Michael O’Brien: With some ‘divinely inspired imagination,’ retired Utah priest peers into heaven

Some 50 years ago I was an altar boy serving Mass at Ogden’s St. Joseph Catholic Church. I was a reliable assistant but prone to occasional daydreaming.

If you’ve ever dared to venture into the mind of a preteen or teenage boy, you can imagine that the distractions were not always, shall we say, pious. Yet, some were, and a few even contemplated heaven.

It’s not easy while inside a church, in the middle of a religious service, to dodge thoughts about heaven. The historic handcarved wooden altar at St. Joseph Church made it impossible for me.

With a half-dozen symmetrical gothic towers, it soared about 20 feet above the church floor, topped gloriously by a golden cross. Each section had exquisite detail — intricate tabernacles, cupolas, decorative lambs, pierced hearts, curves, columns, arches and entablatures.

The altar graced the curved front sanctuary, just below another remarkable feature of the old church: a beautiful blue, gold and green stained-glass window depicting the crucified Christ.

Ogden Catholics first saw the then-brand-new wooden altar on Christmas morning 1905, bathed in what a newspaper said was “the mellow light of myriads of twinkling candles and the brilliance of electricity.”

An Irish priest named Patrick Michael Cushnahan spearheaded the design and installation. The Intermountain Catholic called his altar an “everlasting ornament.”

Almost seven decades later, during my daydreaming, I wondered if Cushnahan’s masterpiece was a glimpse of eternity’s fine scenery. It sure seemed like a little bit of heaven on earth to me.

A Mannion for all seasons

What I did not know back then was that another Irish priest — the one who often celebrated the Mass at which I did my daydreaming — had heaven on his mind, too.

M. Francis Mannion arrived in Utah in November 1973. The Salt Lake Tribune reported that the 20-something priest, born near Galway, had just graduated from St. Patrick’s College in Thurles and had come to America.

Mannion told the newspaper he looked forward to the great challenge of being a priest in the modern world, especially at a time of great divisions in the church. Soon he was assigned to work at St. Joseph in Ogden.

As an Irish-American boy living in the Utah desert, with little connection to the “auld sod,” I was delighted to meet someone from Ireland and hear his soft Irish brogue. He was just starting what would be a half-century of exemplary service.

In the years that followed, Mannion earned a doctorate in theology, directed a liturgical institute in Chicago, penned a regular column in a national newspaper, and led the extensive renovation and preservation of Salt Lake City’s landmark Cathedral of the Madeleine.

We renewed our acquaintance after he had earned the title of “monsignor” and was assigned to work as the pastor at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church in Holladay. We served on the parish school board together, where I enjoyed his quiet wisdom and dry wit.

Mannion once warned the board that he might miss a future meeting if it conflicted with television broadcasts of either professional wrestling or “Desperate Housewives.”

He gave me wide latitude designing and producing some innovative school Christmas programs, sometimes including rap music as well as “Star Wars” and Peanuts characters.

Mostly, I just appreciated his keen mind and talent for clearly explaining difficult theology and other concepts. I was grateful for those skills again a few years later when he read and commented on early drafts of my 2021 “Monastery Mornings” book.

What heaven may be like

There’s an old joke that Catholic priests never retire, they simply cut their work schedule back to 50 hours a week. True to form, after Mannion stepped away from active parish duty, he embarked on a multiyear project to research and write about heaven.

He published the fruits of that labor— “Models of Heaven: Interpreting Life Everlasting” — late last year. It is a lovely and insightful book.

While acknowledging that eternal life lies outside the scope of human experience, Mannion’s book nonetheless uses scripture, literature, scholarship, and even some “divinely inspired imagination” to present us with eight comprehensible models of heaven.

(I asked him why he did eight. Showing his usual good humor he told me, “I planned on doing 10, but then I got tired.”)

Mannion’s models stretch beyond the mere description of an eternal place. He also contemplates what we all will do in heaven, how and with whom we will do it, how time will pass, and how it all will transform us.

