Back in the day when I was still a young priest, I used to have the opportunity to augment my meagre clerical salary by filling in as a supply teacher at the local Catholic High School. One day a young lad, eager to establish his bona fides with his fellow ‘back of the classroom’ mates, decided to challenge me to prove that heaven and hell were realities we would face when we departed this mortal coil. “If they really exist” he asked, “tell me what they are really like.” After explaining that I had as yet no first hand experience of either eternal state I said that I could only answer his question by using earthly analogies that we both could relate to. “Hell” I said “was a never ending litany of wedding rehearsals while heaven was a library that held more interesting books than I could read in an eternity.” Using that paradigm, I am currently experiencing a taste of heaven as I enjoy a sabbatical at St. Mary’s Seminary and University in Baltimore, Maryland where I am spending many bli...