Yes, all we can know of heaven is, that it is the reward, the everlasting life, the new and divine state of being which the saints enter into and enjoy when they have left this world--that is, when they die in the church militant and rise in glory in the church triumphant. If any Christian, then, or so-called Christian, fancies he can meditate about heaven, and hopes to get there without knowing what a saint is, and without striving to be as near one as he can, he is simply deceiving himself. I fear that the kind of place some people think would be a good enough heaven for them, if we are to judge by the way they live, is, in fact, not much above what the state of hell really is. Many are the souls who ought to have been saints, and are damned because they were unfaithful to the vocation God gave them, and too sensual to make the necessary sacrifices that such a vocation demanded. What kind of a heaven, for instance, do you think the many intelligent Protestants we meet with every day will likely get, who know they ought to become Catholics to save their souls, and are yet afraid to take the step; who stand still and count the cost, and cheat their consciences with the false doctrine that no real sacrifices are demanded of them, because God will be more glorified if they leave all to him and do nothing themselves? And yet these people, and a good many Catholics, too, are living just such lives, and in their deaths they will not be divided. {488} And now do you say: O Father! tell us, then, what a saint is, that we may be sure we are not all wrong, but may have some hope of imitating such, and so join the company of the glorified ones in heaven when we die! I answer: A saint is one who does everything he feels that God wants him to do, and carefully gives up and avoids everything that he feels is not pleasing to God. Apply that to yourself. God does not want the same thing of everybody, nor require all to make the same sacrifices. So that, as a fact, there are all kinds of saints, as we know. But in what he does require he demands that one should aim at doing it _perfectly_. "Be ye perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect," said our Lord. Be perfectly honest, be perfectly pure, be perfectly sober, be perfectly charitable, be perfectly obedient to the laws of God and man, be perfectly humble, be perfectly free from loving money or other riches.