Maybe the issue is not the concept of suffering temporally on earth, living happily forever in Heaven. Maybe we don’t really belive that God is GOOD. Maybe we don’t have enough faith in Heaven to suffer in the present. HOW DO WE KNOW?
(P.S, maybe this relates to abstinence before marriage. It may help us know delayed gratification + genuine surprise and delight at an unexpected Heaven if we waited and experienced that same feeling in smaller degree on earth)
Maybe a way:
Did the people,
saints, who took God seriously have testimony to show. Just as we wouldn’t judge whether or not being a doctor is a worthy job by observing someone who hadn’t gone to medical school, residency, and then practiced for some time, we might not want to judge the effects of living for Christ by people who haven’t followed God’s will to God’s pleasure for a long enough period of time - why we should not judge God by a random stranger on this site as who knows what kind of life that person is leading.
E.G. the bible, When Mary told Jesus about the problems at the Wedding of Cana, Jesus said “my time has not yet come” but turned the water into the best wine anyone had ever tasted.
When James and Zebedee wanted to sit and Jesus’s right and left hand in the Bible, the answer was pretty much no.
St. Teresa of Avila pretty much experienced Heaven on Earth and it was better than physical intimacy as she writes in her Autobiography **The Life of St. Teresa of Avila: **
catholicfirst.com/TheFaith/CatholicClassics/StTeresa/life/teresaofavila.cfmas well as Interior Castle. Her experiences were seen by the people around her and even captured in a picture
The Ectasy of St. Teresa So we have at least one testimony.
What about all those promises?
Jesus said, "Amen I say to you, there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the gospel who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age: houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands,
with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come."
Mark 10:29-30
Did they happen? I once gave up a lot of stuff for God and a few years later maybe I had gotten some back, but I definitely did not feel that I had gotten a hundredfold back. Then I realized I had missed the words
with persecutions in these promises, and I also realized that God may have a 400 year time span unlike my 5 year time span.
For example, St. Francis of Assisi gave up his house to start following Christ devoutly. Well, I’m named after him. San Francisco is named after him. There must be tons of hospitals, churches, schools, and orphanages named after him all over the world and he has an order that has existed for centuries. So maybe he got all these things back, but not in the way I would have thought.
St. Therese of Liseux wanted to be a missionary but couldn’t because she was too sickly. She died at 24 of tuberculosis in a Carmelite convent and became patron saint of missionaries. She suffered a great deal and was so holy that some call her the
“the greatest saint of modern times.” What did she get out of it? At her death she is reputed to have said,
“I have reached the point of not being to suffer any more for all suffering is sweet to me.” Can we buy that? Then I learned something. But guess what, Mother Teresa’s original name isn’t Mother Teresa, it’s Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu. Mother Teresa
renamed herself after St. Therese. Mother Teresa is also the only missionary I know of in my ignorance who has also won a Nobel Peace Prize and been voted the greatest person in India (not including Ghandi) in the vote by the Indian people. But Mother Teresa didn’t even start off Indian - She is an Albanian born in Britain. So maybe God did fulfill his promise, just not in the way I would have expected.
Autobiography of St. Therese of Liseux:
The Story of a Soul gutenberg.org/etext/16772 (In my stupid opinion, her words are highly similar to Mother Teresa’s advice books)
There has been a lot of evil in the world: slavery, colonialism, genocide, but it seems that it may take 400 years (as it did even in the Bible when the Israelites stayed 400 years in slavery in Egypt) but it falls down eventually. Maybe the Kingdom of God is coming on earth, just about 1000 times slower than we tend to think it should. And if it is coming on Earth and His promises are true, maybe there is truth that Heaven is a worthy goal.
But maybe the painful propehcies that came true are more convincing evidence than my weak conjectures.
*Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with Thee. Blessed art Thou among women and blessed is the fruit of Thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen. *
Come Holy Spirit, come by means of the powerful intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, your well beloved spouse. Come Holy Spirit, come by means of the powerful intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, your well beloved spouse. Come Holy Spirit, come by means of the powerful intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, your well beloved spouse.
For the sake of his sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world! For the sake of his sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world! For the sake of his sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world!
O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee!
Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!
*Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with Thee. Blessed art Thou among women and blessed is the fruit of Thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen. *
So was Ghandi “selfish?” Was Martin Luther King, Jr., just being “selfish?” Was Blessed Mother Teresa just being “selfish?”
