GOD'S GOODNESS ANCHORED IN

Being anchored in God’s goodness

Fr Ronald Rolheiser

 5 December, 2019

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What would Jesus do? For some Christians, that’s the easy response to every question. In every situation all we need to ask is: “What would Jesus do?”

At a deep level, that’s actually true. Jesus is the ultimate criterion. He is the way, the truth and the life, and anything that contradicts him is not a way to God. Yet, I suspect, many of us find ourselves irritated by how that expression is often used in simplistic ways, as a fundamentalism difficult to digest. Sometimes, in our irritation at this, we spontaneously want to say: “Jesus has nothing to do with this!” But of course, as soon as those words escape our mouths, we realise how bad that sounds.

Jesus has a lot to do with every theological, ecclesial or liturgical question, no matter its complexity. Granted, there’s the danger of fundamentalism here; but it’s equally dangerous to answer theological, ecclesial and liturgical questions without considering what Jesus might think or do. He’s still, and forever will be, a non-negotiable criterion.

But while Jesus is a non-negotiable criterion, he’s not a simplistic one. What did Jesus do? Well, the answer isn’t simple. Looking at his life we see that sometimes he did things one way, sometimes another way, and sometimes he started out doing something one way and ended up seemingly changing his mind and doing it in a different way, as we see in his interaction with the Syro-Phoenician woman. That’s why, I suspect, within Christianity there are so many different denominations, spiritualities, and ways of worship, each with its own interpretation of Jesus. Jesus is complex.

Given Jesus’s complexity, it’s no accident then that theologians, preachers, and spiritualities often find in his person and his teachings ways that reflect more how they would handle a situation than how he would. We see this in our churches and spiritualities everywhere, and I say this with sympathy, not with judgment. None of us gets Jesus fully right.

So where does this leave us? Do we simply rely on our private interpretation of Jesus?

Do we give ourselves over uncritically to some ecclesial or academic authority and trust that it will tell us what Jesus would do in every situation? Is there a third way?

Well, there is a third way, the way of most Christian denominations, wherein we submit our private interpretation to the canonical (“dogmatic”) tradition of our particular church and accept, though not in blind uncritical obedience, the interpretation of that larger community, with its longer history and its wider experience. We can humbly accept that it can be naïve (and arrogant) to bracket 2,000 years of Christian experience so as to believe that our own insight into Jesus is a necessary corrective to a vision that has inspired so many millions of people through so many centuries.

Still, we’re not meant to park the dictates of our private conscience, our critical questions, our unease with certain things and the wounds we carry, at our church door either. In the end, we all must be true to our own consciences, faithful to the particular insights that God graces us with, and mindful of the wounds we carry. Both our graces and our wounds are meant to be listened to and they, along with the deepest voices within our conscience, need to be taken into account when we ask ourselves “What would Jesus do?”

We need to answer that for ourselves, by faithfully carrying within us the tension between being obedient to our churches and not betraying the critical voices within our own conscience.

If we do that honestly, one thing will eventually constellate inside us as an absolute: God is good. Everything Jesus taught and incarnated was predicated on that truth. Anything that jeopardises or belies that – be it a church, a theology, a liturgical practice or a spirituality – is wrong. And any voice within dogma or private conscience that betrays that is also wrong.

How we conceive of God colours for good or for ill everything within our religious practice. The truth that God is good needs to ground everything else, our churches, our theologies, our spiritualities, our liturgies, and our understanding of everyone else. Sadly, often it doesn’t. The fear that God is not good disguises itself in subtle ways but is always manifest whenever our religious teachings or practices somehow make God in heaven not as understanding, merciful, and indiscriminate and unconditional in love as Jesus was on earth. It’s also manifest whenever we fear that we’re dispensing grace too cheaply and making God too accessible.

Sadly, the God who is presented in our churches today is often too narrow, too merciless, too tribal, too petty and too untrustworthy to be worthy of Jesus … or the surrender of our soul.

What would Jesus do? Admittedly, the question is complex. However, we know we have the wrong answer whenever we make God anything less than fully good, whenever we set conditions for unconditional love, and whenever, however subtly, we block access to God and God’s mercy.

