The Last Things

The last things are the ultimate realities that await man: what comes at the end of his life, and what will come at the end of history. Tradition counts four, which it names the novissima, the “last things”: death, judgment, paradise and hell. To consider them is to look at where life leads, in order to live it toward its end.

Death

Death was not God’s first design. God had created man for life, and it is by turning away from him that man gave himself over to death. “By one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death.” Romans 5:12 The book of Wisdom says it again: it is by the envy of the devil that death entered the world. “By the envy of the devil, death entered the world.” Wisdom 2:24 Christ, however, changed the meaning of death: by dying himself, he made it a passage into life, so that to die in Christ becomes a gain. “For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” Philippians 1:21

Death is the separation of soul and body, the end of earthly life. Raising at Troas the young man fallen from the window, Paul measures life by the soul’s presence in the body. “Be not troubled, for his soul is in him.” Acts 20:10 With it ends the time of merit: during this life, man turns to God or away from him, and death seals this choice. “And as it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment.” Hebrews 9:27 One dies only once; beyond, one no longer converts, and the soul is gathered as it has become.

The abode of the dead

Before Christ, all the dead went down to the abode of the dead, the righteous and the wicked, far from the light of the living and the sight of God. The Hebrew word rendered “abode of the dead” is she’ol (שְׁאוֹל); the Greek version translates it Hadēs (ᾅδης): the place below, the pit, where one descends in dying. There one led a diminished existence, in shadow and silence, cut off from the living and from the praise of God. Jacob, believing his son dead, wishes to join him there. “I will go down to my son into hell, mourning.” Genesis 37:35 And the psalm laments this severing. “there is no one in death, that is mindful of thee: and who shall confess to thee in hell?” Psalm 6:6

All went down there, but not in the same state. The righteous rested there in consolation, awaiting the Redeemer; the wicked already knew torment. Christ shows it in the parable of poor Lazarus, carried to rest, and the pitiless rich man, awakened in the flames, an impassable abyss between the two. “The poor man died, and was carried by the angels into the bosom of Abraham.” Luke 16:22 This place of rest for the righteous is called the bosom of Abraham, or the limbo of the Fathers, from the Latin limbus, the edge: there waited the saints of the old Covenant, turned toward the promise still to come.

At his death, Christ descended to the abode of the dead. The Creed confesses it: he descended into hell. The word “hell” comes from the Latin infernus, “what is below”: it names first the underground place where all the dead descend, before designating also the place of the damned. It is to the first that Christ descended, as victor, to find the righteous who awaited him and bring them the news of salvation accomplished. “coming he preached to those spirits that were in prison.” 1 Peter 3:19 He then opened the heaven that sin had closed, and made the righteous pass from waiting to glory.

Since this descent and the Resurrection, heaven is open: the righteous who die in the friendship of God enter into his sight, at once or after the purification of purgatory, and the limbo of the Fathers is empty, its waiting accomplished. There remain hell, for the one who turns from God to the end, and the wait for the last day, when the risen body will rejoin the soul. Then death itself will be destroyed. “And hell and death were cast into the pool of fire. This is the second death.” Revelation 20:14

The particular judgment

Immediately after death, each soul appears before God and receives its eternal lot: this is the particular judgment, so named because it concerns each person separately. The one who judges is Christ, to whom the Father has given all judgment. “For neither does the Father judge any man: but hath given all judgment to the Son.” John 5:22 Before him, the soul sees its whole life in the full light of God, with nothing remaining hidden, and the verdict of Christ confirms what it has made of itself. “we must all be manifested before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive the proper things of the body, according as he hath done, whether it be good or evil.” 2 Corinthians 5:10

What is weighed in this judgment is love: God looks to faith made living by charity. “in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing nor uncircumcision: but faith that worketh by Charity.” Galatians 5:6 The whole life is judged by this measure, the love of God and of neighbour, attested even in the humblest services.

