THUS we live our life in the Mystical Body, well or less well or altogether ill. We have seen the three possible states— we may unite our wills wholly to Christ's; or we may unite our wills partially to His, reserving something of self unyielded; or we may separate our wills wholly from His, choosing self as apart from God, closing our soul to the flow of His life. In one or other of these states we are, at any given moment of our life upon earth; in one or other of them we die. Pause for a moment to consider this matter of natural death, the separation of soul and body which ends our life upon this earth, our time of testing and of 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 unvivified, falls away into its elements.
But the soul does not die with the body.
Why should it?
As a spirit it does not depend for its life upon the body:
matter cannot give life to spirit.
In the absence of the body,
the soul cannot exercise its powers as the animator of a body,
so that these must remain wrapt within it till the body rises again at the
last day.
But 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, then we are cut out from the Body forever. Our lot is forever with the angel who created the precedent, so to speak, who was the first to opt for self as against God. If we die united, even if not wholly, that is if any flicker of the super-natural life is in us, then we shall be saved. If we are wholly united, wholly penetrated by Christ's life, then with no break or interval the soul enters heaven and in the Beatific Vision of the unveiled face of God comes at last to its goal. If there are still elements of self unsurrendered, then there is first cleansing by the suffering of Purgatory, so that life may take possession of every tiniest element in our being, so that we may be made perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect, and so, with no defilement left in us, can enter heaven.
All this suggests a formidable finality about death, and finality is precisely what marks it. Death is an end, an end not of life but of wavering. At any given moment of our life upon earth we are in one of three possible states. But we are not fixed in them: we pass from one to another and back again. Time in its flow brings into the foreground one, or another, or another, of all the myriad objects that can attract the will, so that the will finds itself played upon almost intolerably by competing fascinations. And to an ordeal so continuously exacting the will brings different energies of acceptance
The objects themselves are inconceivably various and so are their ways of drawing the will to them. But for all their variousness, they are reducible to two categories— they are according to God's Will for us or against; and for all the ways in which the will reacts to them, it is always doing one of two things— choosing God, or choosing self as against God, that is to say choosing either increase of being or diminution of being, reality undiluted or reality mingled with illusion. This choice is the determining element in our life. And, as we have seen, most of us do not steadily and without variation choose either the one way or the other. Consider the Catholic in a state of grace, but not perfect. Some object attracts him which he knows to be against God's will for him. If he chooses it, he sins. If it is some small thing, not involving a deliberate assertion of self as against God, a thing inconsiderable in itself so that he gives no particular thought to it at all, we have venial sin. It does not break the relation of love, and so of life, between himself and God. Yet it means that there is this small element of self not wholly given to God. If it is a great thing, chosen with deliberation, then we have mortal sin. It is a definite choice of self as against God,
It is not easy to draw a line in any given case between venial and mortal sin; but the distinction is wholly in keeping with our strange-ness. A man can love his country passionately, yet break its law by driving his automobile too fast or doing a little mild cheating on his income-tax; there is all the difference between things like that and going over to the enemy in time of war. So a man can love God, yet fall into small sins: and though they are breaches of the law of God, there is a world between them and the
Anyhow, venial sins or mortal sins, we can fall into them;
but we do 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.
And then some other temptation comes our way,
and perhaps we resist or perhaps we yield to it:
and if we yield, we can be restored as before, either soon or after many
years.
Any flashback of the mind over our past shows a series of falls and rises
and falls again and more rises:
not much to be proud of, plenty of cause
to be disheartened.
But actually, though the will is always liable to swing
violently, there is a certain defining of its choice.
As life proceeds, we tend either towards God,
or towards self and away from God.
There will be flickering still,
but the range will be narrower,
and the general movement unmistakable.
The will is setting in a direction.
By the end of this life upon earth its direction is fixed.
It loves God:
or it loves self as against God.
There is life in it or it is empty of life.