HOLLYWOOD VS. THE CROSS

The Spirit of Hollywood versus the Spirit of the Cross

- James Bascom

Few institutions today inspire more contempt among God-fearing Americans than Hollywood. Just the name of “Hollywood” conjures up images of glitzy, degenerate celebrities in gaudy outfits who use their wealth and influence to wage war on what remains of Christian morality.

Much subtler than this sexual immorality, yet ultimately more damaging, is the spread of a revolutionary mentality that denies the Catholic Faith at its deepest level by denying the effects of the Original Sin of Adam. It considers the purpose of life on this Earth to be the pursuit of bodily and material happiness. Therefore, suffering in any form and in any degree is the worst of evils. According to this mentality, it must be eradicated as quickly and efficiently as medicine, science, and technology will allow.

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We may call this mentality “The Spirit of Hollywood.” Like a drop of oil on a sheet of paper, it has penetrated into the very fibres of our culture. And it is one of the primary causes of our modern crisis, from family dysfunction to drug abuse and virtually every other social evil we see today.

Some of its most bitter fruits are found, naturally, in Hollywood itself. A particularly salient example was the suicide of actor and comedian Robin Williams. Few in Hollywood personified success and carefree optimism like Robin Williams. He had a global fan base, universal recognition, prestige and wealth. In short, he was the paragon of worldly success.

On August 11, 2014, the world was shocked to discover that he killed himself in his San Francisco home. His personal assistant discovered him hanging by a belt from a door frame in his bedroom. The San Francisco Chronicle was mystified, reporting that the 63-year-old was “a man who seemingly had everything but inexplicably decided to hang himself.”¹

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After his suicide, the facts slowly started to come out. For years he had been an alcoholic and had even taken hard drugs such as cocaine. He suffered from depression. We do not know all the factors that led to his drug abuse, depression, and suicide. But we do know that drugs, gross sexual immorality, depression, alcohol abuse, and suicide are so common in Hollywood that they are the norm, not the exception.

By no means is this spirit and its tragic effects exclusive to Hollywood. The culture of Silicon Valley, for example, shares this utopian philosophy. They believe that every human problem, and therefore every source of suffering, can be solved. One just needs to found the right start up, develop the right technology, and write the proper algorithm. We can even escape the ultimate suffering: death.

Tragically, the spirit of Hollywood has become the default mentality of the nation, with results that are as disastrous as they are predictable. The generation of Americans living in the first decades of the twenty-first century is arguably the unhappiest, dysfunctional, and suicidal generation in history. According to The New York Times, one-third of American adults and adolescents suffer from anxiety.² Drug overdoses now kill more people than both firearms and car accidents.³ More than 60% percent of firearms deaths are not murders, but suicides.⁴
In 2011, suicide passed homicide as the second leading cause of death among teenagers.⁵

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Denial of Original Sin

The Catholic Church teaches that death and suffering are a consequence of Original Sin which we inherited from Adam. After Original Sin, all men have in themselves a very strong tendency towards sin, disorder, and malice. Each person suffers the effects of Original Sin in a slightly different way, but we all feel pulled to have a distaste for virtue, order, duty, and goodness. Fundamental to Catholic spirituality is the call to wage unceasing warfare within ourselves against this disgust for order by turning ourselves towards God and Our Lady in prayer and the Sacraments. If not, we run the risk that this thirst for sin and distaste for order will triumph within us.

Mankind Needs Suffering

Imagine if we were to take a man conceived in Original Sin, with all the defects and bad tendencies it brings with it, and place him in a place like the Garden of Eden. He would be surrounded by every physical delight, but the simple fact of not experiencing any sufferings would begin to cause in him a certain malaise, uneasiness, boredom, and ultimately unhappiness and frustration.

Why? Because after Original Sin human nature requires the challenges of trials, hardships, and suffering to develop our qualities and practice virtue. Without hardship and adversity, we simply cannot develop ourselves.

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Suffering is a type of oxygen for virtues. Without this special oxygen, our virtues wither and die, or never grow at all. Even if our hypothetical person never committed a mortal sin, without trials and sufferings he would never rise to any level of virtue, much less any form of the grandeur of soul like that of a saint.

The “Suffritive” Faculty

God created human nature with certain faculties, or powers. We have the intellectual faculties and the “sensitive” faculties, our five senses. These faculties are good in themselves.

