Credo: A 12-part series on the creed
Editor's note: This article is the final installment of a 12-part series on the Creed by Deacon Matthew Newsome. Explore the series.
In the penultimate installment in our series we talked about the resurrection: the fact that at the end of history, all the dead will rise, “those who have done good deeds, to the resurrection of life, but those who have done wicked deeds, to the resurrection of condemnation” (Jn 5:29). But what happens next? The simple answer is: everything else.
One could say that it is only after the resurrection that our real lives begin. Our old, mortal lives will have ended and our new, eternal lives will have begun. If you want a sobering thought to meditate on during your next holy hour, consider these two seemingly contradictory but inescapable truths. The first is that you will one day die. The second is that you will live forever. We are both mortal and immortal.
Each one of us will have a “last day” here on earth (maybe sooner, maybe later), after which we will stand before the Just Judge to give an account of our lives (see the Catechism of the Catholic Church 1021-1022). We will hear either the words “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Mt 25:23) or “Depart from me; I never knew you” (Mt 7:23). Our probationary time will have ended. Our time for making a choice for or against God, for or against love and goodness, truth and righteousness, mercy and forgiveness, will be behind us, and we will live with the consequences of that choice.
The idea that we get to choose our eternal destiny scandalizes many, because why would anyone choose hell? This has led some to wonder if hell might be empty. Yet the Church is clear: Hell is a real possibility for us. We gain a clearer understanding if we consider the defining characteristic of hell. What makes hell hellish is not fire, brimstone or pitchforks (no one would willingly choose torture). According to the Catechism, it is the “definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed” (CCC 1033).
Do we want to live forever in a loving communion with God and with the saints, or do we not? We make that choice in all the ways we love or fail to love God and neighbor in the here and now.
As St. John of the Cross put it, “At the evening of life, we shall be judged on our love.” In light of this understanding, hell can be understood as an aspect of God’s mercy.
Heaven is loving communion with God, and “we cannot be united with God unless we freely choose to love Him” (CCC 1033). Love must be freely given and freely received, or else it is not love at all. Because God loves us, He grants us the freedom of loving Him back, which makes possible the terrible choice of rejecting Him. For the one who despises God, the only thing worse than hell would be heaven! So God, in His mercy, provides a place even for those who reject Him.
But let us dwell no longer on hell! Let us end our exploration of the Creed as we hope our lives will end, with the glories of heaven, defined by the Catechism as “the communion of life and love with the Trinity, with the Virgin Mary, the angels and all the blessed … the ultimate end and fulfillment of the deepest human longings, the state of supreme, definitive happiness” (CCC 1024).
We don’t know what this eternal communion with God will be like in practical terms. As St. Paul put it, “eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it entered into the human heart what God has prepared for those who love Him” (1 Cor 2:9). We know that our deepest longings will be fulfilled. As St. Augustine points out in the opening lines of his Confessions, God made us for
Himself, and it is in communion with God that we find our fulfillment.
We are made in the image and likeness of a Triune God, and that means we are made for communal relationship. It is only by giving and receiving personal love that we find true happiness. In heaven we will experience that perfectly, therefore we will be perfectly happy. All of our human longings and desires ultimately find their fulfillment in that blessed communion.
There, we will see God face to face: We will both know fully and be fully known (cf. 1 Cor 13:12). This direct knowledge of God is called the beatific vision, the state of seeing God as He is (cf. 1 Jn 3:2). This perfect union with the God of Love, the source of all goodness, truth and beauty, allows for no sorrow. As St. John describes it in his heavenly vision, “God Himself will always be with them … He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain, for the old order has passed away” (Rev 21:3-4).
This is what God wills for us: that we should have all of our desires fulfilled by the love of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, completely and for ever. The only question is: Do we want this for ourselves?
In a conference on the Creed, St. Thomas Aquinas observed, “It is fitting that the end of all our desires, namely eternal life, coincides with the words at the end of the creed, ‘Life everlasting. Amen.’” That little word, “Amen,” means “so be it.” It is a word of assent, saying, “I want this to be so.” When we say it at the end of the Creed, may we say it with conviction and integrity; and may we live each day in accord with that “Amen” so that our lives in this world may lead us to that blessed end.
Deacon Matthew Newsome is the Catholic campus minister at Western Carolina University and the author of “The Devout Life: A Modern Guide to Practical Holiness with St. Francis de Sales,” available from Sophia Institute Press.
