We live our life in the Mystical Body, well, less well, or altogether ill. We may unite our wills wholly to Christ's. We may unite our wills partially to His, reserving some of our ungiven self. We may separate our wills wholly from His, choosing self; as apart from God, closing our soul to the flow of His life. At any given moment of our life on earth, we are in one of these states: in one of them we die. Consider this matter of natural death, the separation of soul and body which ends our life on this earth, our time of testing and growth.
A point comes, suddenly if there is violence, or by slow wearing, when the body can no longer respond to the life-giving energy of the soul. That, precisely, is death. The body without life, falls away into its elements. The soul does not die with the body. As a spirit, it does not depend on a body for its life, as matter cannot give life to spirit. In the absence of the body, the soul cannot exercise its powers, as the animator of a body. These powers must remain wrapped within it, until the body rises again at the last day. In its own nature, as a spirit, with intellect and will, it lives on. In what state? According to the state in which death finds it.
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If we die wholly separated, we are cut out from the Body forever. Our lot is forever with the angel, who created the precedent to opt for self against God. If we die united, even not wholly, having any flicker of the super-natural life, we shall be saved. If we are wholly united and wholly penetrated by Christ's life, the soul enters heaven with no break or interval. In the Beatific Vision of the unveiled face of God the soul comes at last to its goal. If there are still elements of self not surrendered, there is first cleansing by the suffering of Purgatory. This allows life to take possession of every element in our being, so that we may be made perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. With no defilement left in us, we can enter heaven.
All this suggests a formidable finality about death. Death is an end, an end not of life but of wavering. At any given moment of our life on earth we are in one of three possible states. We are not fixed in them, as we pass from one to another and back again. Time in its flow brings into the foreground, one or another, of all that can attract the will. The will finds itself played on by competing fascinations, bringing different energies of acceptance and resistance.
These objects are inconceivably various, as are their ways of drawing the will to them. In spite of all their variations, they are reducible to two categories. They are, according to God's Will, for or against us. For all the ways in which the will reacts to them, it is always doing one of two things - choosing God, or choosing self, not God. They are choosing an increase or a diminution of being, reality undiluted, or mingled with illusion. This choice is the determining element in our life. Most of us do not, without variation, choose either one way or the other. Consider the Catholic in a state of grace, but not perfect. Some object attracts him, which he knows is against God's will. If he chooses it, he sins. A small thing, not involving a deliberate assertion of self, as against God, or a thing he gives no particular thought to it at all, is a venial sin. It does not break the relation of love and life, between himself and God. It means, a small element of self is not wholly given to God. If it is a great thing, chosen with deliberation, we have mortal sin. It is a definite choice of self, as against God. It breaks the bond of love, and empties the soul of life.
It is not easy to draw a line between venial and mortal sin. A man can love his country passionately; yet break its law by driving his automobile too fast. There is all the difference between a thing like this, and going over to the enemy in time of war. A man can love God, yet fall into small sins. Though they are breaches of the law of God, there is a world between them and the deliberate enthronement of self in God's place.
Whether venial or mortal sins, we can fall into them, but not necessarily stay in them. By contrition, true sorrow for the love of God, we can repair our venial sins. By contrition for mortal sins, and the Sacrament of Penance, we can restore the relation of love and the flow of life to the soul. When some other temptation comes our way, we can perhaps resist or yield to it. If we yield, we can be restored as before, soon or after many years. A flashback of the mind over our past, shows a series of falls and rises, not much to be proud of and very disheartening. Though the will is liable to swing violently, there is a defining of its choice. As life proceeds, we tend towards God, or towards self and away from God. There will be flickering, but in a narrower range. The will is setting in a direction. By the end of this life on earth, the direction is fixed. Either the will loves God or loves self, against God, with life or empty of it.
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If the soul has chosen self in this life, it may hardly be aware of it. Life is full of interests. The soul, occupied with them, may not have realized the choice it was making, or the direction it was setting. The reality is there: the soul has come to love self exclusively. Even in this life, that state may have its natural consequence of realized hatred of God. For the majesty of God is an intolerable affront to self-love grown so monstrous. The multiplicity of life may have prevented the soul from seeing clearly, either its own state or God's majesty. Once death comes, there is nothing to stand between the soul and its awareness, both of itself and of God. Loving self, so totally, it can only hate God. Realize that the will is now fixed, not changing of its own choice. Heaven is closed, both by its lack of supernatural life, which makes Heaven possible, and by its ongoing hatred of God. It cannot cease to exist, as by nature, it is immortal. God could destroy it, but will not. Our Lord told us (Mt. 25:41) “what is its lot: to be separated from Him (whom it hates): to go into the everlasting fire that was prepared for the Devil and his angels.”