Professor Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira described a phenomenon he observed in the human soul that, while not a true faculty, by analogy may be considered one. He called it the “suffritive” faculty. It is the capacity and even psychological need of the human soul, due to Original Sin, for suffering. In other words, we need suffering in a similar way that our bodies need exercise, our minds need stimulation, and our souls need beauty.

Take exercise. After Original Sin, our bodies need a certain amount of exercise to stay fit. We build up energy inside that needs to be expended. Without exercise, our bodies begin to get irritable and feel bad. The suffering caused by this ill-feeling is worse than the fatigue from exercising. On the contrary, we usually feel a great well-being after exercise.

Likewise, when this “suffritive” faculty is not exercised we experience emptiness and frustration.

True happiness on this Earth only comes when we accept all the sufferings that God sends us in function of our individual vocation in life.

True Source of Happiness

True happiness on this Earth only comes when we accept all the sufferings that God sends us in function of our individual vocation in life. When we discern our personal vocation in life and make our lives revolve around it, give it our whole heart, soul and mind, and cheerfully accept every suffering that God deigns to send our way, we attain true earthly joy in anticipation of the eternal bliss of Heaven.

Our Lord Jesus Christ illustrated this in the Gospel with the woman about to give birth. The apprehension that she has for what is to come may be very great, and she may suffer terrible pain when the time comes to give birth, but after the child is born her sorrow is immediately turned into joy for having brought a new person into the world. Although maternity is full of sufferings, the woman who fulfils her earthly vocation of mother and accepts those sufferings also experiences true joy. She can look back with satisfaction for having endured those trials and fulfilled her mission.

The same can be said for men who suffer in war. Veterans often consider their service to have been the highlight of their lives, and look back with fondness on the times when they suffered and sacrificed for their country.

Evil Helps Man Understand Goodness

Evil and suffering can perform a valuable function for mankind. We better understand good in itself when comparing it with evil. Human psychology learns things best through contrasts, and this applies especially to good and evil. By contrast we are able to understand things more profoundly.

For example, consider the great heresies of the early Church. Arianism, Nestorianism, Gnosticism, Manichaeism, Iconoclasm, Pelagianism, and the other heresies were some of the worst evils that ever afflicted the Catholic Church. They took many souls to Hell. However, these heresies were the occasion for the development of the Church’s theology and doctrines. The Church grew in the understanding of the divine truths when she was obliged to refute and condemn these errors. The Nicene Creed, for example, was written to refute the many heretical notions of the nature of God, Our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Church.

We truly understand better the beauty, goodness and grandeur of Our Lord Jesus Christ contrasting it with the malice, perfidy, filthiness and dishonour of Judas.

A civilization that seeks to hide all that is disagreeable and pretends that evil does not exist, that seeks to eradicate all suffering, that forms and deforms its culture, art, and literature, in accordance with this worldview, that embraces the sweet things of this Earth while rejecting the cross, produces a soft, saccharine society destined to decay.

How a Catholic Should Face Suffering

A true Catholic should face suffering with heroism and take the opposite attitude of the world. We must prepare ourselves for it and accept the suffering God sends us. Some Catholics have the mistaken idea that temptation is a catastrophe and is even looked at as a sign that the person is in spiritual decadence. A person simply should not suffer temptations. The spiritual life should glide ahead as a train glides over the rails.

On the contrary, the Catholic should confront suffering not like someone who trembles with worry at the thought of a coming disaster, but like a hunter in the African bush tracking down a lion for the kill. When a hunter encounters a lion, he doesn’t think to himself: “Oh no, what a disaster! There is a lion over there! Poor me! What am I going to do?”

Evil and suffering are like that lion. We must seek out that lion for the kill. It is beautiful and heroic to hunt down that lion, and cowardly and shameful to flee from it. The lion is not a disaster, but an occasion for heroism.

Perhaps the greatest treatise on the glory and grandeur of suffering is Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort’s Letter to the Friends of the Cross.

“Friends of the Cross”

Perhaps the greatest treatise on the glory and grandeur of suffering is Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort’s Letter to the Friends of the Cross.⁶ This short work is a treasure of doctrine and counsels to those Catholics who truly wish to live out their consecration of slavery to Our Lady. It is for those few who desire to walk the hard and narrow path up the heights of sanctity, waging warfare against the enemies of Our Lord and His Church.

