"No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time will come. It's like a man going away: He leaves his house and puts his servants in charge, each with his assigned task, and tells the one at the
door to keep watch.”
Mark 13:32-37
A.) Personal Existential Experiences
a.1.) Death: The End of Life
As originally planned upon my arrival in Bohol last semestral break, I was supposed to visit the wake of my former classmate’s father. A week before that, I was texting some of my friends to join me in my visit. It was already organized and a good number of my batch had confirmed their attendance.
This father of my classmate was so dear to our hearts because before, most of our class outings were spent in their house and they were so good and generous to us. I was saddened by his death and I could not resist not having a glance of his remain and in the same time also extend my profound sympathy to the bereaved family.
However, on that very day of my coming, I changed plan. I contacted my college classmates that I could not go with them because I felt the urgency to be with another friend after I knew the heart breaking news of the passing of his mother. I had chosen to give up my previous commitment for I believed that something was more imperative that was to accompany someone who at that very moment suffered a very painful surprise. With that, I went with him to their home that very day.
As we entered their house, the people around were in total silence. Perhaps they were expecting something dramatic to happen. But as my friend paid respect to his mother, I saw how teary the eyes of his father upon seeing his eldest son. But he didn’t cry. He didn’t cry at least during that moment of my witness.
We had a good lunch together with his family and I sensed they were apt to accept the fate of their beloved mother. They shared how painful it was to lose an important figure in the family, nonetheless, the nice thing was that they were able to see and realize that it was part of God’s ultimate plan.
In many human experiences, death could be the most painful to accept. It is the sure possibility that will come to all of us, but in many instances we do not think about it. Most of us never prepare for our death. This is the very reason that most of us, death is unacceptable fact.
a.2.) We are Born to Die
In view of death, I could sense the difference between those who have faith from those who simply believe. In my experience with the father of my friend, I could say that he was a man of God. In his sharing with me he said it would be a difficult life to live ahead without a loving wife, but what is more difficult is to live life without God. I felt that he is in total pain, but he is not suffering that much. I wonder why so many people today who are not in pain but yet they suffered so much. Perhaps this is the difference between those who have faith from those people who simply believe.
I spent most of my semestral vacation to funeral visits. I pursued my visit to the wake of my former classmate’s father the day after and another wake visit to a close friend’s relative the following day. The next day, I visited another friend who was suffering from a stage 3 cancer of the lungs and I only knew that he passed away that night then.
Reflecting these realities, I conceded that human person has nothing to be proud of in this lifetime; even if how rich the person is for death knows no one. Truly, human person is born to die.
a.3.) Death and the Hope of Resurrection
In the logical rule of contradiction, many have equated death as contradiction to life. As if white is life and black is death. Death, as negative, is seen as the opposite of life as positive. There is a clear commotion in the understanding of death that has led many not to think about death for it is something fearful and evil.
However, contemporary theology has refuted this notion saying that death is not something negative and apart /opposite of life. In the eschatological perceptive, death is always part of life. It is the concluding part of life wherein life is fully understood. Death in eschatology is realizing our purpose of which we were created. In my own view, I believe that I am created in order to be in union with God. This unity of God can only be achieved through death with the hope of the resurrection. As a believer, I cannot separate my theological view of death to the realities of the incoming resurrection.
Therefore, in my different funeral visits, I realize one important thing: life is not fulfilled unless death has arrived. The fullness of living is in dying. St. Francis of Assisi in his prayer was right in saying that “in death we are born to eternal life.” Death is switching off the light because the dawn has come. The mystery of death is something very deep and only in deep faith we could see how beautiful to die. And the beauty of death is only understood in the hope of resurrection.
B.) Doctrinal Exposition
b.1.) Christ’ Resurrection
Our eschatology is deeply founded in the ideal of the resurrection of Jesus. The resurrection of Christ is the apex of the Christian faith, the stronghold of our belief -- the historical event upon which Christian doctrine stands or falls. St. Paul makes this clear in his first letter to the Corinthians: But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is futile and your faith is empty. … For if only in this life we have hope in Christ, we should be pitied more than anyone (1 Cor. 15:13-14, 19).
In the New Testament, I am convinced that belief in the bodily resurrection of Christ is a necessary condition of the Christian faith -- no one can be saved apart from it. Those who reject Jesus resurrection may not share His resurrection in the future. This insistence is found in St. Paul letters to the Romans 10:9: Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
“The importance of the resurrection of Christ, therefore, is further demonstrated in the frequency and enthusiasm with which it is preached as the early church grows (e.g., Acts 2:31; 4:33; 17:18; 26:23). Nearly every public witness to the Gospel points to the resurrection of Christ as the hope for all who desire salvation and the hope after death.”
b.2.) The Heaven
My elementary catechecism taught me then that "Heaven" is the place of eternal life, in that “it is a shared plane to be attained by all the elect (rather than an abstract experience related to individual concepts of the ideal).” The essential joy of heaven is called the “beatific vision,” of which one sees God “face to face.” The soul rests perfectly in God, and does not, or cannot desire anything else than God.
The Cathecism of the Catholic Church teaches us that after the Last Judgment, when the soul is reunited with its body, the body participates in the happiness of the soul. It becomes incorruptible, glorious and perfect. Any physical defects the body may have labored under are erased. Heaven is also known as paradise in some cases.
