The Question That May Keep Us Away from It
It is a question the practising Orthodox Christian does not say out loud. It would be improper. Yet he says it in secret, when no one is listening — in those nights when faith feels like an old word and the descriptions of paradise heard in sermons sound like an empty room.
Will I be bored there?
This question does not come from a lack of faith. It comes from the suspicion — most often unspoken — that the Orthodox paradise might be a kind of liturgy that never ends. Choir of angels forever. Unbroken hymn. Static light. Cosmic akathist. The reader of the Gospel has heard “eternal joy” and translated mentally, without willing it: boredom guaranteed, but no way out.
And so, however much he turns his gaze from the question, it returns to his lips. Especially after he leaves the church and looks at the world he is leaving behind. This world looks interesting to me. How is it that the other one seems boring? Could it be that I have remained attached to the wrong one?
This hidden contradiction — between the human appetite for the world and our description of paradise — is one of the most serious. For it speaks not about heaven, but about the way we have imagined it. About the shallow catechesis we have received. And about the depth of the Tradition we have not yet touched.
This article wishes to do this simple thing: to show that the question “Will I be bored in heaven?” is itself the symptom of a false image. And that the Fathers’ answer is not merely “you will not be bored,” but something far stronger — boredom itself will disappear, for boredom is the symptom of the fallen world, not of heaven.
Where Does the Idea That Heaven Would Be Boring Come From?
Before answering the question, it is good to ask where it comes from. For the image of a boring heaven is not patristic — we shall not find it in the Fathers of the Church. It is a modern image, formed from several sources we can identify.
The Baroque Image of Heaven
The first source is Western Baroque iconography. The ceilings of Baroque Catholic churches, Titian’s Maria Assunta, Rubens’ Descent of the Holy Spirit — all these created in the European mind a sentimental heaven, with puffy clouds, plump angels, harps in hand, golden lights. A fixed scenography. An eternal chromolithograph. This image, though it remained within Catholic art, contaminated Orthodox culture too, through textbooks and children’s books — and left in the believer’s mind a lasting association: heaven = static decor.
Secular Modernity
The second source, more serious, is secular modernity. From the Enlightenment onwards, paradise has been mocked as a projection of powerlessness: if you cannot have happiness here, I promise it there, post mortem. Karl Marx — “opium of the people.” Nietzsche — refusal of life. Sigmund Freud — neurotic projection. Albert Camus — existential lie. All have worked at the same image: heaven as escape, as compensation, as anaesthesia.
And since secular modernity has defined happiness as novel experience — travels, encounters, surprises, discoveries — heaven, by contrast, has become the zone where nothing happens any more. There one no longer travels, no longer meets new people, no longer discovers anything. Boredom.
Minimal Catechesis
The third source is, unfortunately, our own catechesis — or, more precisely, its weakness. Generations of Orthodox Christians have received about heaven a minimal description: “the other world,” “eternal joy,” “where the saints are.” Vague words, lacking weight. No patristic theologian quoted verbatim. No drop of the poetry of Saint Ephrem the Syrian. No mystagogy of Saint Maximus. No epektasis of Saint Gregory of Nyssa.
And the result, predictable enough, is that the young Orthodox, set before a secular culture that promises infinite experiences, sees heaven as ontological poverty. He has no choice but to accept it as a duty of faith, or to suspect, in secret, that it is not quite what he thought he wanted.
The Confusion of Paradise and Kingdom
The fourth source — and the most subtle — is the confusion between paradise and the Kingdom of Heaven, two realities which the Orthodox Tradition distinguishes, but which common speech blurs. And our answer will depend upon this distinction.
Two Realities: Paradise and the Kingdom of Heaven
Father Cleopa Ilie († 1998), in his Word About Paradise, draws a distinction which modern speech has forgotten:
“Paradise is the place where Adam dwelt and where the righteous dwell until the Last Judgement. A provisional state. It is not appointed for the righteous to dwell there for ever, for from the Judgement onwards, the souls of the righteous no longer go to paradise, but to the Kingdom of heaven. And the difference between heaven and paradise is unspeakably great, for so great was God’s love for the human race that, in place of paradise, He gave us the Kingdom of heaven”1.
And he adds, with the rigour of a spiritual father formed in Tradition:
“What does the Gospel say? ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of paradise’? No, but otherwise: ‘the kingdom of heaven’”2.
So: paradise is the state of the souls of the righteous between death and the Last Judgement — their place of rest, a reality, not a mere metaphor. Holy Scripture locates it “to the east,” as Father Cleopa observed on the basis of the text of Genesis. There, the righteous soul awaits the resurrection of the bodies. This state is, according to the word of the Holy Apostle Paul, “with Christ” (Philippians 1:23), and is “far better” than the earthly life.
The Kingdom of Heaven, on the other hand, is the final state, after the Last Judgement and the general resurrection — when the righteous, with their resurrected bodies, will inherit a new heaven and a new earth (Revelation 21:1).