What does he mean by “the Cross”? The cross is the ensemble of all that we ought to suffer to save our souls. It comprises, first of all, the efforts required for our sanctification; second, the misfortunes that befall us; and thirdly, our personal limitations and restrictions.

Sanctification involves pruning our souls of bad inclinations due to Original Sin and actual sin.

Misfortune is the lot of every human being. There is no one who does not suffer any misfortunes in life. Professor Corrêa de Oliviera commented how, when he was a boy, the older pious women in São Paulo, when describing a misfortune or disaster, used to use the expression “God visited me.” Catholics of that time still retained the idea that misfortune was, in fact, a gift from God for our own betterment and sanctification.

Limitations can be a source of suffering, whether they be of intelligence, ability, temperament, or any other quality. We are often tempted to compare ourselves with others and be envious of their superiorities. Rather than envy what others have, we must be content with what God gave us and, above all, admire what He in His infinite wisdom bestowed upon others.

The “Great Way” and the “Little Way”

Professor Plinio Corrêa de Oliveria describes two ways to carry one’s cross. The first is the classical way or the “Great Way.” It is the way that the saints of the past such as Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Saint Teresa of Avila, or Saint Alphonsus de Liguori embraced suffering. They saw their duty before them, they saw it was a great suffering to be confronted, they made a mature deliberation of that suffering and a manly act of the will, and finally a gradual yet methodical execution.

Our generation, however, with its brokenness, weakened will, and sins, has a much harder time carrying its crosses. We are, so to speak, spiritually handicapped. The great sufferings of the martyrs and saints often frighten us. We feel our own insufficiency very deeply.

That is where Our Lady comes in. We should approach her and ask, “My Mother, I am too weak to confront these duties. The simple thought makes me tremble. If you wish this from me, give me a special grace, work in my soul, quickly, sublimely, with special efficacy. With the single interplay of ordinary grace, I am not able. So I beg you for enthusiasm, favours, aids, whereby, at a certain moment, my poor soul will be capable.”

Our Lady takes the weak soul and carries it on her shoulders, with much sweetness and ease. The cross still exists, but it is no longer so heavy. This is Saint Thérèse of Lisieux’s way of carrying one’s cross.

The Great Architect

Saint Louis de Montfort compares God to a great architect, and each one of us is a living stone with which God will build His Church:

You are not ignorant that you are the living temples of the Holy Ghost, and that you must, like so many living stones, be placed by this God of love into the building of the heavenly Jerusalem. Expect therefore to be moulded, cut and chiselled by the hammer of the Cross; otherwise, you would remain like rough stones that are good for nothing, despised and rejected. Make sure that the hammer strikes you and be careful with the chisel that cuts you and the hand that turns you! Perhaps this skilful and loving architect wants to make you one of the first stones of his eternal edifice and one of the most beautiful portraits of his heavenly kingdom. So let him do it; He loves you, He knows what He is doing, He has experience; all his blows are dexterous and loving; He never misses one, unless you render it useless by your impatience. (Letter to the Friends of the Cross, no. 28).

Our Lady and “Enlevo”

The essence of our Sacred Slavery of Love to Our Lady according to Saint Louis de Montfort’s method is the desire to consecrate oneself in order to receive her mentality. Her mentality is, above all, the Spirit of the Cross.

Inherent to this grace is a subtle yet very radical transformation in the soul. He begins to have what Prof. Corrêa de Oliviera called enlevo. Enlevo is a Portuguese word that means “a marvelling and sweeping admiration.” It is an admiration that is so strong that it makes a person desire to give himself entirely to the object of his admiration, and desire to serve, obey, and even make of himself a holocaust for that object. The only way for the cross to be attractive is to consider Him Who is nailed to it and to receive from Him the necessary strength to accept it. Love for the cross is born from our enlevo for the things of God, for Our Lord’s Passion, for the Church.

