“There is no place for the heart in the earth where it can preserve its integrity; if it’s in the earth, it rots.”

-St. Augustine

The Feast of the Ascension is important because it reminds us of our destiny and our moral horizon. That is, it reminds us of heaven where Christ is, in whom our lives are hidden (Col. 3:3). And it also reminds us that it is the task of Christians on earth to live as if eternity is real, that is, in the light of a kingdom in which all are made sisters and brothers whom we’d better start loving now.

Paul named it “God’s upward calling” (Phil. 3:14). Knowing that in Christ we are meant for eternity with him, we must now see everyone as brothers or sisters (or as potential brothers and sisters) with whom we are destined eternally in love. Such is why Paul said, “we regard no one according to the flesh,” because we must think of everyone as possible saints and treat everyone as such (2 Cor. 5:16). That is, as Christians, we must begin heaven now in how we speak and act. Because heaven’s the end game.

An old Russian Orthodox saying expresses well how our thought of heaven should affect our life on earth. Look around the room—the saying goes—and pick out the people you don’t want to go to heaven with, and I promise you, you won’t. This is the wisdom and promise and the warning of Christianity, what the Ascension reminds us of; it’s why St. Augustine said we can’t keep our hearts only on earth otherwise they’ll rot. We must lift them up; we must remember that Christ has opened God’s heaven for us. We just need to live for heaven now—as resurrection people with hearts on heaven, as people alert to the much bigger picture.