A grotto depicting Our Lady of Lourdes and a Crucifixion scene is pictured after sunset July 23, 2020, in the cemetery of St. Francis and St. Mary Church in Brussels, Wis. (OSV News file | Sam Lucero, The Compass)At the end of our earthly lives, our faith tells us there will be four last things: death, judgment, hell and heaven. Reflecting on such topics in November is appropriate.
Clearly, bringing Jesus’ saving acts to bear upon the four last things makes all the difference. Without faith, death can be seen in a merely utilitarian way. Rather than being an experience that one “lives,” including reflecting on it and preparing for it, death becomes something to be forestalled at all costs.
The Christian, by contrast, sees the four last things as parts of a very real and profoundly meaningful life with God that extends beyond the grave. Indeed, life cannot be understood fully without acknowledging all four. Each of them reflects God’s love and mercy and justice in its own way.
Given the promises of Jesus – that He would, once and for all, destroy the power of death and open the gates of heaven – every Christian should develop a healthy appreciation of the last things.
Death
Among the four last things, death is seen by both believers and nonbelievers as the end of the physical existence human beings enjoy on this earth, but that’s where the agreement ends. A faithless view stops at the grave. The Catholic Church, on the other hand, sees death within the context of God’s revelation.
Based on Scripture and tradition, and ultimately on Jesus’ witness, the Church recognizes death as the just punishment for the freely chosen sins of human beings. God desired sons and daughters who would choose freely to love each other and their Creator.
Human beings, however, instead invited death into the world by committing the original sin: rejecting the world as God created it and asserting themselves as equals to God. Hence the separation from God and the loss of mortal life.
God responds by honoring the relationship with human beings, even though they did not. In a word, God’s response is Jesus. Jesus has saved the world through His life, death and resurrection. Human beings now can accept salvation, to turn back to God by receiving His forgiveness and yielding to His will and, after dying themselves, to enter eternal life.
Understood in the light of Jesus, death takes on a new meaning. It no longer has power over a person who abides in Jesus. Therefore, death can be greeted with serenity when it comes. Passing from this life to the next is simply moving from one way of living in Jesus to another. The meaning is this: For one who remains faithful to Jesus, life is changed, not ended, at death.
Judgment
The Church’s teaching on death can have both a comforting and sobering effect. It is comforting to know that life continues, but the fact that one’s time on this earth is limited should bring a weightiness to one’s decisions.
The basic meaning of the Church’s teaching about judgment is that the choices one makes have value. God determines the value of one’s choices and metes out the appropriate reward or punishment. This teaching tends to evoke two dominant feelings: fear and satisfaction.
Fear is not a bad feeling to have if one is living a sinful life; it might even prompt one toward conversion. Fear, in the sense of awe, is appropriate, too, for God can judge everyone and every act in perfect justice and mercy. Only God knows the depths of each person’s heart; only He knows the advantages and disadvantages a person had; only He knows the full circumstances of every person’s life and every situation. God knows the full truth and will judge accordingly.
Satisfaction is the other common feeling many people have regarding God’s judgment, which is good if by “satisfaction” one means a sense of contentment concerning God’s ultimate victory over all evil.
Hell
After a person has been judged, he or she will spend eternity in one of two states: hell or heaven. (Many people think of “hell” and “heaven” as places, but they are more accurately denoted vis-à-vis the relationship with God.) Hell is defined by the Church as the “state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed” (CCC 1033). God’s judgment in such a case would be to allow the person’s choice to take effect, as the Catechism relates: “God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end” (CCC 1037).
The very mention of “hell” can cause some people to cry “unfair.” How could a loving and merciful God allow anyone to suffer eternal damnation? Other people even ignore hell and maintain that Jesus, who loves everyone, will also save everyone.
To understand the terrible mystery of hell, the Church directs people to the mystery of freedom, which is a gift human beings have from God. It is a gift that enables the person “to initiate and control his own actions” (CCC 1730). But freedom also means that the person is responsible for his or her choices.
Ultimately, saying no to hell means saying yes to God. Again, God does not want robots that are forced to love Him, but true sons and daughters who choose to love Him and their brothers and sisters in freedom.
Nevertheless, if they have the freedom to love, then they also must have the freedom not to love. The latter choice leads to hell.
Heaven
The alternative to hell is heaven, and whereas hell is the state of eternal separation from God, heaven is its opposite: “This perfect life with the Most Holy Trinity – this communion of life and love with the Trinity, with the Virgin Mary, the angels and all the blessed – is called ‘heaven.’ Heaven is the ultimate end and fulfillment of the deepest longings, the state of supreme, definitive happiness” (CCC 1024).
And just as a person gets to hell by how he or she lives on earth, so it is with heaven. The crucial difference is that the person who chooses heaven uses his or her freedom to make every effort at yielding to and accepting God’s grace. Another difference is that a person can get to hell by oneself, but getting to heaven involves the whole body of Christ, head and members, as St. Paul reminded the Corinthians: “encourage one another and build one another up” (1 Thes 5:11).
The essence of heaven is the relationship that human beings enjoy with the Holy Trinity. The choice is before each human person: to love as Christ loves, faithful to the Father, united in the Spirit, and working for the salvation of all. If a person joins this work now, he or she will experience its perfection in heaven.
The four last things properly understood in the context of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection need not be so ominous. For example, the story is told about St. Bonaventure eating a meal with his fellow friars. One of them asks Bonaventure what he would do if Jesus were to initiate the Last Judgment at that very moment. And Bonaventure answers, “I’d finish eating my soup.” It captures well the peace, even in the face of death and judgment, of one who abides in Jesus.
— David Werning, OSV News