A Friend of the Cross Is a Crusader

A Friend of the Cross, a soul that has enlevo for the Passion, Cross and Death of Our Lord will naturally desire to fight the enemies of the Cross. He is naturally combative. Saint Louis de Montfort did not preach a Spirit of the Cross that was mediocre or self-pitying. On the contrary, he considers the Friends of the Cross to be an invincible army of crusaders in a fight to the death with the enemies of the Church:

You are united together, Friends of the Cross, like so many crusaders, to fight the world, not by fleeing like men and women religious, for fear of being vanquished, but as valiant and brave warriors on the battlefield, without giving ground or turning their backs. Courage! Fight valiantly! Join strongly in a union of minds and hearts, infinitely stronger and more terrible to the world and to hell than are the armed forces of a great kingdom to its enemies. The demons unite to destroy you; you must unite to defeat them. The avaricious unite to trade and amass gold and silver; you must unite your efforts to obtain the treasures of eternity, hidden in the Cross. Libertines join together to enjoy themselves; you must be united to suffer. (Letter to the Friends of the Cross, no. 2).

Our calling as Catholics is to oppose the errors of our times. If we are to be true Friends of the Cross we must resist conforming ourselves to these errors and be highly imbued with the truths that this age denies. It is the complete rejection of our age and all of its hatred for the Cross of Christ.

It would be an understatement to say that we live in times of extraordinary crisis. Extraordinary times of crisis require extraordinary heroism. Moral relativism is the greatest enemy that the Church and Christian civilization have ever faced. This threat is far worse than the Turks at the Battle of Lepanto or even the lions of the Roman arena. We need a heroism proportional to this threat.

A faithful slave of Our Lady, a true Friend of the Cross, receives this heroism. He receives a moral heroism which gives the strength of soul to endure great trials, deceptions, calumnies, failures, everything that man can expect to endure in this life, and above all the great moral heroism of confronting the errors of our day. Our Lady will grant him special graces of heroism, confidence, and perseverance until the final victory in this great Crusade of the twenty-first century, a victory promised one hundred years ago at Fatima, the triumph of Her Immaculate Heart.

1.  Peter Fimrite, Evan Sernoffsky and Henry K. Lee, SFGATE, “Grim details of Robin Williams’ death released by investigators” updated August 13, 2014, at https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Investigators-Robin-Williams-hanged-himself-5683229.php

2.  Benoit Denizet-Lewis, the New York Times Magazine, “Why Are More American Teenagers than Ever Suffering from Severe Anxiety?” October 11, 2017, at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/11/magazine/why-are-more-american-teenagers-than-ever-suffering-from-severe-anxiety.html

3. AP on CBS News, “Drug overdoses now kill more Americans than guns” first published on December 9, 2016, updated on December 11, 2016, at https://www.cbsnews.com/news/drug-overdose-deaths-heroin-opioid-prescription-painkillers-more-than-guns/

4. Margot Sanger-Katz, The New York Times, “Gun Deaths Are Mostly Suicides” on October 8, 2015, at https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/09/upshot/gun-deaths-are-mostly-suicides.html

5.  Alicia Vanorman and Beth Jarosz, “Suicide Replaces Homicide as Second-Leading Cause of Death Among U.S. Teenagers” published June 9, 2016, at http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2016/suicide-replaces-homicide-second-leading-cause-death-among-us-teens.aspx or https://www.prb.org/suicide-replaces-homicide-second-leading-cause-death-among-us-teens/

6.  Saint Louis de Montfort, Letters to the Friends of the Cross at http://www.ewtn.com/library/Montfort/lfcross.htm

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DEATH WITHOUT FEAR

DEATH WITHOUT FEAR

Truth be told, we can’t really be that bothered by the idea of being dead, because - well - we’ll be dead. The idea of dying, however, can shake us. It can unsettle our minds since we’ll have to walk through that process at some point and we’re not really sure how that’s going to happen, whether it will be painful, and who we might leave behind.

The stark reality of death can oftentimes scare us and lead us to see death as a terrible evil that must be avoided at all costs. The idea of losing our autonomy, which is the control we have over our own lives, can make us profoundly agitated and existentially restless. The idea of permanently letting go of everything we have and of everyone we love can profoundly disturb us.

Our dying process will be the most extreme time of transition we’ll have as human beings. Our beliefs on the afterlife will shape and mould most of our reactions at the thought of moving from one well- known stage of life into a veiled, mysterious one.

As Christians, we place our trust in the Lord Jesus, and we see that death has lost its sting. We hope in the resurrection and such a light destroys our fears. In Jesus Christ, we’re able to see the full reality of human existence, during and after this life.

In Christ, therefore, we see that our lives are a journey and death is a process. And while dying may be difficult, it leads us into eternal life. As such, believers understand that death is not an ultimate end or final goodbye.