The judgment gives the soul its lot at once, without waiting for the end of the world, and three states are possible. The one who dies in the friendship of God, fully purified, enters paradise; the one who dies in this friendship, imperfectly purified, passes through purgatory; the one who dies refusing God’s love freely goes to hell. To the good thief crucified beside him, Christ promises heaven for that very day. “Amen I say to thee: This day thou shalt be with me in paradise.” Luke 23:43 The Church solemnly defined this immediate retribution: as early as 1336, Pope Benedict XII, in the constitution Benedictus Deus, declared that the fully purified souls see God face to face immediately after death, without waiting for the end of time, and that the damned descend at once into hell; the Council of Florence confirmed it in 1439.

Paradise

Paradise is the perfect and unending happiness where the elect, fully united to God, share his life and his joy. Its heart is to see God as he is, which the Lord promised to the pure in heart. “Blessed are the clean of heart: they shall see God.” Matthew 5:8 On earth we know God in faith, through his works; in heaven we shall see him directly, face to face. The Church names this contemplation the beatific vision, for it makes blessed those who receive it. “We see now through a glass in a dark manner: but then face to face.” 1 Corinthians 13:12

To see God thus surpasses the powers of every creature; it is God himself who raises the soul by a gift tradition calls the light of glory, and which makes it able to bear his sight. The blessed see him as he is without ever exhausting him: God remains infinite, and his contemplation stays for ever new, without weariness and without end.

Man is made for God, and God alone can fill his heart; in paradise this desire finds at last its full satisfaction, without measure and without end. “That eye hath not seen, nor ear heard: neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love him.” 1 Corinthians 2:9 This happiness man receives with Christ and through him. “Father, I will that where I am, they also whom thou hast given me may be with me: that they may see my glory.” John 17:24 It is through his humanity, united to God, that the elect are brought into the very life of the Trinity.

The measure of glory differs from one of the blessed to another: each sees God according to the charity he bore in this life. “every man shall receive his own reward, according to his own labour.” 1 Corinthians 3:8 The love offered here below widens the capacity to receive God: some are larger vessels than others, and all are filled to the brim, none lacking any desire. “One is the glory of the sun, another the glory of the moon, and another the glory of the stars. For star differeth from star in glory.” 1 Corinthians 15:41

The happiness of paradise is a communion: the blessed live in the joy of God and of one another, the communion of saints come to its term. “Behold, the dwelling of God is with men; he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people.” Revelation 21:3 The souls of the righteous taste this happiness at once after the particular judgment; when the bodies rise, their joy will overflow onto the glorified flesh, and the whole man will live of God.

Purgatory

Purgatory is the state of purification through which pass, after death, those who die in the friendship of God without being yet fully purified. Their salvation is secured; it remains for them to complete their purification from what, in them, still clings to something other than God, for the full light of heaven welcomes only pure hearts. “There shall not enter into it any thing defiled or that worketh abomination or maketh a lie.” Revelation 21:27

Two things can hold this soul back from the full light. First the lighter faults, those venial sins which wound the friendship of God without breaking it, and which death has found still in it. Then the temporal punishment: every sin, even forgiven, leaves a disordered attachment to created things; the offence is remitted, and with it the eternal punishment; this disorder, however, often remains to be healed. The sinner cooperates here below by penance and works of charity; what remains to be purified on leaving this life is completed in purgatory.

Scripture shows that one may pray for the dead and that this prayer profits them. In the time of the Maccabees, a sacrifice is offered for the fallen soldiers. “It is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from their sins.” 2 Maccabees 12:46 Such a prayer would be vain for the blessed, who have no need of it, and for the damned, whom none can help: it supposes a third state, where the soul purifies itself. Scripture evokes it as a passage through fire. “If any mans work burn, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire.” 1 Corinthians 3:15 Christ lets it be understood that a pardon remains possible beyond death. “he that shall speak against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him neither in this world, nor in the world to come.” Matthew 12:32 If a certain fault is remitted neither in this world nor in the next, it is that others can be in the age to come: not the grave fault, which is settled before death, but those lighter faults that purgatory finishes wiping away. The Church confessed it from the Council of Lyon, in 1274.