The present article will use the word “heaven” in the broad sense — covering both states — for the question “Will I be bored in heaven?” refers, in common use, to eternal blessedness in general. But the distinction remains important: even in the provisional state of paradise, boredom is impossible. How much more will it be impossible in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Why? The Fathers have answered this question. And their answer changes everything.
The First Answer: The Time of Heaven Is Not Our Time
Father Cleopa, in the same Word About Paradise, describes paradise as a delight of the five senses transfigured. And he says something which, read carefully, unravels much of our question:
“The songs there (…) have such beauty that a thousand years seem as one hour in paradise, as we read in The Salvation of Sinners”3.
A thousand years — one hour. The exact inverse of boredom.
For boredom is, by definition, time that drags. Boredom is the sensation that the clock moves too slowly — that the minute has 70 seconds, the hour 70 minutes, the day 27 hours. Boredom is empty time, time no longer held by content, time become a burden.
In heaven, says Father Cleopa, time becomes full. A thousand years of blessedness pass as one hour. That is to say: they do not stretch, do not drag, do not empty themselves — but, on the contrary, fly on the wings of contemplation.
This experience of time accelerated by joy is not foreign even to fallen man. We all know the moment when, immersed in something we love — in music, in prayer, in an encounter with a beloved person — we observe on the clock, with wonder, that three hours have passed which seemed like one. Subjective time has shortened because its content was dense.
In heaven, says the Tradition, this phenomenon will be the rule, not the exception. The content of eternal life — the vision of God, the communion with the saints, the contemplation of uncreated beauty — is so dense that time itself becomes thin. A thousand years — one hour. And boredom, which presupposes empty time, becomes simply impossible.
The Second Answer: The Senses Transfigured
The imagining of a boring paradise presupposes, implicitly, that our body will be impoverished there. That sight will be limited, hearing weak, taste abolished, touch undone. This imagining comes from the confusion between the resurrection of the bodies and an eternal existence without body — a confusion which infected Western culture from the time of the Cathars and certain Protestant currents.
The Orthodox teaching is, however, the opposite: in the age to come, the senses will not be abolished, but raised to a state above themselves. Father Cleopa, following the patristic tradition, describes paradise as a delight of all five senses:
“Taste. The fruits of paradise have such sweetness and such variety of flavours that man can no longer desire anything beyond their sweetness.
Hearing. The songs there which delight not the taste but another sense of man, hearing — have such beauty that a thousand years seem as one hour in paradise (…).
Touch, two-fold, inner and outer, has there such beauty and such gentleness in the creatures, that never do thorns exist, no harsh thing exists, nothing that may burn you, nothing that may poison you — so that touch (…) is without any harm.
Smell. There is such a fragrance of the Holy Spirit, and those flowers have such fragrance, that you can no longer imagine that anything in the world could smell more beautifully than they.
Sight. And sight delights in such beauty (Gan-Eden, that is, eternal delight) that man cannot in any way conceive that he could see anything more beautiful than there”4.
Father Cleopa does not invent. He resumes the Syriac tradition of Saint Ephrem the Syrian, who in the Hymns on Paradise describes the paradise as a mountain with three ranks, with extraordinary vegetation, with scents that human tongue cannot name, with lights and harmonies which inebriate the soul5. He resumes the Egyptian Sayings of the Desert Fathers, where the Fathers of the desert speak of visions of paradise as of an intensely material reality, but transfigured. He resumes the teaching of Saint Macarius of Egypt, who saw, through prayer, the uncreated light and called it a “foretaste” of paradise.
In short: heaven is not a poverty of the senses, but an enrichment of them. Present man, with his weak senses, barely guesses what a beautiful flower means. In heaven, he will see the flower as it is in its depth — and will smell its fragrance as, most likely, Adam smelled it in Eden. The true poverty of the senses is here, not there. Here we live with stuffy noses, clouded eyes, ears deafened by noise. There the senses truly awaken.
Of course, in the state after death and before the resurrection of the bodies, we are not speaking about bodily senses in the biological sense of here. But the Tradition uses the language of the senses to show that man will not be impoverished but enriched; and after the general resurrection, the body itself will participate in this transfiguration. The fullness of Father Cleopa’s description will be fulfilled, properly speaking, in the Kingdom of heaven, when every righteous one will be made whole in a resurrected body.
The Third Answer: Epektasis — The Blessedness That Never Stops
Here we enter the deepest part of the patristic answer. And its name is epektasis.
The word belongs to the Holy Apostle Paul, in the Epistle to the Philippians: “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward (ἐπεκτεινόμενος — epekteinomenos) to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God” (Philippians 3:13–14). And Saint Gregory of Nyssa, brother of Saint Basil, made this word the centre of his teaching on the age to come.
Epektasis means: the unceasing reaching out toward God, without end.
Saint Gregory begins from a simple observation: God is infinite. Not metaphorically, not “great,” not “beyond what we can grasp,” but absolutely infinite — without limits, without end. And precisely because He is infinite, no created soul can grasp Him at once. However far you advance in knowing Him, there always remains more to know. However close you draw, He is always revealed more deeply. However much you love, there is always more to love.
