“I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.” That’s Woody Allen, the controversial movie director, speaking. He’s an eloquent spokesman for everyone who fears what comes next.
Woody Allen is a troubled man seething with existential angst.
He might benefit from reading Life After Death: Questions People Ask, the latest book from Fr John Flader, The Catholic Weekly’s prolific columnist. In an easy-to read Q&A format Fr Flader answers thorny questions about what are traditionally called “the Last Things” – death, the particular judgement, hell, purgatory, heaven, and the last day.
The 63 questions are very direct. For instance: “Is hell real?”
It turns out that the answer is Yes. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states unambiguously: “The teaching of the church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity.”
On the other hand, we don’t know how full hell is. The early Fathers of the church thought that “the majority were damned”. St John Paul II, the most compassionate of men, asked “whether God, who is ultimate justice, can tolerate terrible crimes and let them go unpunished”. But the martyred St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), who was the victim of one of those terrible crimes at Auschwitz, believed that it was possible “to hope that God’s omnipotent love finds ways, so to speak, of outwitting human resistance”.
In the end, we don’t know whether hell is like Sydney’s Central Station at rush hour during a snap train strike or like Tasmania’s Maatsuyker Island with its lonely lighthouse keeper.
Better not to find out.
The point is that it’s not up to us to decide whether hell exists. As Christians, we believe that Christ had the last word on the last things. After all, he is author of life and death. Fr Flader cites an American theologian who contends that “the salvation of all is something that one may not only be hopeful about … but that it is absolutely certain.” Given that “Jesus Christ spoke about hell numerous times,” writes Fr Flader, this is “untenable”.
No one objects to heaven, of course. But some people do roll their eyes and say that strumming harps on a cloud will be boring, boring, boring.
Not so, writes Fr Flader. “It will be the maximum of happiness. Pope Benedict XVI writes that eternal life ‘would be like plunging into the ocean of infinite love, a moment in which time – the before and after – no longer exists. We can only attempt to grasp the idea that such a moment is life in the full sense, a plunging ever anew into the vastness of being, in which we are simply overwhelmed with joy.’”
Furthermore, through the abounding mercy of God, this ocean of happiness is open to all of us. “If a person commits numerous serious sins throughout his life and is moved to be sorry for them at the very last moment, even on his deathbed, God will always forgive him,” writes Fr Flader.
There is, of course, a danger of treating hell and heaven as if they were one of Woody Allen’s irreverent quips.
But life is not a Call of Duty video game where the slaughtered legions of baddies dissolve into binary code. It’s a high-stakes drama for every human being and how we live determines our eternal destiny.
With the possible exception of Silicon Valley tech bros, we all know that in the not-too-distant future we are absolutely sure to kick the bucket, drop off the twig, shuffle off the mortal coil, and push up the daisies.
And we all tend to avert our eyes from that dread moment. But there is a final exam and Fr Flader’s crisp, theologically precise, punctiliously documented FAQ will be useful in swotting up for it.
