"The Last Things"

In traditional Catholic teaching, the "Last Things" refers to the topics of death, judgment, hell, and heaven, the so called "four last things to be ever remembered" as Muriel Spark puts it in her book Memento Mori. The study of these last things constitutes the theological enterprise called "eschatology" from the Greek "eschaton" which, essentially, means finality, end, outcome, uttermost.

These four final realities are held by the Church to be utterly inescapable when it comes to the human experience (though the Church of course affirms that hell is not "inescapable" in so far as Christ's offer of salvation is concerned). At the end of the day, we can avoid these subjects as much as we want, we can fabricate the most creative alternatives to them but, in the end, we all die, we face judgement, and we are ultimately transported to one of two very real states - heaven or hell.

It has grown increasingly popular to label everything I've just written as absolutely, ridiculously absurd - a holdover from the Middle Ages. To actually believe anything I've mentioned so far is nothing more than foolish, arcane, superstitious nonsense. Even many of our brothers and sisters in the Church, some in positions of leadership and influence, would cast all of this out the window at the first chance if they could. But I would simply point out that Jesus Christ never surrendered himself to the prison of popularity. The Christian faith is not, has never been, nor ever will it be a faith defined by how "with the times" it is. The Church utterly transcends time and the often bullying influences Pope Saint John Paul II referred to as "passing fads."

It's true that most of the agitation that seems to crop up whenever one makes mention of death, judgement, hell, or heaven may very well be ascribed to outdated and imperfect traditional ways of describing our ultimate end. One can't help but immediately conjure up images of hell being filled with little red devils with pointy tails poking at a person for all eternity with their pitchforks while flames mercilessly lick the room. Heaven is commonly painted as a vast, endless realm of clouds atop which fat little angels and boring people pluck at harps to no end. Trust me, I get it! I mean if the first one is remotely true, how could a good God bear even one of his supposedly beloved creatures ending up there forever? If the second one is true, why in the world would ANYONE ever want to end up there? That kind of heaven is the sort of thing I would probably try and think of when I'm desperately trying to fall asleep!

The truth revealed by Christ and passed down through his Church is far more incredible, far more profound and meaningful than these often quaint pictures we've come to know. I will be making a couple of posts relating to the Last Things over the next few weeks but for now, I think I'll just let the inimitable Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar lay it out:

God is the “last thing” of the creature. Gained, he is heaven; lost, he is hell; examining, he is judgment; purifying, he is purgatory. He it is to whom finite being dies, and through whom it rises to him, in him. This he is, however, as he presents himself to the world, that is, in his Son, Jesus Christ, who is the revelation of God and, therefore, the whole essence of the last things.