In purgatory, the soul suffers from being still held far from the God it loves and desires with all its strength. This suffering is wholly inhabited by hope, for these souls know that they are saved and that their wait has a term. This fire purifies like gold in the crucible: it consumes what remains impure to make the soul worthy of the full light.

The souls of purgatory can no longer merit for themselves; the living can for them, and can hasten their deliverance. The helps we bring them are called suffrages, from the Latin suffragium, the support given in someone’s favour: prayer, almsgiving, penance offered for their intention, and above all the sacrifice of the Mass, where the Cross of Christ is made present for them. The Church also applies to the dead the indulgences: drawing on the treasury of the merits of Christ and the saints, it remits the temporal punishment that remains to be paid and offers it for the souls of purgatory, to hasten their entrance into the full light. In this the communion of saints is lived: the Church of the earth comes to the aid of the Church being purified, in the one charity that binds all the members of Christ.

Hell

Hell is the state of definitive separation from God, the lot of the one who dies refusing his love freely. It is Christ himself who revealed it, and he spoke of it often, always to turn men away from it. To name it, he used the word Gehenna, from a ravine south of Jerusalem, the valley of Hinnom, a place of refuse and fires once linked to idolatrous cults, become the image of the place of perdition. “Fear rather him who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.” Matthew 10:28

The punishment of hell is first the loss of God. The soul was created to see him face to face and live of his life; to be separated from him for ever is the deepest suffering, that of a being deprived of what alone could fill it. Tradition calls it the pain of loss. “Who shall suffer eternal punishment in destruction, from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his power.” 2 Thessalonians 1:9 To this privation is added another punishment, which tradition names the pain of sense and which Scripture figures by fire. “Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels.” Matthew 25:41 This fire speaks of a suffering whose nature surpasses the fire we know: the soul suffers from the disorder it willed and the ruin to which its refusal led it.

Hell is eternal. “And these shall go into everlasting punishment: but the just, into life everlasting.” Matthew 25:46 Its eternity holds to what is fixed at death: as long as life lasts, man can recover himself; death closes this time, and the soul remains for ever in the orientation it has taken. Separated from the body, it adheres to its choice definitively, as the angels fixed themselves on theirs from the beginning.

What leads to hell is mortal sin, so named because it makes the soul lose the life of grace. Three conditions constitute it: grave matter, full awareness of what one does, and deliberate consent. By such an act, man turns from God as his final end and prefers something else to him. Venial sin weakens this friendship; mortal sin breaks it, and as long as conversion and pardon have not raised it, it fixes the soul in its rupture.

The cause of hell lies in the free refusal of man. God wills the salvation of all and destines no one to hell. “Who will have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” 1 Timothy 2:4 Hell is the term of a refusal conscious and maintained to the end, which God respects, for to love supposes the power to refuse. This is why Christ warned of it with gravity, to call to conversion; and the Church, which has never declared any man damned, entrusts all the dead to the mercy of God, greater than every sin. A question remains open: the fate of children who die without baptism, without having been able to make any choice. The Church knows no other ordinary way to salvation than baptism, and so can affirm nothing with certainty; but it does not despair of their salvation. Recalling the tenderness of Christ for the little ones, “Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.” Mark 10:14 and the will of God to save all men, it entrusts them with hope to his mercy.

The resurrection of the body

The resurrection of the body is the reunion, on the last day, of each soul to its own body, now made immortal. Man is body and soul: death violently separates what was made to be united, and the salvation God gives reaches the whole man, restoring the body too to life.

The foundation of this hope is the resurrection of Christ: coming alive from the tomb, in his own body, he opened the way. “But now Christ is risen from the dead, the firstfruits of them that sleep.” 1 Corinthians 15:20 The word “firstfruits” designates the first fruits of the harvest, which announce and guarantee all the rest: his resurrection assures ours.

