Since pope John Paul II spoke so often about "A new Spingtime for the Church", it seems fitting that we have much to hope for in the future. The future is not all 'doom and gloom". Who are the saints of the "New Era" and what will they be doing "on earth as it is done in heaven"? Mark Mallet has some beautiful insights on what the saints have have said in the past on this. I think it is worth reflecting on. His whole blog on this can be found here: http://www.markmallett.com/blog/dear-holy-father-he-is-coming/#more-10951 We do confess that a kingdom is promised to us upon the earth, although before heaven, only in another state of existence; inasmuch as it will be after the resurrection for a thousand years in the divinely-built city of Jerusalem… We say that this city has been provided by God for receiving the saints on their resurrection, and refreshing them with the abundance of all really spiritual blessings, as a recompense for those which we have either despised or lost… —Tertullian (155–240 A.D.), Nicene Church Father; Adversus Marcion, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Henrickson Publishers, 1995, Vol. 3, pp. 342-343) Church doctor St. Augustine proposed, along with three other explanations, that such a period of “spiritual blessing” in the Church is indeed possible… …as if it were a fit thing that the saints should thus enjoy a kind of Sabbath-rest during that period, a holy leisure after the labors of six thousand years since man was created… (and) there should follow on the completion of six thousand years, as of six days, a kind of seventh-day Sabbath in the succeeding thousand years… And this opinion would not be objectionable, if it were believed that the joys of the saints, in that Sabbath, shall be spiritual, and consequent on the presence of God… —St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 A.D.; Church Doctor), De Civitate Dei, Bk. XX, Ch. 7, Catholic University of America Press
