Heaven or Hell - You Choose

9 April 2026  Acts 3:11-26

Thursday in the Octave of Easter

“Repent, therefore, and be converted…that times of refreshment may come from the presence of the Lord….” (Acts 3:19)

Archbishop Fulton Sheen once wrote, “Men of other generations went to God from the order in the universe. Modern man goes to God through the disorder in himself” (Go to Heaven, p. 9). In 21st century America, any barriers to God are not on the outside, but on the inside.

There is some real confusion in these days about Heaven and Hell. Hell is not punishment because you’ve been bad. Hell is what happens when you make hellish decisions. Nobody goes to hell against their will.

Jesus is more like a secret agent who taps on our window late at night, and says softly but intensely, “The liberation has started. Join us!” He shows us signs that what He says is true. Then we decide, and the decision is Heaven or Hell.

Similarly, Heaven is not a reward for being very good. Heaven also is a choice. God doesn’t break doors down. He doesn’t invade, and capture us, and take us anywhere against our will. Jesus is more like a secret agent who taps on our window late at night, and says softly but intensely, “The liberation has started. Join us!” He shows us signs that what He says is true. Then we decide, and the decision is Heaven or Hell.

There have been times and places where people and governments try to compel one choice or another, but in 21st century America the resistance to God isn’t on the outside, but on the inside.

“Why do you look so intently at us?” Peter asked the crowd after healing a lame man in the temple (Acts 3:12). “We didn’t make this man walk, Jesus did” (cf. 3:13). And then Peter spelled out for them all the data about Jesus: You handed Him over to Pilate. You asked for Barabbas, a murderer. instead. You rejected and killed Him. The problem, Peter said, was in them.

It is still the same problem – not on the outside, but on the inside. Peter might say today: You set the Bible aside. You set the Church aside. You walked away from the Gospel. The problem is in you.

Then, however, Peter said, more reassuringly, “I know that you acted in ignorance…. But God has thus brought to fulfillment what He had announced beforehand…. Repent and be converted” (3:17-19).

The liberation has started. Join us!

Then we decide, and the decision is Heaven or Hell. God doesn’t break any doors down, and He doesn’t take us anywhere against our will. Salvation and damnation are choices. Our choices.

The barriers to Heaven in 21st century America aren’t on the outside, but on the inside. Jesus is tapping at the window, telling us not that the “times of refreshment” (3:19) are on the way, but that they have arrived, and the proof is Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. So now there is a decision to make. In another place Archbishop Sheen wrote, “The anxiety underlying all modern man’s anxieties arises from his trying to be himself without God, or from his trying to get beyond himself without God” (Go to Heaven, p. 19). Jonathan Haidt has an entire, hugely influential book on how overprotection of children in the real world and underprotection in the virtual world has created Generation Z, which is the title of his book: The Anxious Generation. Not surprisingly, perhaps, it is the same Generation Z, especially it’s 20-something young men, that is deciding that the way is with God, and GenZ is leading the way in the 38% increase in adult converts to the Catholic Church in the last year – higher still in specific places like Los Angeles (139%), Duluth (145%), and Chicago (52%).

Jesus still isn’t breaking any doors down, but He is still tapping on the window, and the decision is still Heaven or Hell.

The liberation has started. Join us!