So men die and go to bliss or woe. Meanwhile the world goes on. Christ died at the hands of sinners and rose again in victory over sin and death. But 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, and go close to winning many more, and trouble many whom he does not even go close to winning. It was after Our Lord's Resurrection and Ascension that St. Paul wrote to the You must wear all the weapons in God's armoury, 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.
The world is filled with the turbulence of men. The writer of the Book of Wisdom would not have to soften a line in his harsh picture: the proportions may be different, the world makes certain advances, —
They neither keep life nor marriage undefiled: but one kills another by envy or grieves him by adultery. And all things are mingled together, blood, murder, theft and dissimulation, corruption and unfaithfulness, tumults and perjury, disquieting of the good; forgetfulness of God, defiling of souls, changing of nature, disorder in marriage,
But all this is only the colourful front face of things. This is humanity tormented by its own evil and by powers of evil greater than its own. Behind it 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 there are the millions still upon earth in whom His life principle is working, evidently or secretly. Behind all the turbulence, the building of the Mystical Body of Christ goes on ceaselessly, and it is humanity's real work, little as so many humans suspect it, perversely as so many work against it, tepidly as so many
The building goes on ceaselessly, but not by mere addition of more and more. It is growing towards something.
Far off or near, united in the same Spirit, we have access through Him to the Father. You are no longer exiles, then, or aliens; the saints are your fellow-citizens, you belong to God's household. Apostles and prophets are the foundation on which you were built, and the chief corner stone of it is Jesus Christ Himself. In Him the whole fabric is bound together, as it grows into a temple, dedicated to the Lord. (ii.18-21.)
Here the Church is seen as a building growing into a temple. Two chapters later we see it as a Body growing to maturity. We have already seen the application of the verses that follow to the individual soul,
So we shall reach perfect manhood, that maturity which is pro-portioned to the completed growth of Christ. ... We are to follow the truth, in a spirit of charity, and so grow up, in
Both
figures convey the same truth.
The building of a temple is more than an endless heaping together of stones.
It is an adding and an arrangement, and it has a term:
a moment comes 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.
So with a body:
it is not merely 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, He knows and we do not.
But it is not fanciful to think that with the completion of the temple, the
maturity of the Body, the human race will cease to generate.
To what purpose would new generations be born, when the Mystical Body of Christ
is complete?
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Soon or late our world will end and the Day of the Lord will be here. We do not know when the end will come: 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.xxiv.14.)
But if we do not know the time, we know what the signs will be. Our Lord has told us, for example, in the twenty-fourth chapter of St. Matthew. We have it in the Prophet Daniel (especially chapters vii, xi and ), 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. Do not be terrified out of your senses ... by any spiritual utterance ... purporting to come from us, which suggests that the Day of the Lord is close at hand ... the apostasy must come first; the champion of wickedness must appear first, destined to inherit perdition. This is the rebel who is to lift up his head above every divine nature, above all that men hold in reverence, till at last he enthrones himself in God's temple, and proclaims himself as God ... At present there is a power (you know what I mean) which holds him in check, so that he may not show himself before the time appointed to him; meanwhile the conspiracy of revolt is already at work; only, he who checks it now will be able to check it, until he is removed from the enemy's path. Then it is that the rebel will show himself; and the Lord Jesus will destroy him with the breath of His mouth. He will come, when he comes, with all Satan's influence to aid him; there will be no lack of power, of counterfeit signs and wonders; and his wickedness will deceive the souls that are doomed, to punish them for refusing that fellowship in the truth which would have saved them. (2 Thes.ii.)
There is a third sign which seems to be suggested by St. Paul. 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.xi.25.)
St. Paul is alone in telling us of this. It is upon the Apostasy and the coming of Antichrist that Scripture insists continually. Iniquity will abound and love grow cold and Anti-christ will come,
Both St. Paul and St. Peter give us some account of the evil state of men at the Apostasy. 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.
St. Peter gives a description which seems to apply with a special aptness to our own moment, as he speaks of those especially, who follow the defiling appetites of their corrupt nature, and make light of authority. ... 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 ii).
Antichrist's success is to be spectacular while it lasts. All the dwellers on earth fell down in adoration of him, except those whose names the Lamb had written down in His book of life, the Lamb slain in sacrifice ever since the world was made.
Part of this universal success is due to another mysterious figure, the "false prophet", Antichrist's chief minister—Such wonders could it accomplish that it brought down fire, before men's eyes, from heaven to earth; and by these wonders, which it was able to do in its master's presence, it deluded the inhabitants of the world.
We have just seen who were saved—those whose names were written in the book of life; and a moment ago we saw St. Paul indicating how they escaped the error of the rest: there is a fellowship in the truth which in that day will save those who trust in it: however overwhelming the miracles of Antichrist, the Teaching Church will be there for those who will hold fast to it. And the trial, though fierce, will not be long. Christ will come: the false Christ and his false prophet will be overthrown:
What of Antichrist himself? Reading Scripture it is very difficult to see him as anything but an individual: the rebel who is to lift up his head above every divine name, above all that men hold in reverence, till at last he enthrones himself in God's temple and proclaims himself as God.
Daniel says of him (xi.36):He shall be lifted up, and shall magnify himself against every god: and he shall speak great things against the God of gods: and shall prosper, till the wrath be accomplished. For the determination is made. And he shall make no account of the God of his fathers: and he shall follow the lust of women, and he shall not regard any gods: for he shall rise up against all things.