The body that rises is the very body that was buried, restored by God to life under a new condition. Scripture illumines it by the image of the seed, which dies in the ground and reappears wholly other without ceasing to be itself. “that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die first. And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not the body that shall be: but bare grain. But God giveth it a body as he will.” 1 Corinthians 15:36-38

For those whom God saves, this body rises glorious, adorned with four qualities Scripture sets against its present condition. “It is sown in corruption: it shall rise in incorruption. It is sown in dishonour: it shall rise in glory. It is sown in weakness: it shall rise in power. It is sown a natural body: it shall rise a spiritual body.” 1 Corinthians 15:42-44 Impassibility makes it unable to suffer or die; clarity makes it shine with light; agility makes it prompt to follow the soul; subtlety subjects it entirely to the spirit. This body will be made like that of the risen Christ. “Who will reform the body of our lowness, made like to the body of his glory.” Philippians 3:21

All the dead rise, the righteous as the unrighteous; death conquered, no body decays any longer. Glory remains nonetheless the portion of the saved alone: the body of the damned rises immortal and imperishable, capable of suffering, and it is in it that they bear their punishment. “the hour cometh wherein all that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God. And they that have done good things shall come forth unto the resurrection of life: but they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment.” John 5:28-29 This resurrection will take place at the end of the world, at the return of Christ. The hope of it runs already through all the Old Testament. “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and in the last day I shall rise out of the earth. And I shall be clothed again with my skin, and in my flesh I shall see my God.” Job 19:25-26

The last judgment

The last judgment is the appearance of all men before Christ, at the end of the world, after the resurrection of the dead. Ascended into heaven after his resurrection, Christ will come a second time, visible to all, to judge the living and the dead. This return is called the Parousia, from the Greek parousia (παρουσία), “coming” or “presence”. “This Jesus who is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come as you have seen him going into heaven.” Acts 1:11

This return will be preceded by a trial. Scripture announces that before the end, the Church will pass through a final tribulation that will shake the faith of many, marked by the coming of the Antichrist, the adversary who rises against Christ by usurping the place of God. “Who opposeth and is lifted up above all that is called God or that is worshipped, so that he sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself as if he were God.” 2 Thessalonians 2:4 This imposture is not a triumph of evil, but the last assault of an enemy already conquered: at his return, Christ will destroy him. “The Lord Jesus will destroy him with the brightness of his coming.” 2 Thessalonians 2:8

The last judgment is universal: all the men of all history, risen in their bodies, appear together before Christ the judge, each judged whole, body and soul at last reunited.

This day reveals what was hidden: the thoughts, the words and the acts of each, the good as the evil, and their consequences through all history. “judge not before the time: until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts.” 1 Corinthians 4:5 Then Christ separates the righteous from the reprobate. “when the Son of man shall come in his majesty, and all the angels with him, then shall he sit upon the seat of his majesty. And he shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats.” Matthew 25:31-32 The measure of the separation is love, even in the least of the brothers. To those who succoured them, he says: “as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me.” Matthew 25:40 To those who neglected them: “as long as you did it not to one of these least, neither did you do it to me.” Matthew 25:45

Each one’s lot is already fixed at death, and yet this universal judgment accomplishes what the particular one left unfinished. What a man has sown outlives him: the good and the evil he has spread bear their fruit through the centuries, and the entire truth of an existence is seen only at the end, when all its consequences are accomplished. The justice of God, often obscured in the course of history where the just seemed defeated and the wicked prosperous, breaks forth at last before all. “against the day of wrath and revelation of the just judgment of God: Who will render to every man according to his works.” Romans 2:5-6

The last judgment completes history. The whole creation, freed from evil, is renewed and associated with the glory of the saved. “we look for new heavens and a new earth according to his promises, in which justice dwelleth.” 2 Peter 3:13 Then the design of God reaches its term, and he fills all with his presence. “when all things shall be subdued unto him, then the Son also himself shall be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all.” 1 Corinthians 15:28