2, he cites Isaiah 64.

As it is written, what eye has not seen and ear has not heard and what has not entered the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love Him.

This God has revealed to us through the Spirit.

Now of all things about heaven, the most important thing is seeing God, being united to God in what is traditionally known as the beatific vision.

Thomas Aquinas says in his compendium of theology, Man's consummation consists in the attainment of his last end, which is perfect beatitude or happiness, and this consists in the vision of God.

The beatific vision entails immutability in the intellect and will.

As regards the intellect, its questing ceases when at last it comes to the first cause in which all truth can be known.

The will's variability ceases, too, for when it reaches its last end, in which is contained the fullness of all goodness, it finds nothing further to be desired.

The will is subject to change because it craves what it does not possess.

Clearly, therefore, the final consummation of man consists in perfect repose or unchangeableness

in the first paragraph of his Confessions talks about our heart is restless until it rests in you.

That restlessness is throughout this journey on earth.

But when we use this phrase, rest in peace,

we may be thinking of something like sleeping.

Augustine says, heaven is far, far different from sleeping.

Heaven is being fully awake, fully conscious

to a degree that we don't have the experience of here on this earth.

Rather than being like dead to the world of just in some sort of la-la land.

It is the joy of having our intellect and will, our highest part of our soul, united to God.

In Question 12 of the Prima Pars of the Summa, St.

Thomas considers the created intellect, how our soul in heaven sees the divine essence and is united by God's power.

Thomas says, when any created intellect sees the essence of God, the essence of God itself becomes the intelligible form of the intellect.

Hence, it is necessary that some supernatural disposition should be added to the intellect in order that it may be raised up to such a great and sublime height.

Now, since the natural power of the created intellect does not avail to enable it to see the essence of God, it is necessary that the power of understanding should be added by divine grace.

Now, this increase of the intellectual powers is called the illumination of the intellect, as we should also call the intelligible object itself by the name of light of illumination.

And this is the light spoken of in the book of Revelation.

The glory of God has enlightened it, namely, the society of

By this light, the blessed are made deiform,

like to God, according to the saying, when he shall appear we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is." St.

Thomas is talking about how in heaven, because we are so weak, we need the supernatural power called the light of glory that raises the intellect up so that way that there's nothing that gets between you and God.

During this life on earth we have all sorts of images, okay, so that for me to see you there's

In heaven it's not just simply that kind of imaging, but God is so close that God himself is with us, united to us, holding us in a way that is unlike anything here upon this earth.

Again, nothing, nothing gets between you and God.

that the saints have different views of God based upon their charity.

the Cross says how in the evening of life will be judged on love, and all those who die with the theological virtue of charity then will go

to heaven, and that those who have more charity, in

The Latin tradition talks about those in heaven as those who are comprehending, but there's an important distinction here.

This type of comprehending means being united,

being grasped by God and possessing him fully according to our own capacity.

Only God, strictly speaking though, comprehends himself.

But we, according to God's good pleasure, are raised up to be united to God and to be as full as possible for our created nature.

Now, there was a controversy in the Middle Ages about heaven and whether we really did see the divine essence and the immediacy of this.

Because what about, say, we're here at St.

How does he really see the divine essence?

Because he hasn't yet had the resurrected body.

Pope Benedict XII in his Benedictus Deus in

1336 wants people to know that there is this great immediacy of being able actually to see God face to face, and that the saints need not wait until the resurrection of the body, until the last day, okay?

God allows these souls to be united to Him.

It's not just simply that the intellect is fully engaged in God.

All of our desires are fulfilled and God alone satisfies.

Augustine's City of God, Book 22, he says, There in heaven we shall rest and see,

This is what shall be in the end without end.

For what other end do we propose to ourselves than to attain to the kingdom of which there is no end?" Notice the order of the verbs.

We shall rest and see, see and love, love and praise.

It's also important for this life on Earth.

You need to be able to have some sort of rest, really to be able to see, to know, and how can you love that

So then to be able to contemplate, to have that rest, to see, and

that which you see, and then based upon that love, to praise.

Well, if that's true during this life on earth, how much truer is in heaven?

to have God's peace, and then to see, to see God, to love him as he deserves to

be loved, as we long to love, and then to be able to let it all out in praise.

Now, some people are not attracted to worship here upon this earth.

I had a high school friend who said to me, the problem with a self-made man is that he worships his creator.

We want to worship our Creator with a capital C.

And this is where we just think, ah, we need to go to God, to God.

Saint John Henry Newman, in his sermon about holiness is necessary for blessedness, says, Heaven would be hell to an irreligious man.

Heaven would be hell to an irreligious man.

So he continues, we know how unhappy we are apt to feel at present when alone in the midst of strangers or of men of different tastes and habits from ourselves.

How miserable, for example, would it be to have to live in a foreign land among the people whose faces we never saw before and whose language we could not learn.

And this is a faint illustration of the loneliness of a man of earthly dispositions and tastes thrust into the society of saints and angels.

How forlorn would he wander through the courts of heaven.

He would see in every direction the marks of God's holiness, and these would make him shudder.

He would feel himself always in his presence.

He could no longer turn his thoughts another way, as he does now, when conscience reproaches him.

He would know that the eternal eye was ever upon him, and that eye of holiness, which is joy and life to holy creatures, would seem to him an

while he is holy, no unholy soul can be happy in heaven." Right?

Because what is the main activity of heaven?

And if people really don't want to praise God,

That's the importance of thinking about praising God here upon this Earth and the desire to praise.

Okay, so, and it doesn't mean, because sometimes people think, oh, does God need compliments?

Don't you realize, it's like when we really are happy about something and just something is just really extraordinary, we got to say it to somebody.

We want other people to know how happy we are, how beautiful something is, how glorious someone is.

And we just, you know, and you know sometimes we need

All of us here on this earth are passing away in terms of things of this earth, but we're made to live with God forever, and God alone satisfies.

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What is Heaven Like? | Fr. Andrew Hofer