Furthermore, the Catechism of the Catholic Church describes heaven as wherein "Those who die (generally understood as physical death as opposed to "body level," ego identity) in God's grace and friendship and are perfectly purified, live forever (defined as immortality of the body as opposed to eternal aliveness in the psychological sense). This perfect life with God is called heaven. It is the ultimate end and fulfillment of the deepest human longings, the state of supreme, definitive happiness, full aliveness. The Catholic Church teaches that only those baptized by water (symbol of purification/internal cleansing), blood (symbol of martyrdom), or desire (explicit or implicit desire for purification) may enter heaven and those who have died in a state of grace.
b.3.) The State of Purification
In my own understanding, Purgatory is the condition or process of purification in which the souls of those who die in a state of grace are made ready for Heaven. According to Catholic doctrine, “some souls are not sufficiently free from sin and its consequences to enter the state of heaven immediately, nor are they so sinful as to be destined for hell either.” Such souls, ultimately destined to be united with God in heaven, must first endure purgatory—a state of purification. It is a state wherein souls "achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven."
The Compendium of the Catechesism of the Catholic Church describe purgatory as “the state of those who die in God’s friendship, assured of their eternal salvation, but who still have need of purification to enter into the happiness of heaven.” And because of the communion of saints, the faithful who are still pilgrims on earth are able to help the souls in purgatory by offering prayers in suffrage for them, especially the Eucharistic sacrifice. “They also help them by almsgiving, indulgences, and works of penance. Pardon of sins and purification can occur during life—for example, in the Sacrament of Baptism and the Sacrament of Penance. However, if this purification is not achieved in life, venial sins can still be purified after death. The specific name given to this purification of sin after death is "purgatory.”
b.4.) Hell: The State of Condemnation
Yes, there is a hell. This is what the Church teaches me and this is what I believe. For me, hell is where all those who die in personal mortal sin, as enemies of God, and unworthy of eternal life, will be severely punished by God after death. Those who absolutely refuse to be with God, believe in Him and desire for Him have no place in God’s Kingdom. God respects our freedom, if we choose to separate from Him, then we choose hell.
Currently there is a good deal of discussion among Christians about the morality of hell: it is said that a good God would not condemn people to an eternity of torture. However, that has been the belief of most Christians through most of Christian history. It seems to be supported by the Biblical account. The alternative seems about as bad: that God will force himself on people who do not want him.
Note that it is not necessary to say that God imposes hell as punishment. It may be the automatic (indeed logically unavoidable) consequence of rejecting God. It is not clear that God makes it intentionally unpleasant. It may be the nature of the people who are there, and the fact that they are finally given what they want: freedom from God.
We must not consider the eternal punishment of hell as a series of separate of distinct terms of punishment, as if God were forever again and again pronouncing a new sentence and inflicting new penalties, and as if He could never satisfy His desire of vengeance. Hell is, especially in the eyes of God, one and indivisible in its entirety; it is but one sentence and one penalty, according to one theologian. And I agree. Hell is understood as, not really punishment, but a consequence of a wrong choice. Furthermore, “we may represent to ourselves a punishment of indescribable intensity as in a certain sense the equivalent of an eternal punishment; this may help us to see better how God permits the sinner to fall into hell — how a man who sets at naught all Divine warnings, who fails to profit by all the patient forbearance God has shown him, and who in wanton disobedience is absolutely bent on rushing into eternal punishment, can be finally permitted by God's just indignation to fall into hell.”
b.5.) The New Heaven and the New Earth
In some commentary it states that “new heaven and the new earth is that the world of the blessed that is “the new world,” or “the new heavens and earth,” or “the next world that is to succeed this as the habitation of the church,” “is heaven and is the same world that is now the habitation of the angels.” For heaven, or the world of the angels, is called the world that is to come. St. Paul in his letter to the Ephesians says. 1:20-22, “Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come; and has put all things under his feet.”
Heaven, the habitation of principalities and powers, is that which is here called the world to come, as being the world that was to succeed this, as the habitation of the church. It cannot be understood in any other sense, or merely that Christ was to be at the head of things in the new world when it did exist. But it speaks of what is already done and was done at Christ’s ascension, a past effect of God’s mighty power, according to the working of the exceeding greatness of his power which he wrought in Christ Jesus when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places.
The new heaven and the new earth is a state of our being where we are transformed into totally holiness. It is the achievement par excellence of a believer. The experience of perfection is fully realized when we choose to be with God and do His will for us. This choice of God and this doing His will is not something that can be attained only in the life to come but as St. Therese of the Child Jesus said “spending her heaven doing good on earth.” The new heaven and the new earth will happen if we desire to it to happen now.
b.6.) Realized Eschatology
In line with what I discussed above, realized eschatology, a Christian eschatological theory popularized by C. H. Dodd (1884–1973) holds that the eschatological passages in the New Testament do not refer to the future, but instead refer to the ministry of Jesus and his lasting legacy. Eschatology is therefore, not the end of the world but its rebirth instituted by Jesus and continued by his disciples, a historical phenomenon. Those holding this view generally dismiss "end times" theories, believing them to be irrelevant. They hold that what Jesus said and did, and told his disciples to do likewise, are of greater significance than any messianic expectations.
This view is attractive to many people, especially liberal Christians, since it reverses the notion of Jesus' coming as an apocalyptic event, something which they interpret as being hardly in keeping with the overall theme of Jesus' teachings in the canonical gospels, and are troubled by its firm association with evangelicalism and conservative politics. Instead, eschatology should be about being engaged in the process of becoming, rather than waiting for external and unknown forces to bring about destruction.
In my own view, although I concede that there is truth of that new concept of eschatology but I remain to consider that eschatology is realizing our purpose as creatures. And the end of time is not the time of our death but the time when Jesus Christ will come again and transform the world into something new. I am waiting for that Second Coming and I hope I will be counted as one of those God’ chosen to be part of His heavenly banquet.
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