From Everlasting to Eternity from Whence we came!

From Everlasting to Eternity from whence we came!

For some the end of life presents nothing more than an end to what they’re about to leave.  How sad and empty a thought like that could even enter a person’s mind.  Yet that is exactly what the Agnostic will ponder over if he/she has enough assurance that perhaps there really is a God and the words of heaven and everlasting life might just be true. 

And then there are many who wonder when the human soul is placed within each person as God creates our soul immediately.  The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God - it is not “produced by the parents" - and also that it is immortal: it does not perish when it separates from the body at death, and it will be reunited with the body at the final Resurrection.  (CCC 366).

Too often most people are educated in the very basics of Church doctrine and never seek to look into these matters that they feel belong to the Magisterium alone.  However, it is essential for all of us to have some idea about what it is that actually gives us life beyond a healthy heart and its environs that keep us alive.    

Of all visible creatures only man is “able to know and love his creator.”  He is the “only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake,” and he alone is called to share, by knowledge and love, in God’s own life.  It was for this end that he was created, and this is the fundamental reason for his dignity:  (CCC 356). 

What made you establish man in so great a dignity?  Certainly the incalculable love by which you have looked on your creature in yourself?  You are taken with love for her; for by love indeed you created her, by love you have given her a being capable of tasting your eternal Good.  (St, Catherine of Sienna, Dialogue “On Divine Providence.”)  

It is only with the Immortal soul that comes only from God to each individual that gives human life, allows human beings the presence of God within his own self, and is the divine connection of human to divine; As in the preparation for Holy Mass and the Chalice when the words; “By the mingling of this water and wine may we come to share in his divinity as he shares in our humanity” is the holy joining of divinity of Christ with the humanity of man.

The Essence of God and his Holy Presence is placed upon the creature known as man to create what God already saw within each mortal the means to reach into kings and servants the world over the very holiness that is God and his grace to go forth and recreate the forgiveness of all of mankind.  

God is infinitely good and all his works are good.  Yet no one can escape the experience of suffering or the evils in nature which seem to be linked to the limitations proper to creatures: and above all to the question of moral evil.  Where does evil come from?  “I sought whence evil comes and there was no solution,” said St. Augustine, and his own painful quest would only be resolved by his conversion to the living God.  For “the mystery of lawlessness” is clarified only by the light of the “mystery of our religion.”  The revelation of divine love in Christ manifested at the same time the extent of evil and the superabundance of grace.  We must therefore approach the question of the origin of evil by fixing the eyes of our faith on him who alone is its conqueror.  (CCC 385).

Ralph B. Hathaway