Then he had a dream: a stairway rested on the ground,
with its top reaching to the heavens;
and God’s messengers were going up and down on it.
This spot is no longer a mere dream. Jesus is the one who unites heaven and earth.
And he said to him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man" (cf. Joh. 1:51).
The woman who suffers hemorrhages for twelve years understands this intuitively when she thinks, "If only I can touch his cloak, I shall be cured." The woman somehow understands that touching Jesus is touching heaven.
Jacob receives the promise of land and descendants when he dreams of this connection between heaven and earth.
“I, the LORD, am the God of your forefather Abraham
and the God of Isaac;
the land on which you are lying
I will give to you and your descendants.
These shall be as plentiful as the dust of the earth,
and through them you shall spread out east and west, north and south.
In you and your descendants
all the nations of the earth shall find blessing.
Yet this promise to Jacob is not enough to satisfy the deepest desires of the heart. Descendants are given but they still live lives tarnished by sickness and decline which eventually end in death. They are often taken captive from the land of promise. But even when they do dwell there they only rarely dwell in peace, safe from threats without and abuse tyranny within. The place where heaven and earth meet is still more dream than real until heaven becomes incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ.
Now in Jesus we can touch heaven itself together with the hemorrhaging woman. We can cling to him and experience deliverance even from the things which were not abolished by the promise to Jacob. If we place our trust in him and acknowledge his name he will set us on high in a place where even sin and death cannot destroy us.
The world looks and only sees earth. They do not see heaven. They do not see angels ascending and descending in the place. But we do. And so we must go to the place where we can most perfectly encounter the one who is heaven in our midst. We must go to the mass and enter in actively and consciously for it is in the Eucharist that heaven and earth are most perfectly united.
In the Eucharist Jesus takes us by the hand and fills us with the life of heaven.
When the crowd was put out, he came and took her by the hand,
and the little girl arose.
Let us spread the news of this throughout the land. We more perfectly receive what Jacob describes.
If God remains with me,
to protect me on this journey I am making
and to give me enough bread to eat and clothing to wear,
and I come back safe to my father’s house, the LORD shall be my God.
Bread enough to eat and clothing enough to wear? He gives us his very flesh to bring us safely to his Father's house! Let us say to Jesus, "My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust."
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