Editorial

The four last things: death, judgment, heaven and hell

During the month of November, the Church encourages us to meditate about “the four last 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 an end of the first phase of human life. And that first phase—all that we have done in our lifetime—determines all that is to come.

After death, the Church teaches that we will undergo two judgments: 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 the use we have made of the talents God gave us and how we have conducted our lives.

The final or general judgment will take place after our souls are reunited to our bodies at the resurrection of the dead. This is what we say we believe 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, but the Church teaches that Christ will change our lowly body into a “spiritual body.”

Jesus told us what the general judgment will be like. In the 25th chapter of the Gospel according to 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, welcomed the stranger, etc.

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 in both the vision and love of God and the knowledge and love of all others in God. We will, therefore, be reunited with our family and friends as well as with the saints from past, and future, generations.

The Church teaches that we will experience perfect happiness in heaven. Yet some people, because of their lives on Earth, will experience greater happiness than others will. Just as both a large glass and a small glass can be filled to capacity but one will hold more than the other, so will some people have a greater capacity for happiness, but all will be completely happy.

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 final exclusion from communion with God because of one’s own fault. The fires of hell we see in many cartoons is 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 the process of canonization, that certain people are in heaven, but it has never said that certain people are in hell. Jesus’ parables about heaven and hell lean toward the fact that some people are in hell. The 25th chapter of Matthew says that those who don’t feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, etc., “will go off to eternal punishment” (Mt 25:46). His parable of Lazarus and the rich man indicates that the rich man is in hell.

Things to think about during the month of November.

—John F. Fink