BY GRETCHEN KEISER

Staff Writer

ATLANTA--“Heaven is the ultimate end and fulfillment of the deepest human longings, the state of supreme, definitive happiness.”

This consoling and moving description of heaven comes from “The Catechism of the Catholic Church” (section 1024). Knowing that every word in the catechism was the subject of intense theological scrutiny, the description of heaven in terms like human longing and happiness is comforting.

The words offer a bridge between what is beautiful in this life and what we believe will be even more beautiful in the next. They also console, for what will be fulfilled in heaven will include the longings this life did not fulfill, the many blessings we pray for those who die that they did not see in life, the true healing of the sorrows this life can never erase.

For those seeking consolation in the face of death, or for Lenten study, the reflection on death, Resurrection and heaven in the catechism can be a place to rediscover words of hope built on our faith in Jesus Christ and the power of His Resurrection to bring the faithful into new life with Him.

In “The Profession of Faith,” the catechism reviews line by line the words of the Creed recited by Catholics at Sunday Mass. It provides the basic theology behind the words and adds scriptural support and additional sources for study, such as writings of the saints and early Christian teachers.

In the Creed, Catholics pray, “I believe in the Resurrection of the dead.” While the words are familiar, the strength and importance of this belief in the Resurrection is underlined by the catechism.

Belief in the Resurrection is the culmination of the Creed, according to the catechism. It is the climax of our entire statement of our faith in God, Who creates, saves and sanctifies humankind (section 988).

“We firmly believe, and hence we hope that, just as Christ is truly risen from the dead and lives for ever, so after death the righteous will live for ever with the risen Christ and he will raise them up on the last day.”

The Creed expresses our firm faith not only that the soul is immortal, but that “even our mortal body will come to life again” on the last day (section 990).

“How can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead then Christ has not been raised; if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain...But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep,” says St. Paul’s first Letter to the Corinthians.

Jesus taught that God is not “God of the dead, but of the living” (Mk 12:27). Jesus also links faith in the Resurrection to His own person, saying, “I am the Resurrection and the life.”

“It is Jesus himself who on the last day will raise up those who have believed in him, who have eaten his body and drunk his blood,” the catechism teaches, drawing on St. John’s Gospel (Jn 6:40, 54).

Christian belief in the Resurrection of the body has been met with “incomprehension and opposition” from the time of Jesus, the catechism teaches, citing the first century writings of St. Augustine.

But the Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit has sustained this teaching, which consoles and strengthens us in the face of our own death and the deaths of those dear to us.

This teaching says that in death the human body decays, but the soul goes to meet God while awaiting the soul’s reunion with the glorified body. “God in his almighty power will definitively grant incorruptible life to our bodies by reuniting them with our souls, through the power of Jesus’ Resurrection” (section 997).

All the dead will rise at the last day, “those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment” (Jn 5:29).

The perishable will be replaced with the imperishable and “this mortal nature must put on immortality” (1 Cor 15:53).

This mystery, grasped by faith alone, is foreshadowed in the Eucharist, the catechism says, in which bread is both earthly and heavenly. In another description, the catechism says, like a kernel which is sown in the earth to yield new life, what is brought to life in the Resurrection of the body is entirely different from the seed which died.

While these mysteries require eyes of faith, the human experience of death is a constant reminder that our lives are a pilgrimage toward God. The passage of time marks a course with definite limits. This is one of the reminders given by our cross of ashes at the beginning of Lent.

“Our lives are measured by time, in the course of which we change, grow old and, as with all living beings on earth, death seems like the normal end of life. That aspect of death lends urgency to our lives: remembering our mortality helps us realize that we have only a limited time in which to bring our lives to fulfillment,” the catechism says (section 1007).

“Death is the end of man’s earthly pilgrimage, of the time of grace and mercy which God offers him so as to work out his earthly life in keeping with the divine plan, and to decide his ultimate destiny” (section 1013).

Human life begins with birth and ends with death. But our spiritual life in Christ begins in baptism, where we believe Christians are plunged into the death of Christ sacramentally. At the end of our lives, those who die in Christ’s grace complete this physical dying with Christ that began in baptism. This “dying with Christ” also “completes our incorporation into Him in His redeeming act” (section 1010).

The vision of heaven is of a “blessed communion with God” beyond any human imagining or words. Scriptural images include light, life, peace, a wedding feast, the Father’s house, the heavenly Jerusalem, paradise (section 1027).

“No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor 2:9).

The teaching of the catechism also reminds us that those who die in God’s friendship and grace, “but still imperfectly purified,” are assured of eternal salvation; after death they experience purification and can be assisted by our prayers, especially the Eucharist. The catechism also calls to mind the reality of an eternal separation from God through willful and persistent turning away from God. The daily prayer of the Church is for the mercy of God to reach all as God does not want “any to perish, but all to come to repentance” (2 Pet 3:9).