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.
But freedom also means that the person is responsible for his or her choices. There is no true freedom except in the service of what is good and just. 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. The alternative to hell is heaven, and whereas hell is the state of eternal separation from God, heaven is its opposite:. And just as a person gets to hell by how he or she lives on earth, so it is with heaven. 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.
The essence of heaven is the relationship that human beings enjoy with the Holy Trinity which includes all the saints , a perfect communion that restores the order God intended when he first created everything. In fact, the Church teaches that, following the Last Judgment, not only humanity but also the entire universe will be transformed into its glorified state CCC, No.
For human beings this means a reunification with their bodies, now immortal through the grace of the resurrection see CCC, No. Sin disrupted these relationships, resulting in separation from God, alienation among neighbors and disharmony with the earth.
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.
For example, in what is most likely an apocryphal account, 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. David Werning writes from Virginia. Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe now. Send feedback to us at oursunvis osv. Shutterstock Share. Purgatory, which was presented in the article on the Communion of Saints in this series, is not one of the four last things because, as a preparation for heaven, it is not eternal.
Even Christians who hope in the resurrection of Jesus can be deeply affected by death. Indeed, persons may experience great anguish at the thought of dying, just as Jesus did in the Garden of Gethsemane see Lk Therefore, let us not sleep as the rest do, but let us stay alert and sober. As we well know, the sense of the eschaton was greater in the early Church.
What is the eschaton? It is the end time. Eschatology is the study of the reality of the four last things: death, judgment, Heaven, and hell. Sadly, the four last things are not preached about very often today.
But the early followers of the Way, who daily were risking their lives because they believed in Christ, who were considered enemies of the state due to their faith, truly believed that, at any moment, Jesus, King of Glory and Lord of the World could descend, just as he had ascended, to judge each man according to his deeds. Perhaps some even fell away. Hence 1 Thessalonians. Christians, over time, began to forget that, at any moment, the Bridegroom could come again, like a thief in the night, and they could be caught wallowing in the mire of their own fear.
Saint Paul wanted to remind them what a great reward lay in store for their perseverance amidst persecution. As history progresses, when the danger of being Christian seemingly fades, when Christianity becomes, in a sense, mainstream, as it did after the edicts of the Emperor Constantine throughout most of western civilization, men and women can lose sight of the last things. We can put our focus on things of less importance. We might settle into daily routines, the concerns of daily life becoming more and more important.
We may begin to focus on the little things of life, naturally enough, and begin to miss the big picture. We might miss the forest for the trees. Made for immortality, we may become stuck in immorality. The same is true today. In the United States, Australia, and parts of Europe, we have largely lost the eschatological edge that Saint Paul wanted to instill in the Thessalonians.
I think that we need to reclaim the eschatological edge as soon as possible, if we are to regain the proper focus in the Christian life. In reality, where the cult of political correctness reigns, we may not be physically killed for our faith, but we are considered completely irrelevant and an enemy by a not insignificant portion of society.
This type of persecution oppresses Christians and threatens our hope even today. Today, in parts of the Middle East, in parts of Africa, and in other places, being Christian can and still might get you killed, as in the early Church. We need to look no further than to the Catechism to learn exactly what we as the People of God, the Church, need to know and believe concerning the four last things.
It can be found in the Catechism , nos. We should make no mistake: Heaven is real; hell is real; and Purgatory is real. And, in our lives on this earth, we should aim for Heaven by living lives of virtue. Is it possible to prove the existence of God? How do can you deal with sinful thoughts? What is virtue? Does God get angry? Why do we have a Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults? What are the qualifications for being pope? Is it OK for Christians to be rich? What is the Roman Catholic view of work?
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