The soul will be in Hell forever; kept there by its unchanging will to love self and hate God. Man, made for God, needs God with every fiber of his being; and in His absence, must suffer as one suffers from needs unsatisfied. There will be punishment for the offense against God's justice, and may vary from soul to soul. We know nothing of it, save that Christ chose the word "fire" for it. We have some notion of the suffering; by all the needs that cannot be met in Hell, and relating them to our experience in this life. The whole of man's being needs God. The need can be blunted in this life, by everything less than God. In Hell the soul is naked to its own insufficiency, with nothing to lull or distract it. It is one aching need, turned resolutely and finally from the only Reality that could satisfy it.
There is real nightmare in facing this truth. A sense of horror in mans will perverting itself so fully. How can God treat man so cruelly? This is illusion, because the fact of Hell is taught us by Christ Our Lord, who showed His love for men, as no one has ever shown it. Hell is no contradiction of Christ’s love. It is the free will of man that makes the choice. Man can, freely choose love of self and hatred of God, the rest follows. In reverence we can say, that God, respecting the will's freedom, can do nothing about it. He does not thrust devils or men into Hell. They go there, as it is their place. Scripture tells us so, in the case of Judas: “he died and went to his own place." It is a spiritual nature finding its place, as a material thing finds its place by the law of gravity. Our Lord could say "I saw Satan, like lightning, falling from heaven."
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St. Thomas among others has developed this notion of a spiritual law of gravity: a body, unless prevented, is borne to its place by its weight or lightness, so souls, when the bond of flesh by which they were held in the condition of this life, is dissolved, immediately attain their reward or punishment, unless something intervenes. (In 4 Sent. dist. 45. q.i.)
St. Augustine had used the same idea. Weight, he says, takes a material thing where it is to go, if it is heavy, downward, if it is light, upward. But for himself (as for all men) "Amor meus pondus meum " - love is my weight. A man, loving God, is drawn Godward by a sort of natural movement. A man, loving self in preference to God, is drawn away from God. We make our own weight. God gives us the skills, but it is we who make it. The man, who dies with his love set away from God, finds his place, as does the man who dies loving God. This love may be total, a uniting of his will with the Will of God, with no element of self not given up. There is the other possibility. A real love of God, a union of the will with the Will of God; yet with some small element of self not surrendered. This may be by sins committed, venial sins, not taken seriously enough for serious repentance, or mortal sins, repented with genuine sorrow, but lacking in the intensity of the sorrow. It may be sins of omission, resulting from absence of a total yielding of the self at some small point. Either way, real love would bear man directly to God, but these elements hinder the movement. It is for them that Purgatory exists.
Purgatory is a place of waiting, where by lovingly accepted suffering, the soul is cleansed of all these smaller defilements. Purity means the giving of oneself to the Will of God without any other influence. Holding back any element in oneself is an adulteration, and so a defilement. Nothing defiled can enter Heaven. The suffering, by which the soul is brought to perfection in Purgatory, is not known. That it should be suffering is natural enough. The defilement consists precisely in the assertion of self.
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The soul, totally united with God, whether at death or after the purifying of Purgatory, immediately experiences the direct vision of the Blessed Trinity. Man has attained the thing God made him for. Union with God now takes on a closeness, for which we have no adequate expression. God has revealed what is essential in it, but the mind can hardly make a step in their realization. St. Paul reminds us (1 Cor. 1): “Our knowledge, our prophecy, are only glimpses of the truth, and these glimpses will be swept away when the time of fulfillment comes ... at present, we are looking at confused reflections in a mirror; then, we shall see face to face.” St. John says the same thing: “We are sons of God even now, and what we shall be hereafter has not been made known as yet. But we know that when He comes we shall be like Him; then we shall see Him as He is.” (1 John 3:2)
Both saints emphasize seeing Him, as He is and face to face. This is the doctrine of the Beatific Vision - the seeing that brings bliss. The mind knows God, not by an idea, but directly. We have no experience of direct knowledge, as we know by means of ideas. We can try to figure it, as close a contact between the soul and God, so that God takes the place of the idea. We stammer and stumble in our effort at realization. We must hold, with certainty, a union with God of ineffable closeness. The intellect sees Him with nothing between. The will loves Him at the level of this new vision. Intellect, will and every power of the soul, will be fulfilled in the contact. The soul's energy is at its highest. No frustration from unused or misused energy, only happiness.
