School Homily: Friday, November 5, 2004

Citizenship in Heaven

This was an exciting week for us Americans, because we got to do one of the most important things in our country: we got to vote. As I’m sure you heard at home and in school, voting is one of our greatest rights and duties as citizens.

Did you ever stop to consider what it means to be a citizen? Citizenship means that we are free and that we are members of a nation. We owe our loyalty to that nation, and in return, we can expect protection from it. To be a citizen, then, gives us wonderful rights and privileges.

St. Paul wrote something very interesting in his letter that we just heard. He said, “But our citizenship is in heaven.”

Wow! That means that we’re citizens of the United States of America because we were born here or chose to come and live here… AND we’re also citizens of heaven because we were born again in baptism!

Now remember again what it means to be a citizen: we have wonderful rights and privileges and can expect to be protected… AND we also owe our loyalty and devotion.

Heaven, as you all know, is God’s home. It’s the place where the angels live… it’s the place where the saints live. Our job while we’re still here on earth is to love God and the angels and the saints… and to be loyal and devoted to them. And in return, they will help us and protect us—because we, too, are fellow citizens! We are all members of the same Mystical Body of Christ. We all share in the Communion of Saints.

The difference between the saints and us, of course, is that they are already in heaven, while we’re still on the outside. It’s almost as if we’re on a trip, traveling away from home. At the end of our journey, we will look forward to getting back home—getting into heaven.

The interesting thing is that everyone who’s already in heaven is perfect. You can’t get into heaven if you’re not perfect, even though you’re a citizen. It would be like your Mom telling you that you can’t come into your own home with your muddy shoes on. You’ve got to clean up first.

And that’s how it works with heaven, too. The difference is, it’s not dirt or mud on your body or your clothes that prevents you from getting into heaven… it’s dirt on your soul, which we call “sin.” Sins are the bad things that we do on purpose or carelessly.

Fortunately for us, we can still get into heaven even if we committed sins—even if we committed lots of sins—even if we committed terrible sins!

But first, you have to be made perfect. To be made perfect and be able to get into heaven, we have to be sorry for our sins… be forgiven for them… and the damage from our sins has to be fixed.

Picture this: you and your friend are playing ball in your backyard. You’re being careless and fooling around, and even though you should know better, you throw the ball hard so it goes over the fence and breaks a window on your neighbor’s house. You’re a good kid, so you’re very sorry for what you did. You go over to your neighbor’s and tell her what happened. Your neighbor is very nice and she tells you that she forgives you. You’re very relieved, of course, and you start to go back home.

“Wait a minute!” she calls after you. “What about the broken window?”

You see, even though you’re sorry and you’ve been forgiven, there’s still one more thing: the damage that needs to be taken care of—the broken window.

Your neighbor says, “Well, I’ll give you a choice. You can buy a new piece of glass and replace the window yourself… or, you can give me the money and I’ll hire someone to fix it… or, I can let you work it off by mowing my lawn and shoveling the snow off my sidewalk a few times… or, maybe you can pray the Rosary for me a couple of times and we’ll call it even. Any of those things will take care of the damage.”

God, too, let’s us repair the damage from our sins in different ways. We can go to confession and communion, we can do good deeds—like helping around the house or doing extra chores, we can say extra prayers or go to Mass during the week, and so on. These are all ways to make our soul “perfect” to help us get into heaven.

Just the same way we want to be good American citizens, we should also try to be good citizens of heaven. Look for ways to make your soul perfect—and God bless you today and always!