Credo: A 12-part series on the creed
Editor's note: This article is the tenth of 12 in a new series on the Creed by Deacon Matthew Newsome. Explore the series
Belief in an afterlife is not unique to Christianity. Almost all ancient pagan religions expressed belief that the human soul (that spiritual part of ourselves) continues to exist after the death of the body. Most held that our experience of the afterlife could either be pleasant or painful depending upon whether we lived a just life, had adequately appeased the gods, or other factors. And for most religions, that’s about as far as it went. The best one could hope for was to be a happy ghost in the fields of Elysium, to use the Greek name for paradise.
Some believed in reincarnation, according to which theory the deceased may be reborn into this world in a different body, not their own – and not necessarily even human! But among the tribes of Israel, as part of God’s revelation, there began to emerge a sense that human beings were destined for something more: not for an endless cycle of different lives, nor an eternal half-life as ghosts, but eternal life as fully human beings with the body God had given us. This was something new and radical!
It had been revealed in Genesis that God’s original plan for mankind was to live forever, and that death had entered human experience only after the Fall. The Book of Wisdom confirms that “God did not make death, nor does He rejoice in the destruction of the living. For He fashioned all things that they might have being” (Wis 1:13-14a). The prophet Daniel foretold that the dead would one day rise, some to everlasting life, others to everlasting disgrace (see Dn 12:2). That this everlasting life would include a restoration to our physical bodies is made evident when God tells the prophet Ezekiel in a vision to speak these words over a field of dry bones: “I will put sinews on you, make flesh grow over you, cover you with skin, and put breath into you so you may come to life” (Ez 37:6). “You shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and make you come up out of them, my people” (Ez 37:13)!
Belief in resurrection is what gave courage to the martyrs we read about in 2 Maccabees. Seven brothers are arrested along with their mother and forced to eat pork in violation of Mosaic law. Their refusal leads to torture and execution. As he is about to have his hands severed, one of the brothers says, “It was from Heaven that I received these … from Him I hope to receive them again” (2 Macc 7:11). Before he is killed, he tells his executioner, “It is my choice to die at the hands of mortals with the hope that God will restore me to life; but for you, there will be no resurrection to life” (2 Macc 7:14).
Faith in resurrection was not universal among the Jewish people at the time of Christ. The Sadducees’ denial of the resurrection lies behind their interrogation of Jesus recorded in Mark 12 and Matthew 22. Among those who did believe in resurrection was the family of Mary, Martha and Lazarus at Bethany. After Lazarus dies, Jesus comforts Martha by saying her brother would rise again. Martha replies, “I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day” (Jn 11:24). It is then Jesus reveals to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live” (Jn 11:25), and calls Lazarus forth from the tomb.
Jesus affirms the resurrection of the dead not only by His words and miracles, but in His very person. After suffering death Himself, Christ rose from the tomb. Unlike Lazarus and others Jesus raised from the dead, however, this was not a restoration back to this life, but a resurrection to a new glorified life. St. Paul calls Jesus “the first fruits” of the final resurrection (1 Cor 15:20). Our hope is that if we die with Christ – that is, as members of His mystical Body – we will also live with Him (see 1 Tim 2:11, Rom 6:8). “We know that Christ, raised from the dead, dies no more; death no longer has power over him” (Rom 6:9). And neither will death have power over us.
Quoting the fourth Lateran Council, the Catechism teaches that Christ “will change our lowly body to be like His glorious body” (CCC 999) and that this will definitively happen “at the last day, at the end of the world” (CCC 1001), when all of the dead will rise, “those who have done good deeds, to the resurrection of life, but those who have done wicked deeds, to the resurrection of condemnation” (Jn 5:29).
This fundamentally changes how we relate to our bodies. Far from being mere shells we inhabit only for a time, to be discarded upon death, as the pagans teach, our bodies are integral to our identities both here and in the hereafter. This informs how we treat our bodies in this life, as reflected in the moral teachings of the Church, as well as how we treat our bodies after death, as reflected in our funeral rites.
Those who rise to new life in the resurrection will not only receive glorified bodies but will inhabit a new and glorified earth. But before this can happen, the old creation must pass away. Just as our bodies must experience death before rising again, so, too, the universe itself. What the Church teaches this heavenly existence will be like is the subject of the final installment of our series on the Creed. In the meantime, the Catechism reminds us that “in a certain way, we have already risen with Christ. For, by virtue of the Holy Spirit, Christian life is already now on earth a participation in the death and Resurrection of Christ” (CCC 1002).
Deacon Matthew Newsome is the Catholic campus minister at Western Carolina University and the author of “The Devout Life: A Modern Guide to Practical Holiness with St. Francis de Sales,” available from Sophia Institute Press.