Why Should God Let You Into Heaven?

[Climacus]

In his book 'Fundamentals of the Faith', popular Catholic apologist and Boston College professor of philosophy, Peter Kreeft, found that "well over three-quarters of all the "educated" Catholic college students I have taught do not know, after twelve years of catechism classes, how to get to heaven!" (p. 15). I was wondering if the same problem would apply to Orthodox people as well.

The question Kreeft would ask is: "If you should die tonight and God asks you why he should let you into heaven, what would you answer?"

So what would you say?

-Climacus

[Pravoslavnik]

Climacus,

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   I suspect that one Orthodox answer to this question was given by Blessed Father Seraphim Rose, who said that the relationship that we develop with the Triune God in this life is the same one that we shall have with Him in the next.  If we acquire the Holy Spirit of God--through the keeping of Christ's commandments, the purification of the nous, and the sacramental grace of the Orthodox Church--[i]we have already entered the kingdom of heaven[/i], even while living here on the earth.  For that reason, many of the Orthodox saints had direct knowledge of the Divine mind--clairvoyance, the ability to read hearts, to work miracles, and to live peacefully with wild beasts, as in the case of St. Seraphim.  Many of them were also able to survive under conditions of extreme heat, cold, and scarcity, as described in the Apothegmata of the Desert Fathers (and in Father Seraphim's excellent hagiography of Russian saints, called [i]The Northern Thebeaid.)[/i]

  Have you read the famous conversation of St. Seraphim of Sarov with Motovilov, during which St. Seraphim was "transfigured" while discussing the acquisition of the Holy Spirit as the central purpose of our life?  During the conversation, St. Seraphim not only "shone like the sun," but described the wonderful sensory aspects of the experience of the heavenly realm--which was also experienced by Motovilov, himself, during this conversation.

In the Orthodox view, if I am not mistaken, the kingdom of "heaven" is not only "within" us, but "all around us," if we could but perceive it.  Orthodox saints, as exemplified by St. Seraphim, have often entered into the kingdom of heaven even while living in this material world, through the acquisition of the Holy Spirit.  Put differently, "heaven," in the Orthodox view, is not something "out there" that we enter into after going through death (or purgatory) by following mechanical, scholastic formulae, but something that we may gradually attain through the sacramental grace of the Orthodox Church, and the purification of our hearts and minds.

[joasia]

Climacus,

You should read Fr. Seraphim Rose's book titled, The Soul After Death. He gives a concise explanation about how the Orthodox holy fathers teach about salvation.

Also, St. Theophane the Recluse's book called The Path to Salvation is very spiritually beneficial on how to conduct ourselves and gives us a focus on how to observe our conduct.

From what I have read from the holy fathers and these two particular books, I have come to understand that a person who wants salvation should first off, change his lifestyle in the flesh and live a life for God, in the spirit. To each individual, it is a different meaning.

First, it is to live by the Canons and dogmas of the Church that Christ established through the Apostles, that was passed down by succession(because many people have their own versions of what living for Christ is, which are wrong). If that is not established, then truth does not exist in a person's life.

Once that is established, there is plenty of personal habits that must be spiritually re-directed. The holy fathers speak of personal correction, but they are addressing it to those already established in the Orthodox faith.

So from this point, we continue to the personal corrections. Basically, the holy fathers teach that we must cease from conducting sinful acts...we must repent. We must view this as an instruction in changing our habits of the flesh and acting in the way that is God-pleasing.

When we act, we must check ourselves. We must hold ourselves back from the initial reaction and act the way Christ would want us to react. When we fall, by our own emotional weakness, we must draw our minds and hearts back to Christ and ask for forgiveness; God, have mercy on me a sinner or Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.

It draws our minds to focus back to what is spiritually beneficial. This is the constant conduct of an Orthodox Christian life; one that is living in faith and not only in name.

By making Christ a constant focus in our lives, we come to slowly develop in our spiritual conduct. Our priorities change. We start living our lives outside of the social conformities and believing in Christ first. How we make decisions becomes effected by the fact that we are looking at life in a more spiritual way.

But, what it comes down to is repentence and living for Christ before living for the world.

So, the papists make it black and white...how do you get to heaven? The Orthodox don't ask how to get to heaven, they ask will I get to God's Kingdom. And this small outline is an example of what it means to live for God in this life. What it comes down to, is Christ's mercy. And from what I've read, the intercession of the Theotokos is a life-saver.

We may think we are doing okay, but maybe we are doing it with half a heart but we think it's our whole heart. What it comes down to is how much we are doing for Christ.

One last comment. St. Theophane the Recluse taught about zeal for God: Zealous pleasing of God is the path to God which is full of consulation and gives wings to the spirit.

We must repent and want a zealous life for God and He will give us the Grace to have strength to live it. Only God's Grace will give us the strength when we are open to it.

So when it comes down to it, it's God's Grace that will lead us to His Holy Kingdom, but we have to want to live by it...we have to repent.

In Christ, Joanna