Question. Who gave you this name?
Answer. My godfathers and godmothers in my baptism; wherein I was made a member of Christ, the child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.
Suppose that somebody in his will left me property in America. Although I have never been there (I should like to go one day, for one reason because there are people there who are kind to your and my Haggerston), I could say, “It’s mine now”; and, when I did go there, I should see that it belonged to me and to nobody else. At your baptism God promised you heaven. It is yours now, although you have never been there and do not quite know what it looks like: one day, if all is well, you will see that part of heaven marked out for you by your Christian name, and belonging to nobody else, except of course God (Galatians 4, 7).
For “inheritor” means “a person who owns something now, which he will possess one day.”
Every baptized Christian is now an inheritor of God’s kingdom; heaven is now his or her eternal home. God’s kingdom is in this world, as well as in heaven. Here it is not perfect (St. Matthew 13, 24, 25, 27): there it is perfect (St. Matthew 13, 47-49). But here, in this world, you and I and every inheritor are given by God - if we care to use it, it all depends on Free Will - all the help we need to reach heaven; the power of prayer, the grace of the sacraments, the guardianship of angels, the prayers of saints, human love and friendship, etc. And all through this life we know that heaven belongs to us now. In short:
I come from God. *
I belong to God.
I go to God.
So do you. Thank God!
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