Saint Gregory writes:
“The soul that is united with God is never satisfied with what it tastes. The more it is filled with this tasting, the more it is kindled with desire”6.
Read this sentence slowly. It contains everything.
In the fallen life, desire and tasting cancel each other out. You desire a food; you eat it; satiety extinguishes desire. You desire a knowledge; you obtain it; curiosity is quenched. You desire an encounter; it takes place; expectation comes to an end. Boredom comes, necessarily, after satisfaction — because the fallen object is finite.
In heaven, desire and tasting feed each other. The more you taste of God, the more you desire. The more deeply you know Him, the more you are kindled for more. And this more never ends — because God is infinite, and progress in knowing Him knows no ceiling.
This is epektasis: an eternal movement from glory to glory (cf. 2 Corinthians 3:18), which knows no weariness, because every stage of it is already perfection, but not the final point. There exists a perfect blessedness which, at the same time, is an opening to a greater blessedness. This interweaving — paradoxical for the modern mind accustomed to finitude — is, for Tradition, the very essence of the Kingdom.
Saint Gregory goes further. In The Life of Moses, he describes Moses’ experience on Mount Sinai as the model of eternal life: Moses sees God, but at once asks to see Him more. And God answers that he cannot see His face (Exodus 33:20) — that is, cannot grasp His essence. But shows him “His back,” that is, the next step of nearness. And on Mount Sinai, Moses does not stop — he ascends. And he never finishes ascending.
Thus is the saint in heaven. He sees God. But at once he asks to see Him more. And God gives him more, without end. Never enough. Never the ceiling. Never “well, what shall we do now?” — for the now itself is the very content of blessedness.
Boredom is impossible in such an ontological regime. Boredom presupposes that you have grasped something and are waiting for the next challenge. But in epektasis, you have grasped nothing — not because you have remained poor, but because the object (God) is infinite. And this very inability to grasp is the source of joy.
The Satiety Without Satiety
There is a Greek word which Saint Gregory of Nyssa uses with predilection: koros — satiety, fullness. In fallen life, koros comes after pleasure and brings it to an end. You eat too much; you are sated; you no longer want. You drink more than you should; you become drunk; you grow disgusted. You love at an intensity that cannot be sustained; you grow weary; you cool.
In heaven, Saint Gregory teaches, there exists a paradoxical phenomenon: satiety without satiety. That is, the soul is sated — receives the fullness of the Godhead according to the measure of its ability to receive. But satiety does not cut off desire; on the contrary, it inflames it. And therefore the soul, in heaven, is simultaneously full and hungry — full of what it has received, hungry for what is still to be received.
Saint Gregory says somewhere that “God does not delight in satisfying His chosen one, but in His chosen one’s seeking Him always.” This is not the punishment of man through deprivation. It is his calling toward the infinite. If God allowed the soul to say “now I am sated, I want no more,” it would mean that the soul had stopped growing. And for a creature made after the image of God, who is infinite, stopping would be the greatest unhappiness possible.
Knowledge and Union
An important aspect must be underlined: knowledge in the age to come is not academic. It is not the accumulation of information. Saint Gregory of Nyssa describes it as a union — the soul that is united with God. Knowledge here is participation, not observation from outside.
This is a crucial distinction. In modern culture, knowledge is understood as possession. To know a thing = to hold it in the mind. To know a man = to have information about him. To know a phenomenon = to be able to predict it. And precisely because this knowledge is possession, it has a terminus: when you have grasped all that was to be grasped, you have finished. And boredom is born precisely at this terminus.
Knowledge in heaven is not so. The saints will know God not by possession, but by union — by participation in His life. And the life of God is infinite, living, an unbroken fount. To participate in it is not to consume it — but to be consumed by it, in the sweetest sense of the word. The soul united with God does not hold information about Him; it lives through Him, in Him, with Him.
For this very reason, this knowledge never ends. God is not an object. God is Trinity of Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. To know Him does not mean to possess Him mentally, but to enter, by grace, into the communion of His life. To enter this communion means to participate, by grace, in the life of the Trinity — in the eternal love between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, which the Fathers have called, with theological language, perichoresis: the mutual interpenetration and indwelling of the divine Persons. Into this love without end is man called to enter, by grace — and every moment of this union is new, every taste is different, every love comes with a fullness we have not known before.
The Fourth Answer: The Uncreated Light
Here enters, naturally, the teaching of Saint Gregory Palamas on the uncreated light and on the divine energies — a teaching which the Church defended at the Palamite Synods of the fourteenth century (1341, 1347, 1351) against Barlaam the Calabrian.
Barlaam the Calabrian, formed in an intellectual climate marked by rationalism and Western influences, reduced the experience of the divine light to a created or symbolic reality. Saint Gregory Palamas responded: there is in God the essence (incommunicable) and the energies (communicable). And through the energies, God Himself comes to us, illumines us, deifies us. The Taboric light, seen by the Holy Apostles on the mountain of the Transfiguration, was not a symbol — it was the uncreated light of God’s glory, seen through transfigured eyes.