By the power of the resurrection, death becomes a transition that only initiates a new phase of life, one that leads us from glory unto glory.

Our discipleship, with all its triumphs and failures throughout our lives, does not end in the dying process, but is empowered and intensified through it. As in life, so in death, we are called to cling to the Lord Jesus, truly risen from the dead, and give him all our fears and anxieties. In the dying process, we are especially called to be united to Jesus Christ.

In light of the resurrection, we see our dying process as the last gift that we can give to the Lord Jesus. As such, the Church walks with us and gives us helpful instructions to the various medical procedures and questions surrounding the process of dying.

Whether it’s the use of breathing tubes, the continuation of nutrition and hydration, or the use of pain medication and palliative care, the Church interprets the teachings of Jesus Christ on these matters and guides us so that we can die well and in the full abundance of his grace.

We are called, therefore, to give our dying process- and all the decisions surrounding it-to the Lord Jesus. Again, it is our last earthly gift to our loving Saviour.

In response to people who fearfully say, “I want to die with dignity,” the Church - echoing the teachings of Jesus Christ - confidently teaches us, “You will die with dignity. Nothing can take your dignity from you. In whatever way you die, and whatever might happen to you in the process, the God who created you and gave you your dignity will be the God who walks with you and gives you the strength to die a good death in his grace. You can trust him!”  

In the process of dying, we have to be aware of the influence of fear. Whether it’s a fear of diminished capacity, or losing our control, or being kept alive in ways we would not prefer, such fears can be matured, enlightened, and consoled by the reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the sure guidance of the Church on how to die a holy death.

While death can be unsettling, it’s a part of life. The more we prepare for it, pray about it, and discuss the various possibilities surrounding it with loved ones, the more it becomes less fearful and a regular part of our lives.

HEAVEN

Heaven reminds us who is waiting there

Hira Thakni | Shutterstock

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Philip Kosloski | Nov 03, 2019

St. Cyprian describes Heaven as a great family reunion, where we hope to see many of our loved ones.

At times Heaven can appear to be something abstract, a place in the clouds where God dwells. In reality Heaven is much different, full of people, many of whom held a special place in our hearts on earth.

St. Cyprian, a bishop in the 3rd century, wrote about one of the reasons we should long for Heaven.

There a large number of dear ones are waiting for us, of parents, brothers, children; a numerous and full crowd are longing for us; already secure of their own immortality, and still anxious for our safety. To come to the sight and the embrace of these, how great will be the mutual joy to them and to us! What a pleasure of the kingdom of heaven is there without the fear of dying, and with an eternity of living! How consummate and never-ending a happiness!

There is the glorious company of the apostles; there is the assembly of exulting prophets; there is the unnumbered family of martyrs crowned for the victory of their struggles and suffering; there are virgins triumphing, who, by the power of chastity, have subdued the lusts of the flesh and the body; there are the merciful recompensed, who with food and bounty to the poor have done the works of righteousness, who keeping the Lord’s commands have transferred their earthly inheritance into heavenly treasures.

To these, O most dearly beloved brethren, let us hasten with most eager longing; let us desire that our lot may be to be with these speedily; to come speedily to Christ.

Think about that scene for a minute. What joy would you experience to hug a spouse or child again? What if you saw your best friend, or your parents? Would you run at full speed to embrace them?

Let those thoughts stir up within you a great longing for Heaven, one that informs your daily activities. If we want to see that scene one day, should we not do all that we can during our short life to make it a reality?

May we go forward each day with this in mind, living the Gospel in every aspect so that we can one day hug our loved ones tightly, for all eternity.

FOUR LAST THINGS

Fulton Sheen on the 4 Last Things: Love Is the Key

The good archbishop emphasizes what we need to know in light of eternity.

During decades speaking on radio, appearing on his Life Is Worth Living television series, and writing dozens of books, Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen made certain to highlight the Four Last Things — death, judgment, heaven and hell.

All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day provide the perfect backdrop for a small fraction of what he taught in his unassailable way on these four last things — plus purgatory.

With death and judgment leading the list, Sheen sets the scene, noting how Our Lord gave us the Eucharist, his flesh and blood, which implies the resurrection of the body. First, we face the Four Last Things.

