Who Am I in Heaven? A Review of “The Great Divorce”
There have been times in my life when I have prayed for the end of my self. When old sins keep me up at night, or I watch myself fall into the same repeating patterns of sin, I have often prayed the prayer of St. Catherine of Genoa: “God purify me, as gold is refined by fire. Take whatever is left of me and absorb it into your glory.”
St. Catherine of Genoa was a Christian mystic writing in the 15th century. She experienced many visions of God, whom she referred to as Pure Love. Her theology was built around a desire for total annihilation of the self and absorption into this Pure Love. This theology is put best in her own words:
“Thus I say of being: Everything that has being has it from the essence of God, by participation. But Pure Love cannot stand to see this… This love cannot endure such a similitude, but exclaims with the greatest impetuosity of love: ‘My being is God himself, not by participation, but by transformation and annihilation of its own being’” (Wilson, 73).
The traditional Christian approach is that anything good in us is from God. Catherine takes this a step further, arguing that everything good is God, and thus the parts of us that are not God are evil. She believes that the self outside God must be annihilated. As a Roman Catholic, St. Catherine believed in purgatory, a place where (she believed) the soul would be purified with a refining fire, until all of self was burned away. She writes, “when it is purified, the soul remains entirely in God, without anything of its own. For the purification of the soul consists in the deprivation of us in us, because our being is God” (Wilson, 76).
Whether or not you believe in purgatory, traditional Christianity holds to the cleansing of the soul in some respect before entrance into Heaven. Sinful souls can not be in the presence of a holy God. However, does this purification of the soul extend all the way to annihilation of the self and our very being?
As attractive as it often feels to me to be rid of my self, I do not think this is the proper way to view our being. In The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis offers an alternative prayer: “overcome us that, so overcome, we may be ourselves” (Lewis, 113). Instead of dissolving into the glory of God, in Heaven, people become more real, more individual, more human than they ever were on the shadowlands of earth.
In The Great Divorce, Lewis, the main character, travels from the gray, drab streets of Hell to the bright glory of Heaven. When he arrives, he finds that he and the people who have traveled with him “were in fact ghosts: man-shaped stains on the brightness of that air” (Lewis, 20). The land itself is more solid, more beautiful, and far vaster than anything he has experienced before. The inhabitants of Heaven are unlike the “ghost” humans in every way. Lewis describes them thus: “some were naked, some robed. But the naked ones did not seem less adorned, and the robes did not disguise in those who wore them the massive grandeur of muscle and the radiant smoothness of flesh. Some were bearded but no one in that company struck me as being of any particular age” (Lewis, 23).
The image of moving from translucent to solid is a depiction of what happens to the human soul. On earth, because of the fall, we are shadows of who we are made to be. In Heaven, Lewis argues that we will become more human than ever before, and human as God intended us to be.
The individuality Lewis describes (beards, accents, and all) is a gift from God. In the beginning, God made man and woman distinct from each other, and gave them roles as his sub-regents. In Lewis’ garden-like Heaven, our individuality does not leave us. Rather, God restores humanity to the dignity we once fell from.
To Catherine’s credit, Heaven demands some kind of self-denial to reach this point of glory. At the end of the day, each soul must say either “thy will be done” or “my will be done.” The heavenly inhabitants have chosen to surrender themselves to God, saying “I do not look at myself. I have given up myself” (Lewis, 27). This, however, is not Catherine of Genoa’s dissolution into God. Rather, it is surrender that allows our individuality to be restored. In the face of God’s splendor, worshiping him is our only desire. When we worship him as we were created to, we are restored to the role he created for us and can become fully human.
Humans are shaped by failures, potentially more so than by our successes, with sin being a leading force. For some, sins can feel so ingrained that we can question who we are without our sin. Lewis provides a beautiful answer in the man who is freed from lust.
Lewis describes a small, wispish man who carries a tiny red lizard on his shoulder. The lizard constantly whispers and misleads him. An angel asks if he can rid the man of the lizard. After a vicious internal debate, the man allows the Angel to kill the lizard. Immediately after, there is a beautiful response. The man grows, solidifies, and shines radiantly, becoming more human than he ever was on earth. At the same time, the lizard grows and changes, becoming a glorious stallion. The man leads the stallion in a full gallop “further up and further in” toward the mountains of God.
Heaven promises a place free from sin’s control, while still recognizing the way it shaped each of us. Rather than sin controlling the man, weakening his every resolution with whispers of temptation, the man has full control over his actions and is restored to his proper place of dominion. He has become himself again. Through God, we anticipate with gratitude the restoration of our beings so that, like the man, we can run to him to worship.
This scene prompts the above-quote prayer: “overcome us that, so overcome, we may be ourselves” (Lewis, 113). This is the gift of Heaven: not that we are to be annihilated into union with God, but that he restores us to our rightful place as kings and queens, united in worship of him for all eternity.
Lewis, Clive S. The Great Divorce. HarperCollins Publishers, 1946.
Wilson, Katharina M., editor. “Mystic of Pure Love: Saint Catherine of Genoa.” Women Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation, The University of Georgia Press, 1996, pp. 72–79.