And now comes the question: can anyone be bored seeing God?
The question, set thus, contains its own answer. All human boredom comes from contact with limited things — finite, poor, repeatable. God is not so. God is Life Itself, the fount of being, the source of every possible beauty. To see Him is to receive life, not to grow weary of it. And wonder is, by definition, the opposite of boredom.
The Light That Does Not End
The Taboric light is not a light like other lights. Saint Gregory Palamas insists: it is not created — it is not part of the visible world. Nor is it natural, physical sight of the eye. It is the light which Christ, our Saviour, showed on Mount Tabor, when “His face shone like the sun, and His garments became white as light” (Matthew 17:2). A light which Peter, James, and John saw with their eyes — but through the transformation, the strengthening of their eyes, by grace.
This light is, according to Saint Gregory Palamas, the very glory of God — uncreated energy, divine, through which God makes Himself known to creatures. And the saints who see it know not the essence of God (incommunicable), but God Himself in His work toward us.
Father Sophrony Sakharov, who knew intimately Saint Silouan the Athonite († 1938), describes several times the experience of the uncreated light as a reality you can only describe by negation: it is not the light of the sun, but it shines more strongly than the sun; it does not burn, but it pervades all; it cannot be seen with physical eyes, yet it is more real than any visible object.
And concerning the age to come, Father Sophrony used to say that this experience, which in the present life is rare and of short duration, becomes there the normal condition. The saints will live in the uncreated light, will be clothed in it — as Christ is on Mount Tabor, as Moses and Elijah were beside Him, as the saints are shown on icons with the halo (which is nothing other than the visible sign of this uncreated light).
The Vision of God — Knowledge That Deifies
Saint Athanasius the Great spoke the word that has defined the whole of patristic theology: “God became man, that man might become god” (by grace). This by grace is capital. Man does not become God by nature — it would be impossible and blasphemous to say so. Man becomes god by grace, that is, he enters the communion with God through His divine energies. This deification — theosis in Greek — is the very destination of man.
And the vision of God in the age to come is not passive observation. It is active participation in the divine life. He who sees God becomes like Him. So Saint John says clearly: “when He appears we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2).
Like Him. That is, by grace, sons of the Father. By grace, lights from His Light. By grace, like unto the incarnate Word. By grace, full of the Holy Spirit.
How can anyone be bored who, seeing God, becomes like Him? This is not a static state, but one of unending growth in glory. And precisely because the process is unending — because epektasis knows no end — there is no moment in which either the growth, the glory, or the joy comes to an end.
In the Imnele iubirii dumnezeieşti (Hymns of Divine Love), Saint Symeon the New Theologian († 1022) describes the experience of seeing the uncreated light with a direct language which leaves no room for doubt: “And therefore the wonder amazes me the more, when the Spirit opens the eye of my mind. I marvel at how He gives me to see, and how He Himself is seen. For He appears to those who see as Light in light, and those who see see Him again in Light”7. And concerning the very encounter with Christ in light, Saint Symeon witnesses: “I saw Him truly whole, as fire in the midst of my heart. Thus, shaken by the wonder and powerfully terrified, I went out of myself, I lost myself wholly, not knowing what to do”7.
The Fifth Answer: Communion with the Saints
Heaven is not solitude. It is communion. The Holy Apostle Paul writes to the Corinthians that, in the age to come, “love never ends” (1 Corinthians 13:8). And love, by definition, is relation — encounter, conversation, communion.
Whom shall we meet? Holy Scripture and Tradition reply: all the saints. All the prophets of the Old Testament — Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Isaiah. All the Apostles — Peter, Paul, John, all the twelve. All the martyrs — Saint Catherine, Saint George, the Holy Martyrs Brâncoveni. The Fathers of the desert — Anthony the Great, Macarius of Egypt, Pachomius. The Fathers of the Church — Saint Basil the Great, Saint John Chrysostom, Saint Gregory the Theologian. The holy ones of Athos — Saint Paisios the Athonite, Saint Joseph the Hesychast, Saint Iakovos Tsalikis. The saints of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia and all the new martyrs of the twentieth century. The Mother of God. The angels and the archangels.
This “all” is not abstract. Saint Paisios the Athonite († 1994) used to say, speaking of heaven: “There we shall see the saints, we shall speak with them, we shall see how each of them lived.” And in this communion — which is not a conference, but a living encounter — each saint brings something of his own. Each has his gift, his story, his particular light of the love of God.
How many saints are there? How many are saved in the age to come? The Apocalypse of Saint John speaks of “a great multitude which no one could number” (Revelation 7:9). And each of them is a universe of the love of God, a unique expression of the divine image. And the love of the Lord, imprinted in each one differently, gives to each a beauty that exists nowhere else.
To pass from one to another, to know them, to listen to them, to love them — this alone would be enough to fill eternity. And it is but a drop of what eternal life is.