The route begins early. “A happy death is a masterpiece, and no masterpiece was ever perfected in a day,” Sheen said. People fear death chiefly because they “are not prepared for it.” On the other hand, “Death is a beautiful thing for him who dies before he dies, by dying daily to the temptations of the world, the flesh and the devil.”

The soon-to-be beatified archbishop counselled, “When one leads a mortified life in Christ, death does not come like a thief in the night, taking one by surprise. We die daily; thus, we rehearse,” because “it is appointed unto men once to die and after this the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27).

Then comes particular judgment. “You are a person and are individually responsible for your acts,” Sheen explained. “Your works follow you.” The general judgment at the end of the world takes place because you “worked out your salvation in the context of the social order and the Mystical Body of Christ; therefore, you must be judged with all men.”

Sheen described how, at the resurrection of the dead, the soul will have a body conforming to the soul’s spiritual condition. It “will be glorious, if the soul is saved; and miserable, if the soul is lost. … Our bodies have shared in the condition of our souls and will share in their glory or shame.”

The Particular Judgment

Archbishop Sheen explained that the particular judgment will be “an evaluation of ourselves just as we really are.”

This judgment will lead to the next destination, he advises: “Three possible destinies await you at death and judgment: hell, which is pain without love; purgatory, pain with love; and heaven, love without pain.”

During life there seems like “several persons in us” — who we think we are, who others believe we are, and who we really are. It’s easy “to believe our press notices and publicity” instead of judging by “eternal truth.” But, he said, we “are what we are not by our emotions, feelings, likes or dislikes, but by our choices or decisions.”

Our particular judgment will be made “on the way we lived, on the choices we made, on the things we loved.” Sheen prompted serious contemplation: “Do not think when you go before the judgment seat of God that you will argue a case. You will plead no extenuating circumstances; you will not ask for a new trial or a new jury; you will be your own judge! You will be your own jury. As Scripture says, ‘We will be condemned out of our own mouths’ (Matthew 12:37). God will merely seal our judgment.”

If Our Lord sees in a soul in grace “the resemblance of His nature,” like a parent who sees family traits in his or her child, then “seeing in our souls His divine likeness, He says to us, Come, ye blessed of My Father I have taught you to pray ‘Our Father.’ I am the natural Son, you the adopted son; come into the Kingdom I have prepared for you from all eternity” (Matthew 25:34).

But the soul in mortal sin, without grace, doesn’t “possess the family traits of the Trinity.” Seeing no likeness in that soul, Our Lord “can only say those terrible words which signify no recognition: I know you not!” (Luke 13:25).

The soul in mortal sin, “dead to divine life, casts itself into hell just as naturally as a stone released from my hand falls to the ground,” Sheen explains. The spotless soul “full of divine love and without any temporal punishment due to its sins is like a bird released from its cage; it flies to heaven.”

Venial sin is another story. The soul says, “Give me time to clean up.”

Clean Up in Purgatory

“The judgment of God is final,” Archbishop Sheen said, “but there is a merciful chance to be cleansed of sin by those who die in a state of grace, but have not yet atoned for all the punishment due to sins.” Therefore, God created purgatory.

Sheen compared it to “something like a darkroom for developing film,” treating the film (souls) “with burning acids so its hidden colour and beauty may be revealed.” Souls must be purified to be brought into the light.

Most of us, he said, have left deeds undone, words unsaid, good intentions not fully carried out, time wasted and idle words to account for.

“Justice demands that nothing unclean, only the pure of heart, shall stand before the face of the pure God,” he said, also assuring God won’t “sentence such souls to eternal loss. A provision was made for making up for our failings if we die in the state of grace after death.”

In purgatory, God’s love tempers his justice, giving “time to retouch these souls with His Cross, to recut them with the chisel of purification; thus, they might fit into the great spiritual edifice of the heavenly Jerusalem.” God “plunges them into purifying places so they can wash their stained baptismal robes to enter into the spotless purity of heaven.”

We on earth can make up for losses to loved ones. Sheen pointed out purgatory “enables us to atone for our ingratitude, because our prayers, mortifications and sacrifices make it possible to bring joy and consolation to the ones we love. Love is stronger than death; hence, there should be love for those who have gone before us.”

