“Eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, what God has prepared for those who love him.”
As Catholics, we often hear this verse from First Corinthians quoted (or sung) in reference to an unfulfilled hope—typically, the hope of heaven. The words call to mind the unimaginable gloriousness of life with God that awaits beyond the shadow of death.
Yet attentive readers of Scripture will notice that, in its original context, Paul isn’t talking about a hope for something in the future. Quite the opposite: he’s talking about something that’s already happened.
Among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glorification. None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written,
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man conceived,
what God has prepared for those who love him,”God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God (1 Cor. 2:6-10).
“This” (what eye has not seen, and what ear has not heard) God has revealed to us—not will reveal, but did reveal. The lines we usually quote as a present thought about the future, Paul himself quotes as a past thought about the present.
So what’s Paul talking about, if not the hope of heaven?
To answer that, we have to begin at the start of the chapter. There, the apostle makes his famous declaration that he resolved to know nothing (no merely human wisdom) except “Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” This segues directly into the reading above. The wisdom that Paul is talking about here—the wisdom of God, which the rulers of the age didn’t have—is thus Christ, and him crucified.
Paul then pivots to those famous lines. He’s referencing a few different Old Testament passages (“as it is written”), but the main one is Isaiah 64:4: “From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides thee, who works for those who wait for him.” Thus, these lines—seen properly in context—are about the revelation, in history, of Christ himself: his incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection. What the Israelites had been waiting for—what eye had not seen and ear had not heard—is no longer hidden; it’s been revealed, through the Spirit, in Jesus. It’s a hope fulfilled, not an unfulfilled hope—in other words, just the opposite of how we typically use the verse.
So does this mean it’s wrong to use this passage, as the Catechism (CCC 1027) and countless other books do, in reference to the unfulfilled hope of heaven? I don’t think so. To be a Christian is to dwell in the tension of “the not here and not yet” and the “here and now.” The “not here and not yet” is our future life with God, especially at the end of time, when he will be “all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28). The “here and now” is the present life of the Church, the extension of the Incarnation, as it moves through history. We need to look through both of these “lenses” (as my pastor once put it) to see properly as Christians. And between the two, the heavenly lens should be primary: “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth” (Col. 3:2). Life here below remains a valley of tears, but God above “will wipe every tear” (Rev. 21:4). So the application of Paul’s lines to fulfillment of all revelation in heaven is fitting and understandable.
However, we also shouldn’t lose sight of what God has already accomplished through the body of Christ—for thirty-three years in the Holy Land, and even now in his holy Church. It’s truly a radical proposition: God has revealed the depths of God through the Spirit—and he invites us, here and now, into those depths, and into that Spirit!
The power of Saint Paul’s passage is precisely in turning our habitually skittering, forward-looking minds upside down: in a very real sense, the heaven we’re longing for has already arrived—and it’s Christ, and our life in him.
When we lose sight of this here-and-now aspect of the Christian life, we’re tempted toward a spiritual escapism at odds with the gospel. We stand around looking up to the sky (see Acts 1:11) instead of allowing the Spirit to put us to work on the ground. We pass by the needy instead of presenting our bodies as “a living sacrifice” poured out “as a libation” (Rom. 12:1, 2 Tim. 4:6). In short, we become, as the Man in Black sang, so heavenly-minded that we’re no earthly good.
Dorothy Day was fond of a line attributed to Saint Catherine of Siena: “All the way to heaven is heaven, for he has said, ‘I am the Way.’” We eagerly await heaven, yes—and needless to say, this world isn’t it. But don’t forget: heaven came to earth. Christ is the bridge, the Way, between them. So to be in the Way is to be—imperfectly and incompletely, but truly—in heaven already. “We draw close to heaven,” Benedict XVI once said, “indeed, we enter heaven, to the extent that we draw close to Jesus.”
Your eye can see him in the poor, your ear can hear him in the Word, and your heart can welcome him at the altar.