Heaven is the goal: "Keep on lifting your eyes up to heaven as you go about your work"

"Grace in the spirituality of St. Josemaria Escriva," by Cardinal Leo Scheffczyk

To know where one is traveling one needs to know what the goal is. The path of grace would be a path without meaning if faith and hope in reaching heaven were lacking.

That many Christians view the life of grace as lacking in savor and dynamism stems, in part, from not seeing heaven as a real goal. Therefore Escrivá encourages his hearers in a homily: “let us...go right to the core, to what is really important. Look: what we have to try to do is to get to heaven. If we don’t, nothing is worthwhile.”

And he advised “keep on lifting your eyes up to heaven as you go about your work, because hope encourages us to grasp hold of the strong hand which God never ceases to reach out to us.”

Here he is alluding not simply to a longing glance but to a determined effort to reach the goal, compatible with the reality of the trials and apostolic hardships from which it blossoms. For those who are following the path of salvation “at the end of the road a garden of paradise awaits them, eternal happiness, heaven.”

This realism in regard to salvation is firmly grounded in the Gospels, including the very human concern for the reward. Seeing life as a struggle entails the thought of the prize of victory:

“It’s hard! Yes, I know. But, forward! No one will be rewarded—and what a reward!—except those who fight bravely.” Escrivá recalls St. Paul’s promise that “each will duly be paid according to his share in the work?” What one reaps will be a function of what one sows.

Escrivá, in giving us his fullest view of heaven, asks: “what will it be like when all the infinite beauty and greatness, and happiness and Love of God will be poured into the poor clay vessel that the human being is, to satisfy it eternally with the freshness of an ever-new joy?” Heaven is the definitive fullness of grace, union with the divine Persons in love, joy, holiness and glory.

Here we see the dynamic and personal character of Escrivá’s thought, which permits one to grasp the heights and depths of the Catholic faith.