Most people define heaven as the place where God lives. They may add that it's where souls go after they die. None of that is exactly wrong. But there's more to say about heaven from a Christian perspective. Heaven is less a place than it is a condition of complete and final fulfillment for creation in relationship with its Creator. Heaven is "when" we get to be who we were destined to be all along.

We look up instinctively when talking about heaven. The vault of the sky is where we've biblically imagined God to dwell. The ancients put God at the highest point available to the eye: on mountain tops, above the clouds. When Jesus returns to his Father, he ascends. Glory to God in the (literal) highest!

The New Testament raises our expectations about heaven as more than the dwelling place of God, however. It's also the ultimate meaning of home and life for us. We hope to experience the maturity of our being in God's presence, as Franciscan theologian Zachary Hayes explains. When Christian believers are reunited with Jesus, our divine likeness will be revealed in our kinship with God's Son. So when we ask what heaven is like, we might well be asking: what will we be like when we reach spiritual maturity?

The religious imagination of the church through the centuries has created images of a celestial realm that have inspired many to lead holier lives. That realm is the place of final joy, eternal rest, the ultimate family reunion. Most of us hope that eternal transcendence won't mean a loss of our selves: we've rather grown to love and identify with our histories, societies, and relationships, and it would be a letdown to find ourselves in an eternal "oversoul" of un-individuated life. The Borg Collective of Star Trek fame is no one's idea of heaven!

Rather than interrupting our humanity, heaven is interpreted as the fulfillment of it. Theological insistence on the resurrection of both body and spirit is a way of saying this. You and I remain "you and I" in the life of the world to come. Heaven is also the attainment of direct and unmediated knowledge of God, AKA the Beatific Vision. Catherine of Genoa perceived heaven as the moment when everything standing between us and perfect love is finally purged away. Only endless joy with the One who is love remains.

Scripture: Genesis 1:1, 8; Isaiah 6:1-8; 65:17; 66:1; Pss 11:4; 19:1-7; 139:8; Mark 1:9-11; Matthew 3:2; 5:8; 10:32; Luke 24:50-51; 1 Corinthians 13:12; 1 John 3:2

Books: And the Life of the World to Come: Reflections on the Biblical Notion of Heaven - John F. Craghan (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012)

C.S. Lewis on the Fullness of Life: Longing for Deep Heaven - Dennis J. Billy, C.Ss.R. (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2009)

This story includes enough drama for a mini-series. Apostolic succession presumes a direct line of authority proceeding from Peter the Apostle to Pope Francis I. That line got blurred during the Western Schism, which inadvertently sprung from the Avignon papacy.

In the 14th century, Rome was in a state of political anarchy and became too dangerous to contain the pope. One pope was imprisoned, and a later one elected under military pressure. In 1309, Clement V moved to Avignon, France, for safety and stability. Six more popes remained at Avignon, and the papal office became increasingly worldly in what was described as "the Babylonian captivity of the papacy". Saint Brigitta of Sweden pleaded with Avignon Pope #6 to return to Rome, but it took Saint Catherine of Siena's relentless spiritual clout to convince Pope Gregory XI (Avignon Pope #7) to comply in 1377.

Not long after returning to Rome, Gregory XI died. The next papal election was influenced by rioting Italians who called for a native successor, and cardinals still behind in Avignon didn't get to vote. The mentally unstable Urban VI was the result. The French cardinals rejected Urban and held their own conclave, electing Clement VII. England and most of Italy sided with Rome; France, Sicily, Scotland, Naples, and Spain preferred the French pope. This led to a 39-year schism that confounded rulers and bishops. Double appointees were obliged to duke out the details in monasteries, religious houses, even parishes.

Urban returned to Avignon and was probably poisoned. Roman cardinals elected Boniface IX, who was promptly excommunicated by the French Clement VII. Boniface reciprocated. Clement died and was replaced with Benedict XIII by the French. The Roman Pope Boniface died, followed by Innocent VII and then Gregory XII. While several popes on both sides had wanted to end the Schism, Gregory and his counterpart Benedict agreed to sponsor the Council of Pisa in 1409 to resolve the problem. The Council deposed both popes and elected another, Alexander V. The other two popes refused this solution. Now there were three popes. Alexander soon died—probably poisoned.

 The Pisa Council replaced him with John XXIII who was hardly better than a pirate. Another Council was held in Constance in 1414 and it elected Pope Martin V. All other contenders lost their supporters and the Petrine successors were thereafter traced through the Roman line of popes.

