I recall arguing once with a Catholic friend of mine during our teenage years. He was from a big city far away and attended a publicly funded Catholic high school. I was a homeschooled boy from the country. The debate …
Category: The Last Things
On Hell: Clarity Is Mercy in an Age of “Dare We Hope”
On July 13, 1917, Our Lady vouchsafed to the three children at Fatima a vision of Hell (this is the content of the “First Secret”): Our Lady showed us a great sea of fire which seemed to be under the …
There Is No Salvation outside the Catholic Church
It is a truth revealed by God that there is absolutely no salvation outside of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is the true Church of Jesus Christ, instituted by Jesus Christ for the sanctification and salvation of the souls …
Why I Believe that Hell Is the Default
Again and again as of late, we see Catholic bishops and the pope making statements that seem to call into question the basic attributes of Hell, particularly the insistence of the Church that Hell is a place of eternal punishment …
How to Evangelize: Out of the Fire and into the Frying Pan
Tradition tells us that as Saint Thomas Aquinas was approaching the end of his life, Jesus Christ appeared to him in a vision and spoke to him from the cross, inquiring as to how he may reward the great Doctor …
The Fire of Purgatory Comes from Hell
The time from Michaelmas until the Hallowtide, for me, has always been a time to reflect upon Hell itself. After all, as fall settles on the Northern Hemisphere, people tend to reflect upon the afterlife as the days grow shorter …
Peering toward the End: A Short Daydream about My Death
“My Lord and my God, from this moment I accept at Thy hands, with resignation and cheerfulness, the kind of death it may please Thee to send me, with all its pains and anguish.” Despite the countless daydreams I’ve indulged …
The Wedding of the Lamb
Whereas the Son’s own surrender to the love of the Father, on the level of fallen creation, is consummated in his sharing of our death, our reunion in him, in this very death, consummates our ecstasy, our ravishment with the …
An Urgently Needed Unforgetting
While teaching a theology class to men in formation for the diaconate, I asked, “When was the last time you heard a homily on Hell?” None of the sixteen could recall. “And Heaven?” Only two. The exchange reminded me of …
God Made Us for Heaven
It is the simple truth: God created us for happiness. Not jealous of the good He has (or rather is), God fashioned finite intellectual beings—angels and men—capable of sharing His good through knowledge and love, and thus capable of entering …