Maxim-ising Our Spiritual Life (5)
Where we come from can sometimes be a good indication of what we are like: our manners, our way of viewing the world, our habits, even our way of speaking. As my mother might sometimes say of my father, “You can take the man out of the Whiterock, but you can’t take the Whiterock out of the man!” But it can also be a compliment — “You are a credit to your parents” and so on. It might also be the case that we can be marked, understood, and even judged by the place that we are headed.
For St Philip, although at once the most Florentine of men (or so he is called), he was also to be judged by that fact he was clearly a citizen of heaven. He had heaven daily before his eyes, measured all things by their relation to that heavenly goal and cultivated in his life a longing for heaven that was a kind of homesickness. His last blessing to his sons at his death, Fr Faber imagines, was “One half from earth, one half from heaven…just as his life had been. One half in heaven, one half on earth, of earthly toil and heavenly mirth: a wondrous woven scene!” No surprise, then, that he should have as one of his maxims — and probably often quoted by his spiritual children — “The true servant of God acknowledges no other country but heaven.” (16 August)
That longing for heaven, that homesickness, that desire for a return to a place we have been promised and not yet seen, is a peculiar mark of the Christian. To long for somewhere is to live as if we are already there, to be shaped by our longing for it. It is a kind of refusal to let go of it. And when we think of heaven, well, the refusal to let go of it should fill our lives with the qualities of that place — “earthly toil and heavenly mirth: a wondrous woven scene!” In another hymn, which has a lovely poetic expression of what heaven is like, we are invited to view it as a place which is, “all jubilant with song, and bright with many an angel, and all the martyr throng; the Prince is ever with them; the daylight is serene.” We too are invited to be jubilant with song, to be conscious of the merits and our closeness to the saints and to have the Lord, the Prince, ever with us, in the midst of our life. If he is, a measure of that heavenly serenity is ours, a serenity that can handle whatever the world throws at us.
Today we keep a sublime feast of one who is the most serene in the face of the difficulties of the world, our Blessed Lady. Her Assumption, body and soul, into heaven is testament to the totality of her belonging to that place. Just as her life was shaped by her trust in God’s promises, just as it was united to her divine Son, so her life was formed by the place where all this would lead her: heaven.
Life in the world can sometimes make us feel that putting heaven first in our life, or acknowledging no other country but heaven, is asking a lot of us. But when we think about it, why would we want any other country? Acknowledging heaven as our only country brings with it the assurance, joy, comfort and hope that we need in this passing life. It helps us treat others with the dignity and love that is becoming of fellow citizens of that place, and it helps us see that trials are certainly passing and that heaven is eternal and so whatever life throws at us, we can get through it until that day when, with Our Lady, at the feet of her Divine Son, we are reigning too in that happiness that knows no end.