Choosing Heaven

Reflection for July 26, 2026 – Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

In this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus compares the kingdom of Heaven to a treasure buried in a field and a pearl of great price. He also compares the kingdom of Heaven to a net thrown into the sea, collecting every kind of fish. Find the daily reading here.

My children often ask me questions about heaven. What does heaven look like? Is there nighttime in heaven? Do you get hungry in heaven? Are there oceans in heaven? Will we feel bored in heaven?

My answer is almost always the same: “I can’t tell you for sure.” I guess I didn’t realize how little we actually know about heaven until I had kids who were obsessed with hearing the details.

But accepting human ignorance is liberating in a way, because it allows me to see clearly — and cling wholeheartedly to — the three things I do know for sure: Heaven is where God is, and hell is where He isn’t, and it’s completely my decision where I want to be.

The choice, you see, is everything.

We need to pay attention to how Jesus describes the kingdom of heaven in his parables. It is, he tells us, a treasure — but a treasure buried in a field owned by someone else. It is a beautiful pearl — and a very expensive pearl. It is a bountiful yield — one which must be carefully, even painstakingly sifted through.

It’s so easy to imagine the delight of the man who finds the treasure, who encounters the pearl, who hauls the bursting net aboard, just as it is easy to call ourselves followers of Christ, to hang a Rosary from our windshield and go to Mass.

It’s less easy, and a great deal more uncomfortable, to contemplate what comes next: the sacrifice, the commitment, the perseverance through uncertainty. 

Heaven is an incredible stroke of luck — one that requires a good deal of follow-through. We can never earn it, but we must choose it. Again and again and again, we must choose it.

©LPi