Paradise is not found on the beaches of a Caribbean island or in some mythic garden from the book of Genesis. Paradise is where God’s will is done. It is the very reality of our existence with God without the gloss of our own selfish desires, without our own obsessive need for control. It is the location—not so much in time and space, but in experience—where, like God, we live more and more as women and men for others. As the Our Father says so clearly, as the second criminal says implicitly, God’s kingdom—this paradise about which Jesus speaks—is found when his will is done.
— from The Last Words of Jesus: A Meditation on Love and Suffering by Daniel P. Horan, OFM