Scripture:
Mark 3:16; Matthew 16:18; Luke 22:32; John 21:15-17; Acts chs. 1–15

Books:
Authority in the Church - David J. Stagaman, SJ (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1999)

The Popes of Avignon: A Century in Exile - Edwin Mullins (Ketonah, NY:BlueBridge Books, 2011)

All of us in the modern world need to know more about the Crusades! These events have done much to shape East-West relations to the present time. There were nine altogether, from the 11th through the end of the 13th centuries: armed expeditions of western medieval Christians against "infidels" in general, and Muslims occupying the Holy Land in particular. Many Crusades were disasters, and few achieved the goals set for them.

Crusades were holy wars with a biblical pedigree, as historian Joseph Kelly puts it. Their rationale was pasted together from the books of  Joshua through Revelation to support the idea that fighting to secure the Promised Land of Israel is a divinely ordained mission. Since the 7th century, Muslim Arabs had taken charge of Palestine, Egypt, Syria, and northern Africa by means of jihad or their own version of holy war. Specifically they attacked both the Persian and Byzantine Empires on the threshold of their desert territories, incidentally cutting off access to Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria from the West. The Arabs and Byzantines eventually found a way to co-exist, and pilgrim access to the Holy Land was restored.

By the late 11th century the Byzantine emperor wanted to be rid of his enemies and appealed to Western leaders for help. Pope Urban II couldn't drum up support for the Byzantine cause but knew that Catholics would fight to liberate the Holy Land, sweetened with the offer of indulgences. The Crusades invited the religiously fervent, the adventurous, the greedy, and especially landless younger sons who were assured of getting a plot of their own in the bargain. The First Crusade actually did manage to recapture Antioch and Jerusalem, but at the cost of mass slaughtering of Muslims, Jews, and indistinguishable local Christians.

After that, the holy places of the Near East would exchange hands many more times. Crusades were launched to retake them, or to achieve whatever political aims the kings and popes of the West had in mind. Wholesale slaughters, rape, looting, and destruction became programmatic. While some of these wars restored the holy places to Western control, it would be hard to describe the military actions that accompanied them as holy.

Scriptures:
holy war theology in Book of Joshua; Deuteronomy 20:4; the campaigns of King David in 1 and 2 Samuel; Joel 3:10; Book of Revelations

Books:
101 Questions and Answers on the Crusades and the Inquisition - John    Vidmar, OP (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2013)

The Crusades Through Arab Eyes - Amin Maalouf (New York: Schocken/Knopf Doubleday, 1989)

Famous abbesses of the past include Hildegard of Bingen, a 12th-century visionary, theologian, composer, artist, and healer.

An abbess is the female counterpart of an abbot. This title derives from abba, "father" in Aramaic and Syriac, which makes the abbess the mother of her community. Hers is an elected office over a group of twelve or more nuns in an abbey. (Abbey and monastery are interchangeable words.)  The term abbess has been used since the sixth century within the Benedictine order, though now it's generally applied among religious cloisters of women. The abbess was originally a woman of noble rank as recognized within the structures of feudal society. She had the capacity to sit on councils, and in some situations governed double monasteries of both monks and nuns.

Was she powerful? You bet. In the feudal period, an abbess wielded temporal, spiritual, and ecclesial authority that bordered on the episcopal: that is, she held a rank similar to a bishop within the borders of her cloister and associated territories, and was answerable to no authority under the pope. Today's abbesses hold a more limited authority over their communities in spiritual and temporal matters.

Famous abbesses of the past include Hildegard of Bingen, a 12th-century visionary, theologian, composer, artist, and healer. She ran into conflicts with clerical leaders and eventually moved her community to Bingen in order to govern without interference. Her power was so strong and she inspired such devotion in her nuns and priest spiritual directors that it's no wonder she filled some clergy with alarm. Her canonization was delayed for centuries, and only in 2012 did Pope Benedict XVI recognize her as a Doctor of the Church.

Teresa of Avila in the 16th century was a remarkably capable abbess who reformed the Carmelite order and encouraged John of the Cross to do the same with the monks under his charge. Teresa is another Doctor of the Church named belatedly in 1970, and at the time of her death the Spanish Inquisition was investigating her for possible heresy. Eleventh-century Abbess Heloise of the Paraclete community was considered a brilliant scholar and governor of her community. Heloise is remembered mostly for her tragic love for Peter Abelard. Finally, Scholastica, twin sister of Benedict, was co-founder of the Benedictines with her brother. While the term abbess was not used in the 5th century to describe her, Scholastica fulfilled that role admirably for her nuns. As Gregory the Great said of her: "She could do more, because she loved more."

Films: "Hildegard" (Gateway/Vision Video 1994) "Teresa de Jesús" miniseries (Televisión Espanola, 1984)

Books: The Life of Teresa of Jesus: the Autobiography of St, Teresa of Avila  - transl. E. Allison Peers (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1960)

The Life of the Holy Hildegard - The Monks Gottfried and Theodoric (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1995)