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 …
Category: The Last Things
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 …
Purgatory and Hell: Forgotten Destinations – Part IV
Part 4 of a 4-part series: Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV Part 4: The Wisdom of the Church and Her Understanding of Man In this final article, I will speak of the great wisdom of the Church’s understanding of …
Purgatory and Hell: Forgotten Destinations – Part III
Part 3 of a 4-part series: Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV Part 3: Purgatory—The Attractive Impulse of His Burning Love Contemplating the prospects of heaven and hell helps us to see the purpose, indeed the necessity, of a state …
Purgatory and Hell: Forgotten Destinations – Part II
Part 2 of a 4-part series: Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV Part 2: Throwing Yourself Away, or Yielding Yourself to God In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle discusses how each man holds a kind of “inner conversation” with himself, reflecting …
Purgatory and Hell: Forgotten Destinations – Part I
Part 1 of a 4-part series: Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV Part 1: Hell is Real, and You Could Go There If one were to sample the doctrine of today’s sermons and books, one would think that every human …