The Mother of God and the Saints — A Foretaste of Here
This communion is not strictly a future reality. The Orthodox lives it already, from here, through the calling of the names of the saints. When he says “Most Holy Theotokos, save us,” he does not speak into emptiness — he speaks with Someone. And that Person answers, intercedes, is present.
The whole liturgical life of Orthodoxy is an anticipated entry into the communion of the saints. The Orthodox calendar itself is, in essence, the catalogue of our friends in heaven. Every day we meet one or more of them: 30 January with the Three Holy Hierarchs, 8 November with the Holy Archangels, 14 October with Saint Parascheva. And through their commemoration at the Liturgy, through the veneration of relics, through the reading of their Lives, the saints become for the Orthodox Christian a concrete reality, not an abstraction.
Saint Joseph the Hesychast († 1959), who renewed in the twentieth century the tradition of the prayer of the heart on Athos, used to tell his disciples about the appearances of the saints in his cell — Saint Anna, Saint Theodora, the Athonite saints. They came in visions or simply in light — they spoke to him, taught him, comforted him in troubles. The elder did not relate this as a curiosity, but as an ordinary reality of advanced spiritual life. The saints are alive. They are near. And communion with them begins from here.
In heaven, this communion will open completely. There will no longer be rare and momentary appearances, but permanent communion. Each saint will be a close friend. We shall learn, at last, what truly happened in the life of Saint Anthony the Great. How Saint Mary of Egypt lived her 47 years in the desert. How Saint Paisios the Athonite said his first prayer. How Saint Philothea, the virgin from Vidin, heard the voice of the Lord. And all these stories, received from their own mouths, will be a gift no book, however good, can give.
And more: we shall meet also those whom we loved here and who departed before us. Parents, children, brothers, friends, spiritual fathers. This familial communion, sanctified in Christ, is one of the greatest consolations of the Christian faith. Father Cleopa spoke of it with the gentleness proper to him: “In heaven we shall see those dear to us whom we have lost, if they too are there. And then we shall understand that the parting from here was only for an hour.”
A Foretaste in the Divine Liturgy
Before drawing to a close, it is of great profit to show a thing which Saint Maximus the Confessor says in his Mystagogy: The Holy Liturgy is, already from here, the anticipated entry into the Kingdom of Heaven.
This is not a metaphor. When the priest pronounces “Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” at the beginning of the Liturgy, he does not speak of a future and distant Kingdom — he opens its door. The whole Liturgy is a progressive entry into eternity: the Little Entrance with the Gospel is the entry of the angels with the Word; the Great Entrance is the bringing of the gifts from the living for the sacrifice of the Lamb; the Holy Communion is the real union with the Body and Blood of Christ — that is, already from here, participation in the life of the age to come.
He who has ever stood in church, in the Holy Liturgy, with collected mind, in the moment when the priest brings out the Holy Disc with the Body of the Lord and says “With the fear of God, with faith, and with love draw near” — and has felt that here and now, in this moment, eternity has touched me — already knows, without knowing, the answer to our question.
And he knows yet one more thing: in that moment, if the question “are you bored?” were put to him, the answer would be plainly absurd. How can you be bored when Heaven itself has come down into the church? When the angels invisibly encircle the altar? When Christ Himself is present on the Disc?
And if even now, in the Liturgy of here — which is the shadow of the age to come, not its fullness — the pure soul feels full, what shall it be there, in the heavenly Liturgy unbroken, in the vision face to face, in perfect communion?
Saint John Chrysostom, in the Liturgy bearing his name, says before the Eucharistic Anaphora: “Thou hast given us to know Thy Kingdom that is to come.” To know, already from here. The Liturgy is foretaste. And he who tastes already from here knows what awaits him.
Saint Ephrem the Syrian — Hymns on Paradise
There is a Father whose entire gift was to sing of paradise. His name is Ephrem the Syrian († 373) — the deacon of Edessa, “the Harp of the Holy Spirit,” as Tradition called him. He wrote more than 400 hymns — among the most important being the fifteen Hymns on Paradise. These are not systematic theology. They are poetic songs — but in the ancient Syriac Tradition, hymnography is theology, and Saint Ephrem is one of the greatest theologians-through-poetry the Church has given.
The Hymns on Paradise are a vision. Saint Ephrem does not describe paradise as a doctrine — but as a sight to which he was led in spirit. And his words are so concrete, so full of images, that the reader himself feels drawn into that garden.
The Topography of Paradise
In Saint Ephrem’s vision, paradise is a mountain that surrounds the whole earth and the sea, “transcends and envelops the world like a ring, like the halo formed around the moon” (Hymn I, 8). This mountain is structured on three ranks:
- The foot of the mountain — the lowest zone, “the Enclosure” — destined for those who are still being purified, the penitents. A garden of dense vegetation, but not transparently luminous.
- The middle of the mountain — for those who have grown in virtue. Here, the vegetation is more airy, more limpid.
- The summit of the mountain — for those made perfect. Here are the martyrs, the confessors, the prophets, the saints. And above this summit — the glory of God.