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Take the second possibility. The soul has chosen self. In this life it may hardly be aware of it; life is full of all sorts of interests, the soul occupied with them may not have adverted to the choice it was making, the direction in which it was setting. But 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. Yet again the mere multiplicity of life may have prevented the soul from seeing clearly either its own state or God's majesty. But once death comes, there is nothing to stand between the soul and its awareness both of itself and of God: and loving self so totally it can only hate God. Realize that the will is now fixed: it will not change of its own choice, it loves self to the hatred of God. Therefore it cannot go to God: heaven is closed to it both by its lack of that supernatural life which makes living in Heaven possible, and by its own continuing hatred of God. Nor can it cease to exist, for it is by nature immortal: God could, of course, annihilate it, but will not. Our Lord has told us (Mt.xxv.41) what is its lot: to be separated from Him (whom it hates):
Enough has already been said of Hell in chapter i. The soul will be there forever: kept there by its unchanging will to love self and hate God. There will be vast suffering in the nature of the case: for man was made for God, needs God therefore, and, in the absence of the God he needs with every fibre of his being, must suffer as one always suffers from needs unsatisfied. There will be punishment there for the offence against God's justice, and this may vary from soul to soul: we know nothing of it save that Christ, with all the words of human language to choose from, chose the word "fire" to designate it. But of the suffering which I have called "in the nature of the case", the suffering from all the needs that cannot be met in Hell, we can form some faint notion from our experience in this life. The body needs food and drink and suffers agonies in their absence; the whole of man's being needs God: the need can be blunted in this life by every sort of thing less than God: but in Hell the soul is naked to its own insufficiency, with nothing to lull it or distract it. It is one aching need,
If we face the truth of this squarely, there is real nightmare in it — a sense of horror that man's will can pervert itself so utterly. If we see it only superficially, there is illusion of nightmare— a sense of horror that God can treat man so cruelly. We should know that this is illusion, if only because the fact of Hell is taught us by Christ Our Lord, who showed His love for men as no one else has ever shown it. If Christ teaches Hell, then Hell is no contradiction of love. So much we should be certain of simply from our knowledge of Him. But we should also be able to glimpse why. It is the will of man that makes the choice. Given that man can, freely, choose love of self and hatred of God, the rest follows. In all 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, because that is their place. So Scripture tells us in so many words of Judas: and went to his own place.
It is a spiritual nature finding its place somewhat as a material thing finds its place by the law of gravity: I saw Satan, like lightning, falling from heaven.
St. Thomas among others has developed this notion of a spiritual law of gravity: Hence, as 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 IV Sent. dist. xlv. q.i.)
Long before, 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. If a man loves God, then he is, by a sort of natural movement, drawn Godward; if a man loves self in preference to God, then as naturally he is drawn away from God. And we make our own weight: God gives us the wherewithal,
So far we have been considering the man who dies with his love set away from God. He finds his place. But so too does the man who dies loving God. This love, as we have seen, may be total, a uniting of his will with the Will of God so complete that there is no element of self unyielded. But there is the other possibility: a real love of God, and a union of the will with the Will of God, yet with some small element of self left unsurrendered. This may be by way of sins committed— venial sins not taken seriously enough for serious repentance, or mortal sins repented with genuine sorrow yet with something lacking to the intensity of the sorrow. Or it may be sins of omission which consist fundamentally in the absence of a total yielding of the self at this or that small point. Either way it comes to the same thing. The real love really there would bear man directly to God, but these lightless, lifeless elements hinder the movement.
Not a great deal has been revealed to us of the nature of Purgatory.
It is a place of waiting where, by suffering lovingly accepted, the soul
is cleansed of all these smaller defilements.
Purity means the giving of
oneself to the Will of God without any admixture of other influence:
to
hold back any element in oneself, however slight, is an adulteration, and
so a defilement:
and nothing defiled can enter Heaven.
What the suffering
is by which the soul is brought to perfection in Purgatory, we do not know.
But that it should be suffering is natural enough.
The defilement consists
precisely in the assertion of self.
By nothing is self-assertion so radically
healed as by the acceptance of what the self shrinks from as it shrinks
from suffering.
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For the soul totally united with God, whether at death or after the purifying of Purgatory, there is immediately 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 words or concepts adequate. God has revealed the essential of it, and we can repeat the words, but the mind can hardly make more than a step or two in their realization. Our knowledge, our prophecy, are only glimpses of the truth, and these glimpses will be swept away when the time of fulfilment 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. (i John iii.2.)
Thus St. John and St. Paul both emphasize seeing: we shall see Him as He is, we shall see Him face to face. This is the doctrine of the Beatific Vision—the seeing that brings bliss. The mind knows God, not by an idea of God however rich or full, but direct. We have no experience of direct knowledge here below, since we know everything by means of ideas. We can try to figure it to ourselves as so close a contact between the soul and God, that God takes the place of the idea of God. So we stammer and stumble in our effort at realization. What we must hold on to is the certainty of a union with God of inconceivable closeness. The intellect will see Him, with nothing between. The will will love Him at the level of this new vision. Intellect and will and every power of the soul will be utterly fulfilled in the contact. The whole of the soul's energy will be working at its highest upon the highest: there will be no frustration from unused or misused energy: there will be total happiness.