But if Antichrist is to be a real person and the Apostasy a real Apostasy coming at the end of the world, both Antichrist and Apostasy have their forerunners in every age of the world. For the truth is that just as every death is the end of the world in miniature, so every age is the last age in miniature. In that sense we are all in the last age. Antichrist is to come; but we have heard St. Paul ... The conspiracy of revolt is already at work.
In his First Epistle (iv.3) St. John tells us the same thing: Every spirit which acknowledges Jesus Christ as having come to us in human flesh has God for its author; and no spirit which would disunite Jesus comes from God. This is the power of Antichrist, whose coming you have been told to expect; now you must know that he is here in the world already.
Of the coming of Jesus in power to judge the world Scripture also tells us something. St. Paul writes: That is for the day when the Lord Jesus appears from heaven, with Angels to proclaim His power; with fire flaming about Him.—an echo of Our Lord's own phrase: When the Son of Man comes, it will be like the lightning that springs up from the East and flashes across to the West.
There will be the sound of a trumpet, and the dead will arise in their bodies. 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.xxiv.)
St. Paul gives a further detail concerning those who are still alive upon earth when that day comes: It will happen in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, when the last trumpet sounds; the trumpet will sound and the dead will rise again, free from corruption, and we shall find ourselves changed; this corruptible life of ours must be clothed with incorruptible life, this mortal nature with immortality. (l Cor.xv.51.)
It is not only the just who will rise again: When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, He will sit down upon the throne of His glory, and all nations will be gathered in His presence, where He will divide men one from the other, as the shepherd divides the sheep from the goats. He will set the sheep on His right, and the goats on His left. Then the King will say to those who are on His right hand. Come, you that have received a blessing from My Father, take possession of the kingdom which has been prepared for you since the foundation of the world ... then He will say to those who are on His left hand, in their turn. Go far from Me, you that are accursed, into that eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels ... and these shall pass on to eternal punishment, and the just to eternal life. (Mt.xxv.)
Of
the detail of the Judgment we are told little. In the passage just quoted.
Our
Lord makes the sentence depend upon works of charity done or refused by us to
men,
and therefore done or refused to Himself.
It is the common teaching that
these works of charity are used here as representative of the virtues in
general.
The Judgment will be a complete judgment,
in which men will see their
own actions in their true value,
and in the whole of their context—
that is to
say in relation to the actions of all other men,
and these in relation to the
over-ruling providence of God:
so that in a sense there will be spread before
the mind of man a picture of the whole created order and of the marvellous pattern
of God's work in it and upon it.
At last we shall see the shape and bearing of
all things.
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The Kingdom of God will then be established in its fullness. What will be the place of matter in it? Our souls will once more be united with bodies, so that we shall be constituted in the completeness of our personality. Will these bodies have any connection with the bodies we now have? The answer is yes, but the detail is not clear. After all, while I have the same body now that I had twenty years ago, no single cell in it is the same: every cell I had then is gone and a new one has taken its place. Yet it is not mere verbalism to say that I still have the same body. Clearly apart from the cells there is an element which somehow persists and by persisting preserves the identity of my body. It would be beyond the scope of this book to set out the philosophic and scientific theories as to the nature of the persisting element. But it may be this element, whatever it is, that will be re-united with the soul in the resurrection of the body and constitute the identity of the new body with the old. Anyhow 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. In Christopher Dawson's phrase: Matter will be once more the extension of spirit, not its limit; the instrument of spirit, not the enemy.
What matter will be there apart from the human body, or in what condition, we do not know very well. Scripture, both Old Testament and New, is filled with the promise of new heavens and a new earth. The day of the Lord is coming, and when it comes, it will be upon you like a thief. The heavens will vanish in a whirlwind, the elements will be scorched up and dissolve, earth, and all earth's achievements, will burn away ... and meanwhile, we have new heavens and a new earth to look forward to, the dwelling place of holiness. (2 Peter iii.10, 13.)
The whole twenty-first chapter of the last book of the New Testament should be read. Then I saw a new heaven, and a new earth. The old heaven, the old earth had vanished, and there was no more sea. And I, John, saw in my vision that holy city which is the new Jerusalem, being sent down by God from heaven, all clothed in readiness, like a bride who has adorned herself to meet her husband. I heard, too, a voice which cried aloud from the throne. Here is God's tabernacle pitched among men; He will dwell with them, and they will be His own people, and He will be among them, their own God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death, or mourning, or cries of distress, no more sorrow; those old things have passed away. And He who sat on the throne said. Behold, I make all things new.
That inanimate nature will in some way be involved in the Kingdom that shall never end seems certain, however mysterious may be the detail. St. Paul writes much upon this. If creation is full of expectancy, that is because it is waiting for the sons of God to be made known. Created nature has been condemned to frustration; not for some deliberate fault of its own, but for the sake of him who so condemned it, with a hope to look forward to; namely, that nature in its turn will be set free from the tyranny of corruption, to share in the glorious freedom of God's sons.
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 precedency 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.
And to the Ephesians (i.8-10): So rich is God's grace that has overflowed upon us in a full stream of will and discernment, to make known to us the hidden purpose of His Will. It was His loving design, centred in Christ, to give history its fulfilment by resuming everything in Him, all that is in heaven, all that is on earth, or in the Douay version: In the dispensation of the fullness of times to re-establish all things in Christ.
The
essential of life in the Kingdom will be in this,
that in union with Christ we
shall gaze upon the face of God,
our whole being uttering itself in knowledge
and love of Him.
But just as God's infinite knowledge and love of Himself does
not exclude creatures
but flows over into knowing and loving them,
so our total
knowledge and love of God likewise will not exclude creatures,
but will flow
over into knowledge and love of them.
And God will be all in all.
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