Will disabled people be healed in heaven?

[Professor_JHS]

Recently, I read an op-ed piece by former Senator Rick Santorum in which he beautifully expressed his Catholic sense of hope that God’s grace is present even amidst the difficulty of caring for a grievously disabled child. His reflection prompted me to wonder whether, as Catholics, we can also hope that his disabled child will be freed from her disabilities in heaven. Or is it the case that, as one of my colleagues argues, in heaven we will retain our handicaps and limitations but will simply be given the grace to love one another in those infirmities? In short, my question is: Does the Church teach that retarded people will be healed in heaven? Or is it simply that our attitudes will be healed toward them?

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

Does the Church teach that retarded people will be healed in heaven? Or is it simply that our attitudes will be healed toward them?

Who knows what will happen? St. Paul said it best:

But, as it is written, “What 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).

We just don’t know what we will be like in heaven. There is one clue though. Even in his glorified body, Christ retained the marks of his Crucifixion, the scars of his suffering. They did not limit him, but they did prove that he had risen from the dead (John 20:25-28).

I can only offer my personal opinion, but I believe that heaven would be very dull indeed if we all were “preserved in amber,” so to speak, as perfectly sculpted images of humankind of the same general age of 25 to 35. Perhaps one reason why God allows babies, young children, teenagers, and (at the other end of the spectrum) the very old to die at the ages they do is to populate heaven with a true picture of humanity in all of its forms and stages. And perhaps our deformities and weaknesses in this life might be glorified in the next so that they are present but not limitations.