Lifting our eyes to heaven: sermon on the eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

By a Dominican Friar   |   31 July 2024

“And looking up to heaven, he groaned.”

Why does our Lord look up to heaven when He begins to heal this deaf and dumb man? St Bede asks this question, and says that it is to set us an example, whenever we want to help some sick person, to begin by having recourse to God in heaven. But Christ performed this action of lifting up His eyes also at other times. During the Mass, when I recite the prayer of consecration over the host and the chalice, I say, “The day before He suffered, He took bread into His holy and venerable hands and having lifted His eyes to Thee, God His almighty Father, He gave it to His disciples.” Incidentally, it’s not through any of the four written gospels that we learn about our Lord raising His eyes to heaven before offering the Sacrifice. How then do we know it? By tradition: it’s a detail handed down through the centuries in the canon of the Mass, that must come ultimately from an eye-witness. It’s an example of what St Paul says today: “I delivered unto you that which I also received.” Since this detail was preserved in the Church of Rome, I presume that it must come to us from the memory of St Peter himself.

So, Jesus looked to His Father in heaven. But almighty God, of course, is everywhere: not everywhere, like a gas diffused through the cosmos, but because He sees all things and holds them in being. In the prophet Jeremiah, for example, we read, “Do I not fill heaven and earth, says the Lord?” Why then do we say that heaven is the dwelling-place of God? Why do we say, “Our Father, who art in heaven”?

There are at least two reasons. The first is that God has so designed creation that that part of the visible universe which is called heaven, or the heavens, reminds us of some of His own attributes. The ancients called the heavens the noblest part of creation. They are, if not absolutely unchanging — since that is an attribute that can belong only to God — at least unchanging to our eyes. The sun pursues the same course every day, the stars pursue the same course every night. Again, the heavens astonish us by their size and greatness. This, incidentally, is not just a modern emotion. The psalmist, in the Old Testament, cries out, “When I see the heavens, the works of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast arranged, what is man that thou art mindful of him?” They are also, of course, beautiful to look at: radiant and shining. In this way, the material heavens remind us of some of God’s own attributes: His immutability, His magnificence, His beauty.

This would already be a good reason for us to lift our eyes to heaven when we pray. But as Christians, we also have another one. We look to heaven when we pray because our Lord Jesus Christ has gone there. “It came to pass, whilst he blessed them, he departed from them, and was carried up to heaven. And they, adoring, went back into Jerusalem with great joy.” The material heavens that we see conceal from us, in some wonderful way, the throne of Christ, who sits at the right hand of the Father, and to whom we hope to come. 

Remember how this was foretold in the Old Testament, by the very structure of the temple in Jerusalem. There were two chambers in the temple, separated by a veil or thick curtain. The first was called the holy place; the second was called the holy of holies. No one could enter the holy of holies, apart from the high-priest, and he only once a year. At the moment of our Lord’s death, this veil or curtain was torn in two, from top to bottom. This was to show that access to heaven was no longer forbidden to mankind, and that Christ as the true high-priest would enter there by His Ascension.

We shall soon celebrate our Lady’s Assumption, body and soul, into glory. Those of you who know the story of Fatima may remember that the three children asked the beautiful woman whom they saw, “Where does your Reverence come from?” and that Mary replied simply, “I am from heaven.” She is there, where Christ has gone and where we hope to go. So, let us raise up our eyes, and above all, our hearts.