Dear Parishioners:
Autumn has arrived. The leaves are falling, and the temperature is dropping; the Church Year is ending, and our readings are focused on the Four Last Things. The Church encourages us to meditate upon these Things: death, judgment, heaven, and hell. The doctrine of the last things is called eschatology, from a Greek word that means outcomes or ends.
Death is inevitable for all of us; nobody gets out of this world alive. Our challenge throughout our lives is to be ready for what comes next. Death is the end of the first phase of human life. And that first phase—all we have done in our lifetime—determines all that is to come.
The Church teaches that we will undergo two judgments after death: the particular judgment, which happens immediately after death, and the general judgment at the end of the world. In the particular judgment, our soul will be presented before God, and we will be judged on how we have used the talents God gave us and conducted our lives.
The Crucifixion and Last Judgement from Jan van Eyck’s (c. 14420)
The final or general judgment will occur after our souls are reunited with our bodies at the resurrection of the dead. We believe this when we recite the Creed and say that Jesus "will come to judge the living and the dead" and when we say, "We believe in the resurrection of the body." We don't know how our decayed bodies will rise again.
Still, the Church teaches that Christ will change our lowly body into a "spiritual body." Jesus told us what the general judgment would be like. In the 25th chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew, he says that he will judge us according to how well we fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, clothed the naked, visited the sick, and welcomed the stranger. After the final judgment, we will go either to heaven or to hell for all eternity.
Heaven is the state of being in which all are united in love with one another and with God, where those who, having attained salvation, are in glory with God and enjoy the beatific vision—knowledge of God as he is. The bliss of heaven will consist of both the vision and love of God and the knowledge and love of all others in God. Therefore, we will be reunited with our family, friends, and saints from past and future generations.
That brings us to hell. Yes, the Church teaches that there really is a hell. There are too many references to hell in Scripture to pretend that it doesn't exist. It's a place of eternal damnation for those who use the freedom God has given to them to reject God's love. It's the state of persons who die in mortal sin in a condition of self-alienation from God. The essence of hell is the final exclusion from communion with God because of one's own fault. The fires of hell we see in many cartoons and movies are a metaphor for the pain of eternal separation from God, which must be the most horrifying pain of all.
And who is in hell? The Church has said infallibly, through canonization, that certain people are in heaven. We call them saints. However, the Church has never said that certain people are in hell. Yet Jesus' parables about heaven and hell lean toward the fact that some people are in hell. For instance, the 25th chapter of Matthew says that those who don't feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, etc., "will go off to eternal punishment." His parable of Lazarus and the rich man indicates that the rich man is in hell.
As we contemplate the Four Last Things, the Church Year celebrates next Sunday the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe. In Dom Prosper Guéranger’s The Liturgical Year, he suggests the Last Sunday of the liturgical year, we reflect on how this end of the year is our opportunity to look back at the previous year, see the work God has done in us, and ask God to take us deeper into the spiritual life in the next year.
The project around the Sacred Heart statue in Mercy Park is also coming to a conclusion. We hope to finish up in the coming weeks with some seasonal plantings around the statue and the installation of benches in Mercy Park. We thank former OLM Altar Server Alexis Jagminas and Robbie Paulsen of RK Industries for their work on this project and for this beautiful addition to our parish plant.
Be well. Do good. God Bless. Go Pats!