This happiness will not be equal in all, with will and intellect, working at their highest, and no element in them unused. How high depends on the co-operation with grace in this life. The soul grows in this life; with every piece of truth and channel of grace for use by us, if we will for this growth. The soul’s capacity at death, will be filled in the glory and the joy of Heaven. A man, not accepting the Catholic Church, may be saved and enter Heaven. Not having, all the truths or means of grace, his soul will not have grown to the capacity, that Christ's gifts would have brought him. A non-Catholic may have made better use of his smaller share of gifts than a Catholic. His capacity, though greater than a Catholic, is not as great as had he been a Catholic. The difference matters far beyond our power to conceive.
Great soul or small, we shall all be filled. In our total contact with God, we shall be wholly and imperishably happy. There are two possibilities of misunderstanding. One may feel, that a more substantial sort of happiness than knowledge and love of God, would suit us better; or one may feel that eternity is too long for us. The first feeling is commoner, as we think on the things we have enjoyed in this life. The joys of heaven seem noble, of course, but definitely shallow. With a slight sinking in the pit of the heart, we find ourselves hoping, that it may turn out better than it sounds. This is an amiable weakness, as a small child, learning that adults enjoy poetry and mathematics, might feel how uninteresting such things, compared to his toys and sweets.
We must not let imagination fool us. All the things we have enjoyed are made by God from nothing. Any reality in them, is from God. This reality must already have been in Himself. It is in Him, according to His infinity, not less for that, but greater. The things we have enjoyed with their mix of nothingness, we shall possess in God unmixed. A man, living all his life by a muddy stream, never drinking anything but muddy water, might recoil at his first sight of a spring of clear water. It would look thin and bodiless, but let him drink it. For the first time he knows the lovely taste of water. Reality, mirrored in nothingness, has given every man, moments that are exquisite. What reality, unmirrored and unmuddied has to give, will not be less.
The second feeling was expressed by Karl Marx's friend Engels in his jibe at "the tedium of personal immortality". The error arises from a profound sense of the emptiness of life on earth, and notion of eternity, as time that does not end. There is no succession of tomorrows. In heaven we will not be in eternity, the changeless Now of God, but we will be out of the ceaseless flow of change that time measures.
Aeviternity (see chapter 11) is the proper duration of spirit. In heaven the spirit abides in the bliss of a total experience. There is no distracting awareness of moments flowing away, or weariness from needs or powers unsatisfied or restlessness for change. On the last Day, when the body is restored to the spirit, its awareness of the body's less perfect hold on the present will not be a distraction, as it will no longer draw the spirit down to its own level of being. This new relation of soul and body is beyond us; but the reality of it is certain. The body imposed its subjection to time, so forcefully on the soul; that we have almost forgotten that the soul has a proper duration of its own. In Heaven the soul's contemplation of the Blessed Trinity will be the dominating reality. Its relations with the body, though not of the same order, will not diminish it; but somehow fall within it, as will our relations with angels and other souls in heaven.
The soul, in its life-giving contact with the Absolute, is not merged in the Absolute. It remains itself, a value willed by God. Just as total love of God in this life does not exclude, but flows naturally into love of neighbor because God loves him too. Without exclusion, the total vision of God flows naturally into an awareness of all beings in the same loving contact. Benedict, in the Encyclical Benedictus Deus, writes of the just souls in Heaven with Christ, linked together with the company of the angels, not only with the angels but with one another.
We on earth should grasp that we also have a true companionship, here and now, with the souls in Heaven and in Purgatory. They remain members of the Mystical Body, confirmed forever, as we on earth are not. A new dimension of the doctrine of the Communion of Saints, is our help for the souls in Purgatory by prayers. Many theologians hold that they can also help us, as the souls in Heaven can, joining their prayers to ours, before the face of God. They are not less with us for being in Heaven but more, as they are more profoundly in Christ, in whom we also are. The cares of this life still stand between us and them, but not between them and us. They are more closely united to us now, than possible on earth. We do not join the Church for the company, but for the gifts Christ gives through it. If we do not join the Church for the company, we do find ourselves in pretty remarkable company all the same.
“The scene of your approach now is Mount Zion, is the heavenly Jerusalem, city of the living God; here are gathered thousands upon thousands of angels, here is the assembly of those first-born sons whose names are written in Heaven, here is God sitting in judgment on all men, here are the spirits of just men, now made perfect; here is Jesus the spokesman of the new covenant, and the sprinkling of His blood, which has better things to say than Abel's had.” (Heb. 12:22-24)