Advent is always a great time to reflect on the four last things, whether you like them or not. And most people don’t like them at all.
In the Catholics in Australia survey of 2022, we found that almost all Catholics believed in the existence of heaven. Far fewer believed in the existence of purgatory or hell.
The old saying is true: Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.
With this in mind, let’s kick off three weeks of the four last things— death and judgement, hell, and heaven. We’ll start with death and individual judgement.
One day, you’re going to die. Your soul— which is immortal— is going to come apart from your body.
I can’t tell you when. It may be quick or slow, and it may be sooner or later. But it’s going to happen.
This mortal version of your body will start decaying— breaking down into its elements. But your soul is going to keep on living, and you’ll be acutely conscious of this.
What happens next? Let’s start with the natural evidence.
We have thousands of first-hand accounts from people who have begun to die and then come back.
Universities study these accounts. There’s even academic literature on it.
There are common features, like a sense of leaving your body, greater mental clarity, a review of your life, and being able to see and hear things that are going on in the room where you died.
We know from our Catholic faith that when we die, we will go before God to be judged individually on our lives.
People who “come back from the dead” don’t seem to progress this far, so they don’t tell us much about what that’s like.
But the Catechism tells us (CCC: 1022) that once we really and truly die, each of us will be judged individually by God. We will be judged on our life in Christ; and “judged on love.”
We know a bit of what this judgement looks like from the story of Lazarus and the rich man (Luke 16:19-31).
Individual judgement should both be a scary concept, and a not scary one. Your judge will also be your lawyer.
He knows all the ins-and-outs of why you did every single thing. He knows about all the things in your life that twisted you up and spat you out.
But he also knows about all the times you were just plain mean, or greedy, or bitchy, or bullying, or cruel, or dishonest, with no excuses.
He knows about every infidelity, every unkind thought, every rash judgement, and every injustice you committed against other people.
You will see all this as well. You will see where you truly repented, and where you didn’t.
You will see the baked-on awfulness that you didn’t address while you had the chance.
You will see where you showed true love; unselfish and ordered to another person’s true good.
You will see where you showed false love; sentimental, selfish, vicious, and destructive.
You will also see how well you know God as a person. This means that you will see what God (or gods) you really worshipped all your life.
Was the God you talked to—and about— just a tin-pot creation cobbled together of the bits you liked about your religion, but none of the bits you didn’t like?
Or was it just you in a God-mask; your stomach, your genitals, always getting your own way?
This is when you will— as The Wizard of Oz puts it— pay attention to that man behind the curtain. You won’t have any choice.
Although God is the one judging you, you will agree completely with his judgment. All the evidence is right there in front of you.
Now, you get to choose your destination. But you’ve been doing that all your life.
Every day on Earth, you either came a little bit closer to God, or a little bit further away. Now, you get to see where the path you chose is leading you next.
You can go into the fire and be purified so that you can come out the other end and live with God forever.
Or, you can go into the other fire and not come out, because you can’t stand the thought of being with God forever.
It’s pretty harrowing, isn’t it? And it’s meant to be.
So next week, if you’re game, we’ll grapple with the ugliest eternal option and see where that takes us.