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Love reaches the afterlife
Some
recent theologians are of the opinion that the fire
which both burns and saves is Christ Himself, the Judge
and Savior. The encounter with Him is the decisive act
of judgment. Before His gaze, all falsehood melts away.
This
encounter with Him, as it burns us, transforms and frees
us, allowing us to become truly ourselves. All that we
build during our lives can prove to be mere straw, pure
bluster, and it collapses. Yet in the pain of this
encounter, when the impurity and sickness of our lives
become evident to us, there lies salvation. His gaze,
the touch of His heart, heals us through an undeniably
painful transformation “as through fire.” But it is a
blessed pain, in which the holy power of His love sears
through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally
ourselves and thus totally of God. In this way the
interrelation between justice and grace also becomes
clear: The way we live our lives is not immaterial, but
our defilement does not stain us forever if we have at
least continued to reach out toward Christ, toward truth
and toward love. Indeed, it has already been burned away
through Christ’s Passion. At the moment of judgment we
experience and we absorb the overwhelming power of His
love over all the evil in the world and in ourselves.
The pain of love becomes our salvation and our joy. It
is clear that we cannot calculate the “duration” of this
transforming burning in terms of the chronological
measurements of this world. The transforming “moment” of
this encounter eludes earthly time-reckoning—it is the
heart’s time, it is the time of “passage” to communion
with God in the Body of Christ.
The
judgment of God is hope, both because it is justice and
because it is grace. If it were merely grace, making all
earthly things cease to matter, God would still owe us
an answer to the question about justice—the crucial
question that we ask of history and of God. If it were
merely justice, in the end it could bring only fear to
us all. The incarnation of God in Christ has so closely
linked the two together—judgment and grace—that justice
is firmly established: We all work out our salvation
“with fear and trembling.” Nevertheless, grace allows us
all to hope, and to go trustfully to meet the Judge whom
we know as our “advocate.”
Early
Jewish thought includes the idea that one can help the
deceased in their intermediate state through prayer. The
equivalent practice was readily adopted by Christians
and is common to the Eastern and Western Church. The
East does not recognize the purifying and expiatory
suffering of souls in the afterlife, but it does
acknowledge various levels of beatitude and of suffering
in the intermediate state. The souls of the departed
can, however, receive “solace and refreshment” through
the Eucharist, prayer and almsgiving. The belief that
love can reach into the afterlife, that reciprocal
giving and receiving is possible, in which our affection
for one another continues beyond the limits of
death—this has been a fundamental conviction of
Christianity throughout the ages, and it remains a
source of comfort today. Who would not feel the need to
convey to their departed loved ones a sign of kindness,
a gesture of gratitude or even a request for pardon? Now
a further question arises: If “Purgatory” is simply
purification through fire in the encounter with the
Lord, Judge and Savior, how can a third person
intervene, even if he or she is particularly close to
the other? When we ask such a question, we should recall
that no man is an island, entire of itself. Our lives
are involved with one another. Through innumerable
interactions they are linked together. No one lives
alone. No one sins alone. No one is saved alone. The
lives of others continually spill over into yours: in
what you think, say, do and achieve. And, conversely,
your life spills over into that of others: for better
and for worse. So your prayer for another is not
something extraneous to that person, something external,
not even after death. In the interconnectedness of
Being, your gratitude to the other—your prayer for
him—can play a small part in his purification. And for
that there is no need to convert earthly time into God’s
time: In the communion of souls, simple terrestrial time
is superseded. It is never too late to touch the heart
of another, nor is it ever in vain.
Our hope
is always essentially also hope for others; only thus is
it truly hope for me, too. As Christians we should never
limit ourselves to asking: How can I save myself? We
should also ask: What can I do in order that others may
be saved and that for them, too, the star of hope may
rise? Then I will have done my utmost for my own
personal salvation, as well.
To be
continued next week ... ... ...
Spe
Salvi Encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI to all “On
Christian Hope”
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