Are You Seeking Heaven Enough?

11 August 2026  Philippians 3:8-14

Memorial of St. Clare, Virgin

“For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ….”  (Philippians 3:8)  

You get to a certain point in your life – some of us, anyway – and you start to reflect on all the time you wasted, the absurd amount of attention you gave to things that never mattered. Books started and never finished, books bought and never started. Doomscrolling, looking at silly dogs, more comfortable shoes, the latest scandals of celebrities. Our devices tell us every week, without embarrassment or hesitation, how many hours we have devoted to them, a number we lie about, if we dare to mention it at all.

The Poor Clares (officially the Order of St. Clare) never have to worry about wasted time. They are the most austere order of nuns in the world. Their whole life is dedicated to prayer, seeking first and only the heart of Jesus.

C.S. Lewis once said, “He who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only” (The Weight of Glory, p. 7). And if we seek God and everything else, God and anything else, we run the grave risk of seeking God less, seeking heaven not enough.

Once a woman joins the Poor Clares, she only leaves the convent again in the event of emergencies or serious medical attention, not even to visit her family. Families can visit on a few occasions each year, but at those visits the consecrated sister sits behind a screen. She can only physically touch her family once every 25 years. They don’t have cell phones, televisions, newspapers or the internet. They never sleep for more than four hours at a stretch, but wake in the middle of the night to begin praying the Divine Office, which they continue at specified hours throughout the day. They want nothing to distract them from their vocation to pray for the cares of the world, and draw closer in to the heart of Jesus.

In short, the Poor Clares spend all their hours, day and night seeking heaven.

Now, before anyone starts harumphing about “wasted lives”, heaven is, in fact, the thing we all yearn for, and the only thing apart from God not bound by time or space. Indeed, heaven is God; it is to be taken up completely into the divine love of Jesus and abide there in the eternal fellowship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is finally to understand fully, even as we have been fully understood (cf. 1 Corinthians 13:12). Can there be anything more important than that? Who really is wasting time, or wasting their lives?

Yes, yes, there are poor and sick people to be cared for. There are wrongs to be righted, and injustices to be opposed. There are children to be taught, burdens to be lightened and burdens to be borne. All of that is true and good.

And all of that will pass away.

In heaven there will be no wrongs to right, no injustices to fight, no ignorance to teach, no sermons to preach. “They will all know me,” said the Lord to Jeremiah, “from the least of them to the greatest” (Jeremiah 31:34). Nothing that is not the love of God, the heart of Jesus, will be there: “As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect, and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away” (1 Corintians 13:8-10). Isn’t that what we should be thinking about, at least some of the time?

C.S. Lewis once said, “He who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only” (The Weight of Glory, p. 7). And if we seek God and everything else, God and anything else, we run the grave risk of seeking God less, seeking heaven not enough.

Thankfully there are the Poor Clares to remind us.

St. Clare of Assisi, pray for us.