This topography is not mere poetic fancy. In Saint Ephrem, the image has theological density: paradise is real, but is expressed through symbolic, liturgical, and poetic language. And each soul finds here its place according to its measure of growth — which corresponds exactly to the word of Saint Paisios the Athonite: “Each according to his measure.”
The Senses Spiritualised
Saint Ephrem describes paradise as an explosion of sensations. Not the impoverishment of the senses, but their tenfold multiplication. The flowers have colours which the eye of here cannot see. The fragrances have a density which the nose of here cannot bear. The songs have harmonies which the ear of here cannot hear.
And, with the typically Syriac intuition, Saint Ephrem says that the transfigured body will be capable of what the body of here cannot. Here the body is a hindrance to the spirit — it drags it down. There, the body will be the vehicle of the spirit — will serve it in the ecstasy of contemplation. There will no longer be conflict between body and soul. They are one.
This vision is profoundly anti-gnostic. Saint Ephrem does not say that in heaven we shall be rid of the body. He says, on the contrary, that in heaven we shall have the body as it ought to have been from the beginning — servant of the spirit, transparent to the glory of God, capable of receiving the uncreated light.
What Do Those in Paradise Eat?
Here is an unexpected question — and one which Saint Ephrem raises. Do those in paradise eat? Drink? Have need?
His answer is subtle. Yes, there is food in paradise — but it is spiritual food. Those in paradise feed from the fruits of the trees of paradise, which are not like the fruits of here. They are food that does not end. They are food that inebriates the soul, not only the body. And the tree of life — from which Adam, after he fell through eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, was kept away, that he might not eat and live for ever in the state of the fall (Genesis 3:22–24) — will be there accessible to all the saved.
Saint Ephrem says that, looking at the trees of paradise, you will see each one bending toward you with its fruits, offering you what you need. This is a fundamental image for eternal life: creation itself is in the service of man, and man in the service of God. The natural hierarchy of creation is restored.
The Confusion of Weeping
Saint Ephrem has a troubling observation. In stanza 11 of Hymn XII, speaking of those who weep at the death of their dear ones, he says that this weeping shows a confusion. How can you weep when someone passes from a prison to a garden? From a place of corruption to one of glory? From a life of weariness to one of joy?
Weeping, Saint Ephrem says, is understandable for the pain of separation. But it must not be for the one who has crossed over. For him, it is joy. For us, it is the call to prepare ourselves — for there we shall meet again.
The Sixth Answer: Creation Transfigured
The Holy Apostle Paul, in Romans 8, writes words that have troubled and enlightened the patristic Tradition in equal measure:
“The creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it — in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:19–21).
The whole of creation — not only man — will be freed from the bondage of decay. Will be renewed. Will be transfigured. A new heaven and a new earth, says the Apocalypse.
This means that in the Kingdom of heaven there will be still things we love here. There will be flowers — but without thorns. There will be rivers, but they will no longer drown. There will be birds, but they will no longer die. There will be the beauty which our body tastes now — sights, scents, clear waters, the morning light — but without corruption, without pain, without end.
Saint Irenaeus of Lyons († c. 202), one of the most ancient Fathers on this theme, quotes the tradition received from Saint Papias, the disciple of Saint John the Evangelist: in the Kingdom of Christ, the vines will each have ten thousand stocks, and each stock ten thousand branches, and each branch ten thousand shoots, and each shoot ten thousand clusters, and each cluster ten thousand grapes, and each grape twenty-five measures of wine8. This image must not be read as fantastic agriculture in a coarse sense, but as biblical language of the abundance of creation healed — a concrete, material image, bursting with life. Not an abstract spirituality — a real, multiplied, healed creation.
This is a fundamental teaching: salvation is not the abandonment of the world, but its renewal. God did not make creation in order to discard it. He made it in order to bring it to full glory — through man and for man. And man, as priest of the cosmos — as Saint Maximus the Confessor says — is called to bring the whole of creation as a sacrifice to God, so that all may be sanctified, all transfigured, all enter into the glory of Christ.
Who will be bored in such a creation? Who will be bored in a world healed of death, full of boundless beauty, transparent to the glory of God? Only he who has grown too accustomed to the fallen world — and has forgotten that this world is not the true one, but only its shadow.
The Seventh Answer: Work in Eternity
In the book of the Apocalypse it is said of those saved: “and his servants shall serve him” (Revelation 22:3). In the service of God — for ever, without weariness, without end.
This means that eternal life is not passivity. It is not a static state in which you receive blessedness like an anaesthetic. It is work — but work without exhaustion, without frustration, without weakness. Service in glory.
Father Sophrony Sakharov († 1993), the disciple of Saint Silouan the Athonite, used to write often that pure prayer of here, when it is attained, is the foretaste of the service of the age to come. He who prays from the whole heart the Name of Jesus, immersed in the uncreated light, begins already from here the work which he will continue there. It is not a matter of exhausting activity. It is the fullness of being, expressed in the highest work of man: the worship of God.
