25.1
Men die and go to bliss or woe. The world goes on. Christ died, at the hands of sinners, and rose again in victory over sin and death. Still, sin and death go on. The victory, complete in Christ, is progressive in men. Its completion lies somewhere in the future. Satan is dethroned, but not driven from the field. He has lost the human race, but may still win individuals, get close to winning more, and trouble those not close to his winning. After Our Lord's Resurrection and Ascension St. Paul wrote: “You must wear all the weapons in God's armory, if you would find strength to resist the cunning of the devil. It is not against flesh and blood that we enter the lists; we have to do with princedoms and powers, with those who have mastery of the world in these dark days, with malign influences in an order higher than ours.” (Eph. 6:11-12)
This is humanity tormented, both by its own evil, and by greater powers of evil. Behind and within it, Christ is forming the new humanity, re-born and re-made in Him. The Mystical Body continues to grow. There are the millions, who have died in Christ and are inbuilt into the Body forever, and the millions still on earth in whom His life principle is working. Behind turbulence, the building of the Mystical Body of Christ continues. It is humanity's real work, little, perverse and tepid but the building going on ceaselessly towards something: (see Eph. 2:18-21)
The Church can be seen, as a building growing into a temple, and later as a Body growing to maturity. The building of a temple is more than an endless heaping together of stones. It is an adding, an arrangement and has a term. A moment will come when the temple is built. Only God knows the shape and proportion of the temple, He is building. Only God knows how close the temple is to completion. With a body, it is not just an endless growing of new cells. It has a shape and proportion, and grows toward a maturity. How close Christ's Mystical Body is to its maturity, only He knows. It is possible to think, that on completion of the temple and maturity of the Body, the human race will cease to generate, as what is the purpose of new generations?
25.2
Our world will end and the Day of the Lord will come. We do not know when the end will come. All we have is Our Lord's word: “This gospel of the kingdom must first be preached all over the world, so that all nations may hear the truth; only after that will the end come.” (Mt. 24:14)
If we do not know the time, we know what the signs will be. Our Lord has told us, in the twenty-fourth chapter of St. Matthew. We have it in the Prophet Daniel, and again in the second Epistle of St. Paul to the Thessalonians. Of these signs, two are stated with immense clarity, namely a general apostasy and the coming of Antichrist. (see 2 Thes:2)
There is a third sign which seems to be suggested by St. Paul. It is the conversion of the Jews:
“Blindness has fallen upon a part of Israel, but only until the tale of the Gentile nations is complete; then the whole of Israel will find salvation.” (Rom.11:25)
It is on the Apostasy, and the coming of Anti-Christ, that Scripture insists continually. Iniquity will abound and love grow cold and Anti-Christ will come, and then very soon after, Christ will come. Both St. Paul and St. Peter give us some account of the evil state of men at the Apostasy. St. Paul writes: “Know also this, that in the last days, shall come dangerous times.
Men shall be lovers of themselves, covetous, haughty, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, wicked, without affection, without peace, slanderers, incontinent, unmerciful, without kindness, traitors, stubborn, puffed up, and lovers of pleasures more than of God: Having an appearance indeed of godliness, but denying the power thereof.” (2 Tim. 3)
St. Peter gives a description which seems to apply to our own moment: “Their eyes feast on adultery, insatiable of sin; and they know how to win wavering souls to their purpose, so skilled is all their accursed brood at gaining its own ends. ... Using fine phrases that have no meaning, they bait their hook with the wanton appetites of sense, to catch those who have had but a short respite from false teaching. What do they offer men? Liberty. And all the time they themselves are enslaved to worldly corruption.” (2 Peter 2) The Anti-Christ's success is to be spectacular. St. John, recounting his vision: (see Rev. 1)
The saved will be the names written in the book of life. St. Paul indicates that there is a fellowship in the truth which will save those who trust in it. Despite the miracles of the Anti-Christ, the Teaching Church will be there for those holding to it. The trial, not long, as Christ will come. The false Christ and his false prophet will be overthrown. Mankind will be judged.
What of Anti-Christ himself? Reading Scripture it is very difficult to see him as anything but an individual: Daniel says of him: (see Dan. 11:36} If Anti-Christ is to be a real person and a real Apostasy coming at the end of the world, both have their signs in every age of the world. Every death is the end of the world in miniature, and every age is the last age in miniature. Thus, we are all in the last age. Anti-Christ is to come; but we as St. Paul says: “The conspiracy of revolt is already at work”. (2Thes. 2:7) St. John tells us the same thing: (see 1John 4:3)
25.3
Of the coming of Jesus in power to judge the world, Scripture also tells us something. Our Lord tells us: "Immediately after the distress of those days, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will refuse her light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of heaven will rock; and then the sign of the Son of Man will be seen in heaven; then it is that all the tribes of the land will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming upon the clouds of heaven, with great power and glory; and he will send out his angels with a loud blast of the trumpet, to gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other." (Mt. 24: 29)
St. Paul gives a further detail concerning those who are still alive upon earth when that day comes: (see l Cor. 15:51) Not only the just will rise again: (see Mt. 25:21-24)
We are told little of the Judgment. In the passage just quoted, Our Lord makes the sentence depend on works of charity, done or refused by us, and as such, done or refused to Himself. These works of charity are used as examples of the virtues in general. The Judgment will be complete, as men will see their own actions in their true value, and whole context. In a sense, spread before the mind of man, there will be a picture of the whole created order; and of the marvelous pattern of God's work in it and on it.
25.4
The Kingdom of God will then be established in its fullness. Our souls will once more be united with bodies, so that we shall be constituted in the completeness of our personality. The bodies will have a connection with the bodies we now have, but the detail is not clear. While I have the same body now that I had twenty years ago, no single cell in it is the same. Apart from the cells, there is an element which persists and preserves the identity of my body. This element will be re-united with the soul in the resurrection of the body, and constitute the identity of the new body with the old. Our resurrection bodies will be, in the theological phrase, glorified bodies. Corruption will be clothed with incorruptible life, mortal nature with immortality. At last we shall know what it is to be a man; for the union of soul and body will exist with no rebellion or inertia on the body's part to diminish the union.
What matter will be there apart from the human body, or in what condition, we do not know. Scripture, both Old Testament and New, is filled with the promise of new heavens and a new earth. Here is St. Peter: (see 2 Peter 3:10, 13) The whole twenty-first chapter Revelations should be read. Note the opening verses: (see Rev 21:1-5) St. Paul writes much upon this: (see Rom. 8:19-22)
This destiny of the material creation is bound up with the role of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity; in and through whom all things were created and who became man for the re-making of the design that man had spoiled. Consider two of the things St. Paul said; “He is the true likeness of the God we cannot see: His is that first birth which precedes every act of creation. Yes, in Him all created things took their being, heavenly and earthly, visible and invisible ... He takes precedence of all and in Him all subsist ... it was God's good pleasure to let all completeness dwell in Him, and through Him to win back all things, whether on earth or in heaven, into union with Himself, making peace with them through His blood, shed on the cross.” (Col. 1:15-20) & (see Eph. 1:8-10)