God was not in Heaven

Fr. Rodrigo Mejia, SJ (March 2003)

The Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was the first man in history who traveled beyond the atmosphere in the space around the earth. After his historical travel he solemnly declared on the national TV: "I have been in heaven. I have looked everywhere but God was not there".

This sarcastic declaration of atheism served as a good propaganda for the then communist regime of the now extinct Soviet Union. However, another Russian citizen, an orthodox monk of the monastery of the Holy Trinity in the city of Kiev, responded to that declaration saying: "Gagarin said that he could not find God in heaven. Of course, if you do not find God on earth you will never find him in heaven ".

This wise comment of that monk expresses a fundamen1al truth of our Christian faith: our religion is not asking us to look for God in heaven but to find him on this earth by doing his will as Jesus taught us: "If someone loves me he will keep my word and my Father will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him" (John 14:23). If heaven is to be with God, our heaven has to start now on earth.

Many Christians have the idea that since God is spiritual He can be found only in spiritual things like prayer, liturgy and penance. But the God who created all things can be also found in all his creatures because he is present in all of them. This has been the experience of the great saints, of which St. Francis of Assisi is perhaps one of the clearest examples of finding and loving God in his creation.

True religious responsibility is not primarily oriented towards heaven, which we do not know but towards our brethren that we know. The Apostle James is very clear on this matter when he teaches: "Religion that is pure and without stain is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained by the world' (James 1 :26-27).

This had been the constant teaching of the Bible since the Old Testament. The prophets reacted against a religious practice that was centered on heavenly things while forgetting the needs of our brethren, especially the poorest of them. The best way to find God on earth, according to prophet Isaiah, is in the practical love for the poor:

"Yet this people seek me daily and delight to know my ways...Fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard in high...Is such the fast that I choose, a day  for a man to humble himself? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?... Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry and he will say: Here I am" (Cf. Isaiah 58: 1-9).

There are currently more than eleven millions of Ethiopians affected by starvation and famine. International NGO's are mobilized to help them. If our solidarity with them does not go beyond our prayers addressed to God in heaven, we may hear the same remark the disciples of Jesus received from the angels when Jesus ascended into heaven forty days after his resurrection: ''Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven?" (Acts 1: 1).