Furthermore: each saint will have, in the age to come, his own mission. Saint Mary of Egypt, Saint Anthony the Great, Saint Seraphim of Sarov — all will have to serve, each according to his measure, according to his gift. And not service by constraint — but of unceasing love, unleashed toward God, which produces, every moment, new joy.
And fallen man, who flees boredom by trying to fill his time with experiences, will understand at last what he sought. The experiences of the world were a blind search for the same service. Here he did not find it — for the fallen world does not contain it. There, he will find it as the very heart of his being.
Why Are We Bored Here?
Now, after going through these answers of the Tradition, we can return to the question with new clarity.
Boredom, in this world, is not accident. It is not the symptom of lack of imagination or lack of opportunities. It is the deepest symptom of the fall.
Boredom tells two things about man. First: we were made for something greater than what we encounter. All the things of the world — even the most beautiful — leave us, in the end, empty. We travel — and we grow bored with travels. We meet people — and we grow bored with them. We learn — and we reach the limit of curiosity. We love — and the object of love wears out. This world cannot satisfy us. All its things are finite — and their very finitude poisons us with boredom.
Second: we were made for God. And we cannot recognise this except through the negative: through the fact that nothing created satisfies us. This non-satisfaction is not a defect; it is a witness to our destination. Saint Augustine said it, in a formulation become famous: our heart is restless until it rests in Thee, O Lord.
And boredom is but the most banal name we give to this restlessness.
The adolescent who no longer knows what to do with his time, though he has games, friends, internet — is bored because he was made for something infinite. The young man who travels through the world and can no longer be surprised — is bored because the One he thirsts for he finds nowhere on earth. The woman who has received all she wanted — marriage, children, home — and yet feels empty — seeks the One for whom she was made.
Boredom is, therefore, a gift. A painful gift, but a real one. It shows us that this world is not our homeland. It keeps us in motion, makes us always seek, prevents us from contenting ourselves with the things that cannot satisfy us.
Saint Basil the Great, at the end of the Ninth Homily on the Hexaemeron, used to say: “Your true homeland is the Jerusalem above. Your fellow-citizens and countrymen are the firstborn enrolled in heaven”9.
Our boredom of here announces that we are not at home. Boredom disappears in heaven not because they keep us busy with something, but because we are at last home.
The Question Reset
Now, after going through the answers of the Tradition, we can reset the original question:
Will I be bored in heaven?
We can answer honestly: No.
But we must say more. Boredom itself will disappear, because boredom is the symptom of the fallen world. In the renewed world, in the age to come, the substance of boredom disappears. There:
- Time no longer drags — a thousand years seem as one hour (Father Cleopa)
- The senses no longer impoverish — such sweetness and such variety of flavours (Father Cleopa)
- Desire is no longer sated — the more it is filled with this tasting, the more it is kindled with desire (Saint Gregory of Nyssa)
- Knowledge no longer ends — the infinite God lets Himself never be grasped (Saint Gregory Palamas)
- Encounters no longer exhaust — a great multitude which no one could number (Revelation 7:9)
- Creation no longer decays — the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay (Romans 8:21)
- Service no longer wearies — his servants shall serve him (Revelation 22:3)
All the structural conditions of boredom are abolished. Not because God “made us so that we should no longer be bored.” But because the very condition that produces boredom — finitude, repetition, satiety, limitation — no longer exists there.
The True Question
But if we insisted. If, after all these answers, the question still troubled us — then it is a sign that we fear not boredom, but something else.
What does modern man, who asks “will I be bored in heaven,” truly fear?
I believe the true fear is this: that in heaven I shall no longer be myself. That this world — with its pleasures, with its habits, with the identity I have built around them — will be annulled. And that the person whom I truly love — who is me — will not survive there.
This fear is, in fact, the fear of our passions that they will be torn away. The drunkard does not want heaven because in heaven one will no longer drink. The fornicator does not want heaven because in heaven one will no longer fornicate. The lover of wealth does not want heaven because in heaven things will no longer be amassed. The lover of vainglory does not want heaven because in heaven names will no longer be made great through envy and competition.
Behind the question “will I be bored in heaven?” there often hides this dull fear: that all that defines me here will not survive. And this is, in truth, a justified fear. The passions will not survive. They will be torn away with pain. They will be healed. They will be replaced with their opposite virtues — which, though our true face, seem to us today strange.
Repentance from here is nothing other than this voluntary, anticipated killing of the old man — so that the new man (cf. Ephesians 4:24) may be born from here. And he who still has to do this work should shudder not at boredom — but at the thought that he might, through carelessness, remain outside the life of the Kingdom.
Saint Paisios the Athonite used to say: “All the saints have joy in heaven, but each according to his measure.” This shows that eternal joy is not uniform. Each one receives according to his measure — according to the measure of his love, his humility, his purity, his service. And if our measure in heaven is small, God is not to blame, but we — who did not want to widen it from here.
Preparation from Here
This, in the end, is the lesson. The question “will I be bored in heaven?” is not solved by arguments. It is solved through life.