This happiness, though total for each, will not be equal in all. Will and intellect will be working at their highest, with no element in them unused or unfed. But how high will my highest or yours be? As high as our co-operation with grace in this life has made it. It is in this life that the soul grows; every piece of truth, every channel of grace, can be used by us, if we will, for growth. Whatever capacity the soul has grown to at death, that capacity will be filled in the glory and the joy of Heaven. A man who does not accept the Catholic Church may be saved, that is, he may enter Heaven. But not having had all the truths or all the means of grace, he will not have grown to the soul-capacity that the totality of Christ's gifts would have meant for him. A given non-Catholic may indeed have made better use of his smaller share of gifts than a given Catholic of the totality. Yet his capacity, though it may be greater than this or that Catholic actually has, is not as great as he himself as a Catholic would.
But great soul or small, we shall all be filled. In our total contact with God we shall be wholly happy, and imperishably happy. There are two possibilities of misunderstanding here. One may feel that some more substantial sort of happiness than knowledge and love of God would suit us better;
The first feeling is commoner: as we think upon the things we have enjoyed in this life, the joys of heaven seem noble, of course, but definitely thin: 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, much as if a small child, learning that adults enjoy poetry or science or mathematics, should feel how ill such things compare with the tin soldiers and the rocking-horse
We must not let imagination fool us. All the things we have enjoyed are made by God of nothing. Whatever reality is in them God gave them. But God does not give what He has not got. Any reality He has put into things. He must already have in Himself. It will be in Him according to His infinity, but it will not be less for that, but greater. The things we have enjoyed with their mingling of nothingness, we shall possess in God unmingled. A man who had lived all his life by a muddy stream and never had anything to slake his thirst but muddy water, might recoil from his first sight of a spring of clear water. It would look so thin and bodyless. But let him drink it. For the first time he knows the lovely taste of water, and in that act knows the mud for what it is. Reality mirrored in nothingness has given every man exquisite moments— reality mirrored in nothingness, reality muddied by nothingness. What reality unmirrored, unmuddied, has to give will
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 upon earth, combined with a notion of eternity as time that does not end— Macbeth's tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeping on their petty pace from day to day. But the "pace" of heaven is not petty. And there is no succession of tomorrows. In heaven we shall not be in eternity, the changeless Now of God, but we shall be out of the
Aeviternity, we have seen in chapter xi, is the proper duration of spirit: in heaven the spirit abides, with no distracting awareness of moments flowing away, nor any weariness from needs or powers unsatisfied to make it restless for change, in the bliss of a total experience. Even when the body is restored to it at the Last Day, its awareness of the body's less perfect hold upon an abiding present will not be a distraction, for the body will no longer draw the spirit downward to its own lesser level of being. The detail of this new relation of soul and body is beyond us; but the reality of it is certain. We have seen how here below the body imposes its subjection to time so forcefully upon the soul that we have almost forgotten that the soul has a proper duration of its own. In Heaven it will not be so. The soul's changeless 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; so, mysteriously, will our relations with
For observe that the soul in its life-giving contact with the Absolute is not merged in the Absolute. It remains itself, a value willed by God. And just as total love of God in this life does not exclude but flows naturally into love of neighbour because God loves him too, so the total vision of God does not exclude but flows naturally into an awareness of all those other beings who are in the same loving contact. So Benedict in the Encyclical Benedictus Deus writes of the souls of the just who "see the divine essence with an intuitive and face to face vision", that they are in Heaven with Christ, linked together with the company of the angels. It is not only the angels in whose companionship we shall be in Heaven. We shall be with one another. Thus in the Mass for the Dead the Church has special prayers for the dead father and mother of a priest: "bring us to see them in the joy of eternal glory" and in the Secret to "conjoin us with them in the bliss of the Saints".
What our companionship with one another in Heaven will mean is another of the things we cannot know in detail; and there is no great point, though quite a lot of pleasure, in speculating.
What is more practical is to grasp that we upon earth have a true companionship with them here and now. The souls in Heaven and in Purgatory are still members of the Mystical Body, confirmed forever in their membership as we upon earth are not, but members of one Body with us for all that. The doctrine of the Communion of Saints takes on a new dimension. We can help the souls in Purgatory by our prayers, and there are many theologians who hold that they can help us similarly; the souls in Heaven certainly can. Before the face of God they can join their prayers to ours. They are not less with us for being in Heaven but more, because they are more profoundly in Christ in whom we also are. This is the sense in which we say that sin separates but death does not. 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 in any closeness known upon earth. It was noted earlier that we do not join the Church for the company, but for the gifts Christ gives through it. But if we do not join the Church for the company, we do find The scene of your approach now is Mount Sion, 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..22-24.)