God’s Bucket List: Heaven’s Surefire Way to Happiness in This Life and Beyond

Do you have a bucket list? Being a leeeeeeeeeetle bit (read: A LOT) organizationally minded, I thought about it. After all, I love lists. What’s not to love about a list? And a list of lifetime goals? There’s an appeal for me, I won’t lie.

But here’s the thing: I wouldn’t be able to stop. And I know myself well: I wouldn’t be able to have any fun until things were crossed off.

So no, I don’t have a bucket list. And I don’t want one.

So the title of Teresa Tomeo’s latest book caught my attention, because if God has a bucket list, shouldn’t I?

No, not necessarily. It’s a catchy title…and it has a point.

Teresa writes that she first heard about it when the movie The Bucket List, starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, was released. She wrote, in the beginning of God’s Bucket List: Heaven’s Surefire Way to Happiness in This Life and Beyond,

That movie made me think about my own ‘life list.’ I love lists, and even though I didn’t call it a bucket list, for most of my life I’d had a list of things that I wanted to accomplish in my life.

She then shares some of her story, though not in such exhausting detail that, if you’re a long-time fan, you’ll be bored before you begin. The “bucket list” idea comes in as she examines what God wants for each of us.

And that gets the reader into the book itself, which is centered around Scripture and Catholic teaching in a way that’s both catechetical and entertaining. God’s bucket list is aligned with the fruits of the Spirit, which makes sense (and makes the catechist in me smile broadly).

She writes that she was unfamiliar with the fruits of the Spirit during her many years as a cradle Catholic. She had little or no idea how to apply them from a Catholic perspective after she came back to the Church. Tying them in with the sacraments, as she does in this book, provides a catechesis for all of us, her readers.

One of the looming questions of this book is why it’s so challenging to figure out if we’re on the right track. The answer? The call to true discernment on both a long-term and an everyday level.

This book is full of wisdom and common sense topped with Tomeo’s signature flair. Translation: it was fun to read and worth my time. I’m recommending it.