He who, even from here, tastes the uncreated light in prayer, no longer asks whether heaven will be boring. He tastes it. He who, even from here, feels the presence of the saints through calling their names, through akathists, through their intercessions, knows already that he is not alone — and will not be alone. He who, even from here, sees the beauty of God’s creation — in a blade of grass, in a bird, in a flower — knows already that there can be no question of a world more boring than this one.
Saint Maximus the Confessor said that the spiritual life is the foretaste of the Kingdom. Not an abstract anticipation, but a concrete one. The Liturgy, above all, is here already an entry into the age to come. He who has stood in church, with collected mind, during “Holy God” or during “The Body of Christ receive” and has felt, even for a moment, that this is the place where I would want to remain for ever — he already knows, without knowing, the answer to the question of this article.
And the question will vanish entirely in that hour when he passes from this world into the true one — and sees, at last, the Face which he sought, without knowing it, in every beauty of life.
The Conclusion
Will I be bored in heaven?
No. Because:
— boredom is the symptom of the fallen world, and in heaven the fallen world no longer exists;
— boredom presupposes empty time, and in heaven time is so full that a thousand years seem as one hour;
— boredom presupposes poor senses, and in heaven the senses are a thousandfold transfigured;
— boredom presupposes a desire that becomes sated, and in heaven desire grows with every tasting;
— boredom presupposes a knowledge that ends, and in heaven we shall never finish knowing the Infinite One;
— boredom presupposes a hidden solitude, and in heaven we shall be in full communion with the saints and with the Mother of God;
— boredom presupposes a creation worn out, and in heaven the cosmos will be new, transfigured, without pain;
— boredom presupposes idleness, and in heaven we shall serve God without weariness.
The question itself is the symptom of the fact that we have not yet known heaven. And the only serious answer to it is not an intellectual one — but one we receive only through the Liturgy, through repentance, through unceasing prayer. Through the foretaste of the Kingdom here, as much as God allows us.
And then, the question will cease of itself. Not because we have gathered answers. But because we shall have tasted of the reality which the question, trying to encompass, only misses.
Boredom is the symptom of the fact that we have not yet arrived. Heaven is the place where, at last, we arrive.
Notes
1 Father Cleopa Ilie, Cuvânt despre rai (Word About Paradise), in Predicile Părintelui Cleopa (The Sermons of Father Cleopa) or in Ne vorbește Părintele Cleopa (Father Cleopa Speaks to Us), vol. III, Sihăstria Monastery Press. For an accessible contextual presentation, see also the article “Mânca-v-ar Raiul! The Vision of the Spiritual Father of Sihăstria About the World of the Righteous,” Adevărul, 16 November 2015.
2 Father Cleopa Ilie, Word About Paradise (ibid.).
3 Father Cleopa Ilie, Word About Paradise (ibid.). The reference “The Salvation of Sinners” is to the work of Saint Agapios the Athonite (18th century), translated into Romanian under various titles.
4 Father Cleopa Ilie, Word About Paradise (ibid.).
5 Saint Ephrem the Syrian, Hymns on Paradise, translation and presentation by deacon Ioan I. Ică jr., Deisis Publishing House, Sibiu, 2010 (2nd ed.). Cf. especially Hymn I, stanzas 4–9, for the topography of paradise as a mountain with three ranks; Hymn VII for the sensory description of paradise. For the standard English translation, see St. Ephrem the Syrian: Hymns on Paradise, trans. Sebastian Brock, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1990.
6 Saint Gregory of Nyssa, Commentary on the Song of Songs, Homily VIII, translation by Fr. D. Stăniloae, in Părinți și Scriitori Bisericești, vol. 29, Romanian Patriarchate Press, Bucharest, 1982, p. 126. For the standard English translation, see Saint Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on the Song of Songs, trans. Richard A. Norris Jr., Society of Biblical Literature, Atlanta, 2012. For the development of the concept of epektasis, see also The Life of Moses, Book II, §§ 219–255 (English: trans. Abraham J. Malherbe and Everett Ferguson, Paulist Press, 1978).
7 Saint Symeon the New Theologian, Imnele iubirii dumnezeiești (Hymns of Divine Love), Hymn 11 (Z. 32), translation by Fr. D. Stăniloae, in Studii de Teologie Dogmatică Ortodoxă, Mitropolia Olteniei Press, Craiova, 1991. For a more recent edition, see Imnele iubirii dumnezeiești, Basilica Press, Bucharest, 2022 (Dumitru Stăniloae — Complete Works series). For the standard English translation, see Saint Symeon the New Theologian: Divine Eros — Hymns of Saint Symeon the New Theologian, trans. Daniel K. Griggs, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2010.
8 Saint Irenaeus of Lyons, Adversus Haereses, Book V, ch. 33, 3, quoting the tradition received from Saint Papias. English: Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1.
9 Saint Basil the Great, Homily IX on the Hexaemeron, 2; in Părinți și Scriitori Bisericești, vol. 17, Romanian Patriarchate Press, Bucharest, 1986, p. 141. NPNF, Series II, Vol. 8, p. 103.