By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
Many Christians either forget all about Advent or confuse it with Christmas. However, as my Iowa Trappist monk friends always remind me, “Advent and Christmas are different. Advent is the period of joyful expectation.”
This Advent, I am devoting some of my anticipation energy to better understanding the ultimate joyful expectation—heaven. An old friend who has served as a Utah Catholic priest for a half century is helping me.
Monsignor M. Francis Mannion was born near Galway, Ireland. Among other things during the last fifty years, he has earned a doctorate in theology, penned a regular national newspaper column, directed a liturgical institute in Chicago, and spearheaded the renovation of the landmark Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City.
I met him when I was a young altar boy at one of the first Utah Catholic parishes where he served. We renewed that acquaintance and started a friendship, many years later, now that we both comb gray hair.
There’s an old joke that Catholic priests never retire, they just cut their work schedule back to 50 hours per week. It’s not just a joke.
After Msgr. Mannion stepped away from active parish duty a decade ago, he embarked on a six year long project to research and write about heaven.
He published the fruits of that labor—Models of Heaven: Interpreting Life Everlasting (Wipf & Stock, Eugene, Oregon, 2023)—late last year. I’ve read it and think it is a lovely and insightful book.
And what better topic than heaven for anticipation, for expectation, and thus for Advent?
Acknowledging that eternal life lies outside the scope of human experience, Msgr. Mannion—with the help of scripture, literature, and scholarship—engages in some “divinely-inspired imagination” to present eight models of heaven.
The eight models are: Resting in Peace; Contemplating Divine Beauty; Participating in the Trinity; Communing with the Saints; Singing with the Angels; Tending the New Creation; Dwelling in the Holy City; and Feasting in the Kingdom.
His models are not just a description about a place and what we might see there. Msgr. Mannion also presents a thoughtful contemplation of what we will do in heaven, how and with whom we will do it, and how it likely will transform us.
The book is an interesting and determined effort to debunk the notion of heaven as “an eternal, boring, retirement home where white-robed ghostly figures wander aimlessly between clouds, playing or listening to harp music, vaguely encountering deceased friends and relatives, and occasionally catching a glimpse of a rather remote and dispassionate God.”
Here are some of my favorite highlights from each of the eight models.
Resting in Peace: In contrast to the age of anxiety and restlessness in which we live, Msgr. Mannion’s first model of Heaven is about finding rest and peace. This is not sleep, but rather “a place of dynamic rest” and of “intense engagement” in work which “meets the heart’s desires.” Quite simply, it is “participation in the eternal activity of God.”
Contemplating Divine Beauty: Seeking to explain the venerable but elusive notion of the “beatific vision, the eternal vision of God,” Msgr. Mannion explains how anything “authentically beautiful is a kind of sacrament of the world to come.” In this model of Heaven, “we shall see everything as God sees it” and even become “makers of beauty.” This eternity “will be an endless celebration of all that is wondrous and beautiful,” an unending “feast for the eyes.”
Participating in the Trinity: Msgr. Mannion concedes that the doctrine of the Trinity is the “most obscure and least interesting feature of Christian faith.” His model makes it intriguing by asking us to consider a “Dancing God” in a “partnership of movement” with “reciprocal giving and receiving.” Heaven with this Trinity is an “everlasting dance” in which “all persons , communities, and all creation, will move in ordered glory, ecstasy, and joy.”
Communing with the Saints: “A notion of heaven as a place in which people dwell in insolation,” Msgr. Mannion writes, “is profoundly wrong.” Instead, it will be a place of communion—togetherness—with the best of us and the rest of us, saint and sinner alike. He explains, “Since we live in relationship on earth and in heaven, we cannot but know in heaven spouses, family, friends—indeed eventually all men and women.”
Singing with the Angels: In an earlier chapter Msgr. Mannion writes of the dancing God. Here it is God the musician, with a capable backup choir of angels. He states a wonderful retort to those who doubt angelic existence—“[G]iven our modern knowledge of outer space, we should be more open than ever to life forms beyond what we now know.” Under this lovely model…“In heaven, we shall sing eternally with the angels, as all together redeemed humanity and creation give praise to God.”
Tending the New Creation: This “garden” model described by Msgr. Mannion is very appealing. He explains how “men and women of goodwill” will “tend, till, and protect animals, water, plants, food, fields, and all elements of creation,” and that human “despoiling” of nature will have “passed away.” He concludes, “God will once again look at his Creation and find it ‘very good.’”
Dwelling in the Holy City: Msgr. Mannion sees the Holy City of heaven as a progression and form of transfiguration. Away from the confusion and fragmentation of the Old Testament Babel; away from the injustice and incivility of Raamses which enslaved the Israelites; away from the crassness and ugliness of Philistia. This movement is towards an eternity “of all that is most noble, graceful, and beautiful in the human city,” and to freedom from all that is “dehumanizing and tragic.”
Feasting in the Kingdom: We might wonder, in heaven will the food be any good? Msgr. Mannion expects there will be a “superabundance of food and wine of the highest quality.” Better yet, “Human sadness and tears will be resolved in a joyful feast on God’s holy mountain, where there will be no more loss, sadness, or death.”
Advent is a wonderful time to think about heaven, and it now is much easier to think about heaven thanks to Msgr. Mannion’s new book. His thoughtful reflections put me in the right frame of mind to cherish my favorite words from Isaiah 9:6:
For to us a child is born, to us a son is given;
and the government will be upon his shoulder,
and his name will be called
“Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
*Mike O’Brien (author website here) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Paraclete Press published his book Monastery Mornings, about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, in August 2021. The League of Utah Writers chose it as the best non-fiction book of 2022.
