Children in Heaven

The Old Testament

I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.
For I, the Lord your God, will hold your right hand....

The New Testament

The Heavenly Doctrines

Let him who wishes to be eternally happy know and believe that he will live after death. Let him think of this and keep it in mind, for it is the truth.

Little Children Who Die Are Raised in Heaven

All little children in the world who die, are raised again by the Lord and are taken up into heaven. They are brought up and instructed among angels who take care of them. They are all instructed in the truths of faith and in the goods of mutual love, and become angels.

Every little child, wherever born, whether within the Church or outside it, whether of pious or impious parents, is received when he dies by the Lord and educated in heaven.... As he is perfected in intelligence and wisdom, he is introduced into heaven and becomes an angel.

Little children are all raised under the immediate guidance of the Lord.

Angel Mothers

A love of little children remains after death, especially in women. As soon as little children are resuscitated (which takes place immediately after death), they are raised into heaven and entrusted to angels of the feminine sex who, in the life of their body in the world, loved little children and at the same time venerated God. Because they had loved all little children with a motherly tenderness, they receive these little children as their own, and the little children there almost instinctively love them as though they were their mothers. They have as many little children in their care as their spiritual love of children causes them to desire.

The Development of Children Raised in Heaven

Many may suppose that in heaven little children remain little children, and continue as such among the angels. But as soon as they become intelligent and wise they become angels. They do not then appear as children, but as adults.

Children in heaven and children on earth are alike in that in their development they are attracted at first to such things as appeal to their physical senses, then little by little to such things as affect their inner contemplative sense, and by degrees to such things as infuse their will with affection. Then, when they reach an age midway between immaturity and maturity, they develop an attraction towards marriage, which in a young woman is an attraction towards a young man, and in a young man, towards a young woman.

Like all angels, they [children who are raised in heaven] are so withheld from evil and held in good by the Lord as to seem to themselves to be in good from themselves. For this reason when children have become adults in heaven, so that they may not have the false idea about themselves that the good in them is from themselves and not from the Lord, they are now and then let down into their evils which they inherited. They are left in them until they know, acknowledge, and believe the truth of the matter.

The Life of Children in Heaven

Three, four, or five girls are kept together and each one has her own room. They embroider flowers and such things. The things they make are either for their own use or they give them to others. The girls receive garments with which they clothe themselves every day; a better garment for feast days. And they have a little garden, also. While they are growing up, there are only flowers in the gardens - no fruits until they become wives.

When they see that the flowers in their little gardens become dim, or change into worse ones, their attention is arrested -- if into better and more beautiful ones, they rejoice, because it is a token that they have thought well.

They are given coins of silver or of gold. These they carefully treasure up, because they are tokens of industry or of virtue.

They have the written Word and Psalters, and they take these with them to worship services. They likewise read in them. If they do not read, either some garment is taken away, or the little garden disappears.

In the afternoons boys and girls are seen playing games in the streets, under the supervision of their nursemaids and teachers sitting on the porches of the houses. On the edges of the city, in its outskirts, various activities go on for boys and adolescent youths. There are running games, ball games, and games with rebounding balls, called rackets. Competitive exercises are held among the boys and the quicker ones receive several laurel leaves as a prize. Moreover, outside the city theatrical performances are put on by comic actors on stages, who portray the various honorable qualities and virtues of moral life, with dramatic actors among them also to provide points of comparison..... But it has been prescribed by law that they may not exhibit anything that is dishonorable and unbecoming, except symbolically.