Pictured is Bishop Robert Barron. If you click that link, you will be able to explore his many online writings. Bishop Barron's daily "Reflection," on August 15, 2026, is what has prompted my blog posting today. In that daily gospel reflection, the Bishop comments on a Psalm, a quotation from the Book of Revelation, the Gospel according to Luke, and Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians. Here's the comment that attracted my attention (emphasis added):
In the Apostles’ Creed, we speak of our hope for “the resurrection of the body.” Mary, assumed body and soul into heaven, has experienced precisely this resurrection and hence becomes a sign of hope for the rest of the human race.
When we speak of the assumption of the Blessed Mother’s body, we are not envisioning a journey through space, as though Mary moved up into the sky. The “heavens” are a rich and consistent biblical symbol for the transcendent, for a manner of existence that lies beyond our familiar dimensions of space and time.
The assumption of Mary means that the Blessed Mother was “translated,” in the totality of her being, from this dimensional system to the higher one for which we use the term “heaven.” Mary, who exists now in this other world, is not so much somewhere else as somehow else, and this helps to explain why we can speak of her, especially in her heavenly state, interceding for us, helping us, and praying for us.
I have never understood modern physics, but believe, at least, that I do understand that the science of physics, proceeding on since Einstein, now asserts that both "space" and "time" are, actually, quite different from the way we most conventionally think of them. "Death," in particular, should quite possibly be understood differently, too, post Einstein.
As I read Bishop Barron's reflection, part of which is quoted above, he is, in fact, claiming that the Bible's statements about "Heaven," and related topics, might be literally "true," if it's true that both time and space are different from the way we normally think of them.
I very much doubt that I will ever understand modern physics - and thus I am pretty certain that I won't feel very confident that I understand "Heaven," either. I do think, though, that what the Bishop is suggesting should be taken "seriously," in the sense that what the Bible is talking about, when it speaks of "Heaven," might well reflect a "reality" that can be seen to be fully consistent with what we know about the "real world" we each inhabit, since (post Einstein) we now should be evaluating "reality" by a standard that does not say that our "normal" way of understanding space and time are based on the "reality" that we have conventionally believed "reality" to be.
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-nspm-7-repression/
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