In these November days when we celebrate all the saints and pray for our beloved dead, the Church invites us to ponder the final things: Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, and the Last Judgment.
In light of eternity, this life is a blink of an eye, a brief moment of history, but it is also our sacred time to live by faith, to love God, and to do His work here on Earth.
The ultimate question, which should guide our decisions each day is: Where do I want to be in 10,000 years? With God, of course!
But then, I need to respond to the invitation of the Lord to follow Him and become a saint.
The big questions
I often wonder if most people regularly muse on the big questions about the meaning of life, what happens after death, what is Heaven really like, the mystery of God, and why we are here.
Children and the elderly do, perhaps because they are closest to the mysteries of birth and death, but seemingly most of us in the middle of life are often too busy to take the time to be contemplatives and mystics.
Coupled with our daily preoccupations is the superficiality and agnosticism of our culture, which does not lend itself easily to introspection.
How tragic it would be to go through an entire life and miss the point, to never have fully grasped the meaning and purpose of your own existence, to have settled for mediocrity and puny ideals, when God actually had great plans for your life.
To think about our ultimate goal — union with God forever in the glory of Heaven — and to realize that our eternal destiny is profoundly linked to how we live out the call to holiness here on earth, is to grasp the urgency of the moment.
We have only a few short years to do something beautiful for God, to grasp the love of Christ, to leave sin behind, and to become a saint.
In King Lear, Shakespeare writes, “Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
This poetic cry of nihilism captures the sadness of a heart which has never known God or is so overwhelmed by suffering, that despair has crushed all hope.
The spiritual crisis of the West is a collapse of transcendent meaning.
If our human experience has no ultimate reference point beyond itself, if nothing endures beyond the grave, then we are all simply whistling in the dark, trying to keep busy, pursuing some paltry achievement or possession to fill the emptiness, putting out a record of random experiences on Facebook, all to quell the gnawing fear within us that none of it amounts to very much in the end.
On the other hand, if we know and love God, embrace the Biblical narrative of Creation, Sin, Redemption, and Discipleship, and accept the Lordship of Jesus Christ, then our individual story has a profound linkage to God’s story.
Our attempts to believe, love, pray, forgive, serve, to go beyond ourselves in the transcendence of the Spirit, are all ultimately leading somewhere, to that mysterious somewhere which we call Heaven.
Then, we can suffer defeats and tragedies, rise from our sins, and face even death itself with joyful hope, because we know that the Lord who created the world and guides history has already gained the victory for us in Christ.
Sin and death do not have the final word on us.
Prayer and meditation
In this month to remember the dead, we pray for our loved ones, that the Lord will purify them of their sins and bring them home to eternal life, to that glorious place of peace and joy where the saints worship God forever at the Paschal Feast of the Lamb. Our belief in Purgatory is consoling, because it means that, even after death, God is not finished with us, that He will continue to perfect and forgive us until we are ready to enter the wedding feast.
Our prayers here on earth help our brothers and sisters in this process of purification.
The Church invites us to meditate on Hell and the Final Judgment as well.
Hell is the permanent state of being completely shut off from God and His mercy.
Only God can judge us justly, and we rely on His mercy and goodness won for us in Christ to save us, but at least occasionally, I need to remember that I could lose that salvation through persistent and stubborn mortal sin and that I will give an account for my life at the end of it.
That sobering thought should lead us to repentance, trust, conversion, and hope, as we place ourselves in the compassionate Sacred Heart of Jesus.
The final paragraph of Eucharistic Prayer III states it beautifully: “To our departed brothers and sisters and to all who were pleasing to you at their passing from this life, give kind admittance to your kingdom. There we hope to enjoy forever the fullness of your glory through Christ our Lord, through whom you bestow on the world all that is good.”