Who Art in Heaven

This reflection is upon eternal reality — so it’s going to be fairly short. Why short? Because, really, what can I say? I will need a snippet from the Catechism and a silly poem to help me.

Recently, I took part in a Word on Fire Institute conversation with Mark Bradford. We discussed what disability means and how Christ, God in the Flesh, shows us who we are as human beings. Near the end, he surprised me by asking, “Where is Heaven?”

I could only smile and answer, “Yes.”

This is a mysterious theological question and yet, at the same time, a question about each of our futures. So… Where is Heaven?

First my poem.

If I traveled to Arizona,

I would not say that I am there,

I would say, “I am here.”

If I go to Nova Scotia,

I won’t write, “Wish you were there,”

but, “Wish you were here, my dear!”

To see face-to-face the river Tiber

or even the river Niger

is to live an awareness of hereness

— not of thereness.

So there is far and there is near,

but I am only ever here.

Next, let’s reflect on heaven in the Lord’s Prayer via the Catechism of the Catholic Church. When we begin the prayer that Jesus gave to us, we pray to Our Father, “Who Art in Heaven…”

From Catechism paragraph 2794: “This biblical expression does not mean a place (“space”), but a way of being; it does not mean that God is distant, but majestic. Our Father is not “elsewhere”: he transcends everything we can conceive of his holiness.”

Heaven itself is not a place as in a spatial location. If heaven is a place, then it would be akin to when we say, “I’m just not in a good place right now.” The place that I might be referring to is not the state of New Hampshire, but rather the state of my mind, a state or way of being. Maybe heaven is like that — but it’s an extremely, eternally good place. Maybe it’s a way of being that is unity with God.

The Catechism continues:

“’Our Father who art in heaven’ is rightly understood to mean that God is in the hearts of the just, as in his holy temple. At the same time, it means that those who pray should desire the one they invoke to dwell in them.”

My heart is where God and I dwell together alone. God — Father, Son, Holy Spirit — lives in my heart, in the very core of my being when I “make room” for Him, as it were: humbly acknowledging that God is God and I am not, repenting that I have sinned against God, truly contrite and desiring to do what is just and holy in God’s sight. In this pureness of heart, we ask God to make in us His dwelling place, as in His holy temple. If heaven is where God is, then heaven is in the pure of heart.

Sin takes us away from our true homeland — heaven — “but conversion of heart enables us to return to the Father, to heaven. In Christ, then, heaven and earth are reconciled.”[1]

By the power of the Spirit, we are enabled to live in union with God. Now and forever.

“When the Church prays ‘our Father who art in heaven,’ she is professing that we are the People of God, already seated ‘with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus’ and ‘hidden with Christ in God;’ yet at the same time, ‘here indeed we groan, and long to put on our heavenly dwelling.’” [2]

In briefer brief:

“Who art in heaven” does not refer to a place but to God’s majesty and his presence in the hearts of the just. Heaven, the Father’s house, is the true homeland toward which we are heading and to which, already, we belong.”[3]

Here am I, Lord! I come to do Your will.

Not sure that I’m closer to understanding (I’m definitely not), but I thank you for reflecting with me! If you have silly thoughts or deep insights into where heaven is, please share in the comments. Pax Christi

© 2026 Christina Chase

---

[1] CCC para 2795

[2] 2796

[3] 2802