A Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Easter
Readings: Acts 6:1-7 1  Peter 2:4-9  John 14:1-12

Her 1975 debut album, “Horses,” positioned Patti Smith at the top of punk rock, and her 1978 hit “Because the Night,” written alongside Bruce Springsteen, subsequently reached the heights of the Billboard Hot 100.

That and her 2007 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame could be enough for anyone’s resume. But in addition to being a wife and the mother of two children, Patti Smith has also become a poet, painter, writer and photographer. 

Her 2010 memoir, Just Kids, sets her long relationship with the artist Robert Mapplethorpe amid the “young love and free wheeling artistic expression of New York City” in the ’60s and ’70s. In it, she confesses an extraordinary artistic desire: 

I believed I could write the longest book in the world. I would record the events of every single day. I would write it all down in such a way that everyone would find something of themselves.

Youth is made for magnificent dreams! 

There is something infinite about the human heart, at least if one judges by its desires. We want it all! No one has ever said to God or to anyone else: “I have all the beauty, the truth and the love that I will ever need. Thank you, that is quite enough.”

When the Church Fathers pondered the meaning of the “many dwelling places” in the “Father’s house,” they knew that our Lord was not offering a description of heavenly real estate (Jn 14:2). No, he was revealing what might be called celestial spheres or degrees of eternal bliss, which correspond to our deepest desires.

St. Irenaeus wrote:

All things belong to God, who supplies all with a suitable dwelling place, even as his Word says that a share is allotted to all by the Father, according as each person is or shall be worthy (Against Heresies, 5:36.2). 

Tertullian made the same point, using the stars as a metaphor. 

How will there be many mansions in our Father’s house, if not to match the diversity of what each deserves? How will one star also differ from another star in glory, unless in virtue of disparity in their rays? (Scorpiace, 6). 

This many-mansioned, multi-layered heaven is not our contemporary image. Perhaps under the baneful influence of faith alone being sufficient, we tend to think of entrance into heaven as similar to a pass/fail grade. Just show up for the course and you are in. 

There is a problem with this picture. Heaven is the enjoyment of a Trinitarian relationship that knows no limit, not the reward of tract housing real estate. 

In so many contemporary minds, heaven is no more than a celestial country club. And with that picture, it hardly seems fair to introduce levels of membership.

But echoing Philippians 1:23, the Catechism of the Catholic Church defines heaven not as real estate but as a relationship (cf. Jn 14:3 & 1 Thess 4:17).

This perfect life with the Most Holy Trinity—this communion of life and love with the Trinity, with the Virgin Mary, the angels and all the blessed—is called “heaven.” Heaven is the ultimate end and fulfillment of the deepest human longings, the state of supreme, definitive happiness.

To live in heaven is “to be with Christ.” The elect live “in Christ,” but they retain, or rather find, their true identity, their own name.

For life is to be with Christ; where Christ is, there is life, there is the kingdom (Nos. 1024-25).

Put another way, heaven is the ultimate fulfillment of our drive for relationships, for the beauty, truth and love that they offer to us. As varied as they are, all relationships share this much. We receive from them according to the measure we give ourselves to them. As St. John of the Cross once said of struggling relationships, “where there is no love, put love, and you will draw out love” (Letter 26 to Madre María de la Encarnación).

The purpose of this life is to fit us for God, to make us ready to receive the boundless relationship of love that we call God. But we do not directly see or know God in this life. The only way we know that we love God, that we are preparing ourselves for life with God, is by loving those whom he has given to us. 

God is uniquely personal. So God will never be some “thing,” some prize, that we receive. Like any other love, like the desire of the human heart itself, the love of God is limitless. But as in this life, as in all loves, our possession of God is curtailed by our capacity to receive. 

Life is not a test we pass. Its significance does not fade when a passing grade is assigned. No, life is a forge, creating something eternal, something never to be frustrated: our desire for God. For St. Cyril of Alexandria, to yearn in this life for Christ was to prepare for him in the next. Desire deepens us.

“I myself,” he seems to say, “am going ahead to prepare the path of entry into heaven.” But if you wish, and if it is the delight of your heart to rest within those mansions, and if you have devoted everything to reaching that city above and dwelling in the company of holy spirit—then “you know the way,” which is myself (Commentary on the Gospel of John, 9).

Patti Smith has written a new book, Bread of Angels (2025). In a profile for The Atlantic, she admitted to Amy Weiss-Meyer that her youthful ambition to speak to, and for, the heart of every human being was impossible: 

Near the end of our conversation, Smith brought up her desire, invoked early in her memoir, to write something in which everyone would find a piece of themselves. It was a goal she hadn’t fulfilled, she acknowledged. “Nobody knows how anybody feels,” she said. But she hoped that this new book would at least remind her readers, “You’re not alone.” 

Keep going, Patti! Heaven is not gained in a pew. Your dreams will forever exceed your reach, but they are not futile. They are forging you, forging something restless and eternal. Because even in an eternity of joy and contentment—“when we’ve been there ten thousand years”—our hearts will never say of God: “No more. I am satisfied.”

The Rev. Terrance W. Klein is a priest of the Diocese of Dodge City and author of Vanity Faith.