By praying for those poor souls in purgatory, including our family and friends, we help remit the debt they owe to God. “Certainly God cannot be unmindful of a wife who offers her merits to the captive soul of a husband waiting for his deliverance. Surely the mercy of God cannot be deaf to the good works of a mother who offers them for the liberation of her offspring …” Sheen writes.

Hell of a Place

Hell isn’t mentioned much anymore. “If there is any subject which is offensive to modern sentimentalists it is the subject of hell,” Sheen stressed, adding that “our unsoiled age wants a Christianity watered so as to make the Gospel of Christ nothing more than a gentle doctrine of goodwill, a social program of economic betterment …”

“Few today believe in either the devil or hell,” he added. “Why don’t they believe in the devil when so much is devilish?”

Looking at Scripture, he enumerated our Blessed Lord spoke 15 times of hell and 11 times of eternal fire, describing it as “the place where worm dieth not and the fire is not extinguished” (Mark 9:48).

“To disbelieve in hell is to assert that the consequences of good and bad acts are indifferent,” Sheen emphasized. “Have you ever noticed saints fear hell but never deny it, and great sinners deny hell, but they do not fear it — for the moment? The devil is never so strong as when he gets a man to deny there is a devil.”

Yet at death such a soul can’t do without God. “But God is not there.” The soul knows it can’t be happy without “life, truth and love, which it has eternally rejected, and that is hell.”

In shortened form, Sheen described hell via our human experiences. “Hell is the mind eternally mad at itself for wounding love,” he said. “You hated yourself most when you hurt someone you loved. The souls in hell hate themselves most for wounding perfect love,” and “they can never forgive themselves. Their hell is eternal, self-imposed unforgiveness. It is not that God will not forgive them, but they will not forgive themselves.”

Then, sinful rebellion requires divine justice. “Hell is a place where there is no love. Could anything be worse?”

Hell begins here. Heaven does, too.

Heaven Is Not Far Away

There isn’t much we know about heaven, Sheen noted, quoting 1 Corinthians: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man what things God has prepared for those that love Him.” Still, the saintly archbishop offered familiar ways we can use to get a most minute peek into heaven.

To understand, we’ve got to begin with time, he said. “Have you ever noticed that your happiest moments have come when eternity almost seemed to get inside of your soul?”

He notes that “your happiest moments are those when you are not conscious of time at all. There is a hint of what heaven must be. It must be outside of time, where you can possess all joys at one and the same full moment.”

Sheen explained this also shows people are making their heaven, or hell, here on earth. He met people who were in hell, and “people with heaven in them.”

Love is the key to heaven, the good archbishop emphasizes.

“If you ever want to see heaven in a child, look at that child the day of first Communion. If you want to see how much love is related to heaven, just look at a bride and groom at the altar on the day of the nuptial Mass. Heaven is there because love is there. I've seen heaven in a missionary nun who was giving herself among the lepers.”

Sheen wanted us to think about some of life’s great moments, “when you really enjoyed the thrill of living. Then go back and think of a time when somebody told you a truth or you studied and understood a great mystery. Then go to another moment of your life, when you had the great spiritual ecstasy of love and wanted it to go on and on.”

The insightful archbishop listed many of nature’s beauties, beautiful architecture such as cathedrals, things he imagined including a world with never a pain, disease or death, “a world wherein every man would live in a castle, a world in which winter would never come, and in which the flowers would never fade, and the sun would never set … there would always be peace … a constant enjoyment without satiety … a world which would eliminate all the evils and diseases and worries of life, and combine all of its best joys and happiness …”

He wanted to take this moment and raise it to where it “became the Father,” lift this truth “to infinity until it became the moment of the ecstasy of truth, namely, the Son,” and internalize the moment of love so it “became the Holy Spirit. That would be a dim suggestion of heaven.”

To be perfectly happy Sheen reminded us that we’ll have to have our bodies (at the resurrection of the body), which have “done a great deal for the salvation of our souls. There we will meet, in the communion of saints, all of those who were our friends and mates on earth.”

Whatever hints we have, the truth remains: “Heaven is perfect life, perfect truth and perfect love.”

That is our holy goal.

Archbishop Sheen admitted only one fear — the fear “of losing divine love, which is Christ,” he said. “The reason I want to go to heaven is because I want to be with love. There’ll be many surprises … there will be one great surprise, the greatest of all — that you and I are there. I will see you in heaven!”