With classic insight into what it is to be human, St. Thomas Aquinas notes that in a sense there will be anguish in heaven. It is there as something remembered. “The saints in glory will remember the afflictions they endured,” yet “they will not experience them with anguish.”
I find this deeply moving and consoling. Suffering is a significant and enduring feature of our life on earth. We know—at least we can grasp this conceptually—that suffering is necessary as an instrument of divine love crafting us into our true selves. But it’s still just so difficult; sometimes, so very, very difficult.
Aquinas makes this point in commenting on the Lord’s words that after a mother gives birth she “remembers no more the anguish.” Interestingly, he suggests that the real meaning is that she no longer experiences the anguish. For surely, she does ‘remember’ it.
We can probably extrapolate that ‘remembering no more’ also means that the mother judges the anguish as nothing in comparison with the fruit it has born. But again, memory of the anguish there certainly is. I would think (and if as a man I err here, I beg forgiveness) that the memory can in fact be suffused with the joy of the child’s life and presence. And perhaps from the other direction, joy in the child’s life is suffused with a certain richness precisely as the fruit of this agonizing labor.
To return then to human suffering in general, on which the analogy to childbirth should shed light, our suffering has a direct and profound role in bringing about our sanctification, our becoming whole, our becoming ourselves. Our being born into true life.
And to the extent that we begin to see this mysterious causality, we can begin to look with new eyes at our suffering (as a mother now looks back at her fruitful anguish), and also at our being whole (as a mother thinks about her child, the fruit of her labor).
Yes, only when the labor is completely done (and so we know there’s no more coming!) will we have unalloyed joy in what has been wrought through our suffering; and only then will we remember our suffering in all its meaningful glory. I cannot but think we will laugh aloud, and shed tears, rejoicing in a plan now at last completely manifest. And our scars will be so many trophies, monuments to a plan so wondrous we never could have imagined.
And in the meantime, right now I can look forward to that. Yet I suppose I should not expect this will remove the present suffering; rather it helps sustain me in it. For if it simply removed it, what then later would there be to remember as suffering? ~ ~ ~
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Thanks
You’re welcome, David!
I would have put a question mark after your title, suffering in heaven. I think this would be most appropriate since it wouldn’t entice the reader to question what kind of suffering could be possible to Heavenly Kingdom.
Nice read!
I see what you are saying; thank you. But I did indeed intend, simply by the title as given, to prompt the reader to wonder about something that is truly wonder-full; namely, that suffering we have endured can truly contribute to the richness of heaven, throught its being remembered.
Yes, I agree! It would seem too that the saints in glory, and our loved ones gone before, are not above our suffering or our concerns but are intensely involved in them precisely because of that fullness of vision in which they live. It is that eternal perspective that would seem to take them farther from us but paradoxically makes them closer.
Thank you, Imdelda; that is a great perspective that goes beyond and complements what I have suggested here.
“See, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. Isaiah 65:17. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed Rev 21:4
The bible says we will not have suffering in heaven.
Thank you for these lovely Scriptural verses. Surely indeed there will be no suffering there in the sense of something that causes us anguish. But will there not be a memory of Our Lord’s Passion and Death? It is in this sense, I think, that St. Thomas is reminding us that we will remember suffering as part of our glory. It will in fact be a cause for joy. This, I think, is good and wonderful news. The richness of heavenly glory is beyond even our imagining, and part of that richness is recollection of the path to glory.
But what about those in heaven who have caused the suffering? If our sufferings will be our “trophies,” how will knowing the suffering they caused us be reflected? Not that it matters, though I will be relieved and grateful that those who caused me suffering are in heaven with me, I’d rather they not know the suffering they caused.
I cannot claim to know just how God will handle the issue you raise here (which I thank you for raising). I will simply suggest this: might it be that God’s astounding Mercy will shine through all the more clearly in the truth that while people have caused such suffering, they have repented and are now forgiven? And indeed, I think we will see and rejoice in how God’s amazing Providence was able to utilize that suffering, all working together for the good of those who love Him.
I would think, too, that in heaven we will be reminded of the suffering we caused yet have been forgiven for.