CS Lewis, the author of many works, including the Chronicles of Narnia, once wrote that should you or I or he get into heaven, a three fold shock would await us. 

First, we’d be surprised by the people who were there.  We Catholics may have only recently moved away from our rather arrogant and self centered view that we have exclusive rights to heaven. Sadly there are still some Christians who are ready to exclude others from Paradise. They hear about the goodness of a Mahatma Gandhi, but they can’t get themselves to believe that there might be a Hindu in heaven, let alone millions, billions, of good people who were never Christians. That would not follow the rules that they have made up for determining the Who’s Who in heaven.  They seem to forget that those who reach out to others in charity, reach out to the very presence of Christ in others, even if, like the sheep in today’s Gospel, they do not recognize Christ. There will be many who have been saved by Christ who did not know Him by that name but who reached out to Him in others. There will be many in heaven whom we would not expect to be there.  

C. S. Lewis’s second conjecture is that there will be people missing from heaven whom we expected to be there.  In our American denial of death, we try to ease our grief of death by canonizing our Loved Ones who have died.  No matter who a person may be, we decide that they are in heaven after their death.  All of this has to more to do with our grief than the reality of God’s gifts.  Perhaps, and hopefully, they indeed are.  But their presence in heaven will be determined not by our need for them to be there, but by how well they reached out to Christ in others throughout their lives. 

      (Which is why we pray for those who have gone before us this month – that God might be redeeming in them whatever stands in the way of accepting his love completely.)   

Finally, in his wit, C. S. Lewis says that the third surprise we would have if we took stock of the souls in heaven would be learning that we are there.  When we are honest with ourselves, we are well aware of the many times that we have turned from God.  Our sins are very clear to us.  What we are not so aware of is the extent of God’s mercy. He sees the ways that we have allowed Him to immerse us in Christianity to such an extent that we reach out to him without even recognizing His presence.  He sees the ways that we do that which is only natural for us, the ways that Christianity has become a natural way of life for us.  This continual grace in our lives pointing us to his presence in others is a great mercy.  He allows us to replace with love that which we have destroyed with selfishness and sin.  We live in His mercy. 

When we think about the final judgment, this last great story in Matthew’s gospel tells us that both groups were surprised.  For the blessed, welcomed in to the Kingdom, it was a judgment of affirmation and praise.  For those who served other selflessly, no knowing there were actually serving Christ himself, a surprising judgment of joy transformed their past into an even more glorious future.  For those standing of the left, the surprise was that in failing to see Christ in the lives of people in need, they failed to gain heaven.  It had to be more complicated than that – didn’t the observance of the law count for anything?   

The final judgment is coming for us all.  Of that, make no doubt.  And the only question on the final exam is so simple?  Did you love with all your heart, mind and soul?  Did you love those you met, whether deserving or undeserving of your love?  For whenever we do this for the least of our brothers, we indeed do it for Christ.