Is paradise a different place than heaven?

You are always at home being always in your Father's house. 

And yet the glorious length and breadth of Paradise are ever open to you. 

No frost threatens, no need for sleep detains and no night alarms you. 

Paradise is like earth, a creation of God, but a much more glorious and perfect creation. 

And since the earthly and the heavenly creation resemble each other in somewhat the same manner, as the original resembles its imperfect copy, you can speak of the glories of Paradise even to an earthly understanding. 

Just take from the earthly creation all that reminds you of death and corruption—

Imagine all traces of the perishableness manifested by all that grows and blooms removed—

Let all colours be brighter—

All blossoms more fully developed—

All perfumes more exquisite—

Let it be always May and then you will get at least some faint notion of the glory that will surround you. 

Every soul provides its surroundings in accordance with its own nature—it not only lives in, but forms its home. 

I have my flowerbed in heaven. 

My favourite flower, mignonette, is still my favourite in heaven. 

Its brilliant, tender corollas remind me of many happy hours on earth. 

I rear it here too. 

Only to rear flowers in heaven no longer means to keep them from harm—or to promote their growth, but to understand them as masterpieces of God. 

My favourite place is under the green jasmine arbour, thence my eyes wander to the lovely lake whose sparkling waves are transparent to the very bottom. 

Water is the eye of the landscape. 

The streams of heaven satisfy the desires of contemplative souls. 

Like eyes beaming with love, which fully and entirely show the life and feelings of the soul, they look at you and speak to you in the clear and intelligible language of the power and goodness of Him who called the whole creation into existence, for the purpose of making the being made after His image, happy. 

And when you seek me in spirit and would like to know where I am, remember one thing—

You are at home with the Lord and glad to be at home. 

Do not wish you could find out the spot in the starry skies, which forms the abode of the blessed, for these starry skies are like a curtain, which conceals a secret. 

You may know the curtain accurately, observe its several threads and analyse them into their component elements, but you cannot thereby look behind it. 

The Milky Way with its starry host, the seven stars and Orion are the decoration of this curtain. 

When it is once drawn aside before your eyes, you see more than the curtain allowed you to see. 

But on earth where you compute by paces and are inspired by an accurate conception of the distance between two neighbouring stars, you have no measure for the infinite and eternal. 

Do not be afraid, only believe, and take care that you too one day come home.