As We End The Liturgical Year

As we end the liturgical year…

We focus on the four last things: Death, Judgement, Heaven, and Hell (eschatology). It is a good thing to meditate on these every so often. For they bear on how we live in the present.

We're all going to die; it is a matter of time. But although death is “the wages of sin” (Rom 6:23), it has been transformed by Christ into an act of complete and free submission to his Father's will (cf Mk 14: 33-34). Actually, “through Baptism the Christian has already ‘died with Christ’ sacramentally, in order to live a new life; and if we die in Christ's grace, physical death (simply) completes this ‘dying with Christ’ and so completes our incorporation into him in his redeeming act” (CCC 1010).

Dying with Christ means dying to sin– a separation from sin. Everyday we ought therefore to die to sin so as to live in Christ. This means separating ourselves from anything that will offend God. The thought of the inevitability of death should therefore inspire us to take care that we are always in Christ. For only then will we rise and reign with Him. The more attached we are to God, the easier it is to part with sin and with the world.

Immediately after death we will be judged. “Theologians speculate that what actually takes place probably is that God (at the very instant the soul leaves the body) illumines the soul so
that it sees itself as God sees it--sees the state it is in, of grace or of unforgiven sin, of God-loving or God-rejecting–and sees what its fate is to be in accordance with the infinite justice
of God.”** For all of us it is payday. The soul will be judged on the good and the evil he has done on earth: “He that seeth into the heart, He understandeth, and nothing deceiveth the keeper of thy soul, and He shall render to a man according to his works” (Prov 24:12). Therefore it is good to keep in mind that everything we think, say, or do are deserving of judgment from our Lord. We cannot get away from any of it, not the least of it. As someone put it: “be careful what you think (and say and do), heaven is listening”. So why wait for the final judgment? We therefore ought to “live daily as though we were about to appear before the judgment seat of God”.*

If we die in the state of mortal sin, cut off from God by our free choice, then we have lost God forever. “For such a soul, death, judgement, and HELL are simultaneous.”** The essential pains of Hell are the ‘pain of loss’ and the ‘pain of sense’.

The pain of loss, damnation, is “the everlasting separation from the vision of God, with its attendant remorse and despair”.* We can think of Hell as a place of “awful loneliness standing nakedly alone in a vast emptiness that is filled only with hatred, hatred for God and hatred for myself, wishing that I could die and knowing that I cannot, knowing also that this is the destiny which I have freely chosen for myself in exchange for some mess of pottage, and all the while there is being dinned into my ears the voice of my own jeering conscience: ‘this is forever…’”. ** The pain of sense is “a suffering in all senses of both soul and body, caused principally by a consuming fire (not identical with material fire, something at the same time physical and supra-physical, a punishment…that torments the damned)”.*

It is good to consider that whenever we are in the ‘state of mortal sin’ we are POTENTIALLY IN HELL. In Hell we suffer the pain of loss and the pain of sense. So it is that when we are in sin we experience a darkness, a stupidity, some kind of a living Hell (cut-off from God). It may even show in our outer countenance. If we don't it might be that we have gotten used to being in sin, or simply living a mediocre spiritual life. It is therefore a good practice to examine our conscience regularly. Oh, the misery and poverty and emptiness of a soul without God!

If we die in the state of grace and already purified we go straight to heaven. “The instantaneous sight of God will itself be our judgment.” ** This ‘beatific vision’ is “a union with God; God possessing the soul and the soul possessing God in a unity so ravishingly complete as to be infinitely beyond the ecstasy of the most perfect human marriage.”** “...how petty then shall we think the worst of our earthly sufferings and trials to have been; what a ridiculously small price we shall have paid for the searing, tearing, choking, spiraling happiness that is ours…that nothing can take from us… a telescoped, concentrated instant of pure bliss that will never end”.** “This mystery of blessed communion with God…is beyond all understanding and description (‘no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love Him’. 1Cor 2:9)” CCC 1027. If then Heaven is being with God, we can live Heaven (on earth) now by being in union with God, and constantly growing in that union with sky as the limit.

If we die in the state of grace but still needs to be purified (as perhaps is the lot of most who die in the state of grace) we go to Purgatory, where we suffer joyfully in “the knowledge of the ecstasy to come”.** Still it is good to consider that “the ‘fire of Purgatory’ is MORE TERRIBLE than all that man can suffer in this life. (St. Augustine). But even now we can be purged by our daily sufferings, prayers and works of Penance if so offered (in the state of grace) in reparation for all our sins, and thereby shorten if not totally bypass Purgatory.

Overall we have nothing to worry about death, judgment or Hell if we live now with Christ as our King, allowing Him to reign in our hearts and in our homes.
Viva Cristo Rey!!!

*quotes from CREDO, by Bp Schneider.
**quotes from “The Faith Explained”, by Leo Trese.