There was a teacher who died recently and went to heaven. He came to the door and Peter said, "Wait a minute! Come here! Where are you going?" "I'm going in there." "Oh, no you're not." "Why not?" "It's not that simple." "Why?" "Well, we have a points system here, you see: so many points to get in."

"Oh, I didn't think that applied here. How many points," said the teacher, "to get in?" "Well, you need at least a thousand," said Peter. At this the teacher was a bit shocked but then came to himself again and Peter said, "Okay, come on, come on, what did you do when you were down there?"

So he stuck out his chest and said, "I went to Mass every morning for 40 years." He thought that was his trump card. And Peter said, "Fair enough. That's one point." At this the teacher's heart was in his shoes and so, Peter continued, "What else?" "Well, I belonged to the Third World agencies, the St Vincent de Paul Society and a couple more charitable organizations." Peter said, "Hurry up - what else? How much money did you collect for good causes over the years?" "Perhaps something like 25,000." "Not bad," said Peter, "not bad. That's another point."

At this stage the teacher was completely deflated and muttered to himself something like, "If this is the way it is, it's only by the grace of God that I'm ever going to get in." On hearing that, Peter turned to him and said, "Once you believe that, you've got the necessary thousand points. If you really believe what you just said, you may go right on in. Because heaven is a total, absolute, pure free gift of God."