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TASK OF LIFE IS TO 'SEND UP MATERIAL' FOR HOMES THAT WE ARE BUILDING IN HEAVEN

Your life is where you build it and you should see it -- you should build it -- in truth. Don't sell yourself short. Neither exaggerate. In prayer, seek the right place to build your foundation -- your mansion.

We speak here of heavenly mansions. Of course, all of Heaven will be our home. That's what so many say: that it felt like going home.

But did not Christ say this? "In My Father's house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you," He said in John 14:2.

What a fascinating concept this is: that Christ prepares an abode for us. In some translations, it says "many mansions."

It is also what we hear from those who have alleged near-death experiences: that in the afterlife they saw what were similar to structures on earth, including homes that ranged from little hovels to magnificent buildings (depending on the person's spiritual development)!

Said one experiencer, "I was surprised to see while many of the homes were spacious, others were very small. Some were barely larger than a small kitchen or a large bathroom. I couldn't imagine why anyone would want to live in a house so small. I asked my brother about this. 'That was all the material they sent up,' was his strange reply. 'What do you mean?' I asked. 'That was all the good works they sent up,' he replied, meaning the size of a house one gets in paradise is determined by the quantity and quality of the good deeds performed [on earth]."

According to researchers, a number of individuals saw unfinished buildings in the spirit world and one found out why; she was told that the future occupant had not yet completed her earthly life, her mission.

What would yours look like? What have you sent up? Where have you built your foundation?

We know from Scripture how building something on sand is tenuous (no matter how big we build it) and so we start out with that: building on the Rock of Christ and His Church, which is on the bones of Peter. Sacraments. Too often, we build our lives where we simply happen to find ourselves -- where we have landed, through happenstance -- instead of seeing in prayer where God wants us. Too often, we construct where we will live in the afterlife where others want us to build, or where we are shoved instead of calling on the Lord to bring us to something higher, something better and higher.

Our point: choose not the mire, the swamp, but the mountaintop! Let not your spirit be mired. You may be there already. It may be meant exactly as it now is. Just make sure that you have built you life at the high point of your spirit -- because that's who you really are.

In prayer we should ask: Who am I Lord? What am I, Lord? Am I where you fashioned me to be?

Meanwhile, we must send up the right "materials." Faith is the brick. Charity is the floor. Love is the mortar. Gratitude is the roof (bringing it to the peak). Kindness is the delicate trim. Patience is the sweeping landscape. Purity determines the size and quality of the windows, we might imagine. Every mission and child a mother rears and sacrifice is a beam that girders the structure. 

While living here in the world, we have needs that must be met, but our gaze must always be toward the afterlife and so that is what we mean by building on the highest ground: in Heaven.

Did you ever notice how certain people can knock you off track -- make you feel differently about who you are, jilt you out of alignment? Or how that can happen when you sin or don't pray enough (you will never sin while praying)?

Prayer is the key to aligning the personality with the spirit -- which is important. Meditate on this daily: Lord, is my personality in line with the spirit You formed within me?

Another way of saying this is we must all pray to bring our personalities in alignment with our spirits. We must find balance. When you feel out of sorts, when you are uncomfortable with what you do, or who is around you, it may be because you are out of alignment, and so is your foundation. Think of the expressions: You don't "feel yourself." You are "out of sorts." You don't know "where you're going." You don't "recognize yourself." You're not who you "used to be." You don't "know who you are." What frustration!

Having a foundation means remaining the same -- feeling like who you really are no matter who is around. Seek this. God will help. The distance between your personality and spirit is the extent of your confusion (read that twice).

It may also be the source of your anxiety. Let not others define you.

Are you confused? Are you anxious? Is it because your spirit is still searching for its proper foundation?

We lose that sense -- that alignment -- when we gossip, when we're angry, when we are too "down to earth," when we're filled with lust, when we're jealous.

Pray from the heart; build faith with small miracles; send up "material" through the sacraments; let no one lower your sights; set your sights where God wants you (and build your foundation there)!

Be all you can be. Don't build yourself up with falsity, of course, but don't undersell yourself, either. In short, define yourself as what is best in you and you will find joy in Heaven and the fullness of life even here, where the mansions are nothing in comparison.

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