The book’s goal emerges early on.

Mannion seeks to counter the notion of heaven as “an eternal, boring, retirement home where white-robed ghostly figures wander aimlessly between clouds, playing or listening to harp music, vaguely encountering deceased friends and relatives, and occasionally catching a glimpse of a rather remote and dispassionate God.”

His first model — resting in peace — illustrates his ambitious approach. Mannion sees this most common notion of heaven as an important antidote for the age of anxiety and restlessness in which we live.

With a nod to the poet Emily Dickinson’s stated concern about a heaven filled with sleep — “It will take so many beds” — Mannion explains that heavenly peace will not be slumber.

Instead, Mannion describes “a place of dynamic rest” and “intense engagement” with work for us that meets our “heart’s desires.” That work, of course, is nothing less than “participation in the eternal activity of God.”

In similar fashion, the book explains and clarifies seven other models of heaven: contemplating divine beauty; participating in the Trinity; communing with the saints; singing with the angels; tending the new creation; dwelling in the holy city; and feasting in the kingdom.

Picturing heaven

In the process, Mannion answers many FAQs about the nature of the afterlife.

For example, what sort of God might we encounter?

Mannion concedes that the Holy Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) is the “most obscure and least interesting feature of Christian faith.” Instead, he asks us to imagine a dynamic “dancing God.”

At the heart of this divine triune relationship is choreography, a “partnership of movement” and “reciprocal giving and receiving.” The heaven of this God will be an “everlasting dance” in which “all persons, communities, and all creation, will move in ordered glory, ecstasy, and joy.”

The book tackles another common question: Will we be alone in the afterlife?

“A notion of heaven as a place in which people dwell in insolation,” Mannion writes, “is profoundly wrong.” Rather, it will be a place of communion — togetherness — with the best of us and the rest of us, saint and sinner alike.

Mannion’s view reminds me of a similar eternal life described by another friend, Marlin K. Jensen, an emeritus general authority of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Jensen once wrote:

“Sometimes after an enjoyable family home evening or during a fervent family prayer or when our entire family is at the dinner table on Sunday evening eating waffles and engaging in a session of lively, good-natured conversation, I quietly say to myself, ‘If heaven is nothing more than this, it will be good enough for me.’”

What will heaven look like?

Mannion says there will be a glorious “garden” filled with people of “goodwill” who shall “tend, till, and protect animals, water, plants, food, fields, and all elements of creation.” Yet, it also will include “all that is most noble, graceful, and beautiful” in the human cities we know.

Will the food be any good?

Mannion expects that there will be a “superabundance of food and wine of the highest quality.” Most importantly, heaven will be free from the problems that typically vex good digestion, “Human sadness and tears will be resolved in a joyful feast on God’s holy mountain, where there will be no more loss, sadness, or death.”

Does heaven include a soaring handcarved wooden altar with gothic towers, intricate tabernacles, cupolas, decorative lambs, pierced hearts, curves, columns, arches and entablatures, all lit by twinkling candles?

Just kidding. Mannion does not answer that question. Nor need he do so.

Based on my altar boy daydreaming, I already know the answer. And thanks to the divine imagination of the kind priest who tolerated that youthful daydreaming, I now know so much more, too.

“Models of Heaven” opens by quoting Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, “Heaven, as conventionally conceived, is a place so inane, so dull, so useless, so miserable, that nobody has ever ventured to describe a whole day in heaven.”

Thanks to Mannion, Shaw’s once-valid critique of what another theologian has called “this most beautiful of subjects” is simply no longer the case.

Michael Patrick O’Brien is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City who often represents The Salt Lake Tribune in legal matters. His book “Monastery Mornings: My Unusual Boyhood Among the Saints and Monks,” about growing up with the monks at an old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, was published by Paraclete Press and chosen by the League of Utah Writers as the best nonfiction book of 2022.