A concerned mother of a young family writes: At a mission recently in our parish one of the speakers stated that he did not know where our deceased went when they die. His exact words were: “They either go to the unknown, heaven or hell.” Neither I nor any of my family had ever heard of the “unknown”. This upset me, especially as my father and brother died recently. Fr Bernard McGuckian replies.
Would I be right in saying that the main difficulty here is the use of the term ‘the unknown’? With regard to the existence of the other two possibilities, Heaven and Hell, the scriptural evidence is pretty overwhelming and Catholic teaching is very clear.
It was to Heaven Jesus was referring when he told his disciples during the Last Supper that he was going to a place where there were ‘many mansions’. Once there, he would prepare a place for them and then return to bring them there also to be happy with him forever.
It was also Heaven that St. Paul had in mind when he wrote about his experience of being lifted out of himself and given a glimpse of what lies ahead for those who are faithful. It was something wonderful, far beyond anything we can presently imagine. ‘What no eye has seen and no ear has heard, what the mind of man cannot visualize; all that God has prepared for those who love him’ (I Cor.2:9).
Hell is at the other end of the spectrum. The main source of any information we have for its existence is the gentle Jesus Himself. He seems to have had no hesitation about speaking of its stark and horrible reality. It is to be avoided at all costs. With his help and our own good will, however, this is not too
difficult for any of us. With regard to those who end up there, St. Paul’s comment should give us pause: ‘Their punishment is to last eternally’ (2 Thess.1:9). Enough said.
Since Limbo has been disposed of – and it was never official Church teaching in any case – the only other
possibility is Purgatory, that ‘place or state of punishment where some souls suffer for a time before they can enter Heaven’, as it was described in the old Maynooth Catechism. Even after hearing this description of Purgatory, an element of the ‘unknown’ remains. For instance, what does the suffering entail, how long does it last, is it a geographical place? We can all identify with Prince Hamlet’s problem:
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourne
No traveller returns, puzzles the will. (Hamlet, Act III Scene 1)
Death and its consequences remain an insoluble puzzle unless some traveller does return from that ,undiscovered country’. A central tenet of our Christian faith, however, is that Someone has returned. It is in this Person that we put our faith.
One very important aspect of faith is that it is always based on the evidence of someone else. This is something that we are doing all day long whether we realize it or not.
When you listen to a radio commentary on a football match 100 miles away, you are taking the message of the commentator on faith. And when you read the results of the game in the next day’s paper, you are still taking it on faith. If you still doubted both the radio commentator and the newspaper reporter, you could then try and contact all of the 80,000 people who claim to have been at the match. You would have to take their word for it that they were at the match – also an act of faith.
Even after you had done all that, you would still be taking the result on faith for the simple reason that you were not there and did not see the game and goals being scored with your own eyes. Where football matches are concerned, the only way to avoid having to make an act of faith about the result is to travel to the stadium and see the game for yourself.
With regard to the game of life after death, this is not possible. There is only One Person who is to be believed and who even claims that He is to be believed: Jesus Christ, the First-born from the dead. There is no one else to turn to.
The Christian attitude to death and what follows it, is shot through with hope. At the Requiem Mass we are reminded in one of the Prefaces that ‘when the body of our earthly dwelling lies in death, we gain an everlasting dwelling place in heaven’. This should be our consolation when we think of our deceased relatives and friends.
The doctrine of Purgatory should in no way disturb our peace and our acceptance of God’s Providence. This does not mean that we lessen our Masses, prayers and other efforts on their behalf. We should be slow to conclude that they don’t want our prayers. Indeed, praying for them could very well be doing
us more good than it is doing them. The first person to benefit from any prayer is the one who prays, not the one who is prayed for. In prayer everyone is a winner.
The conviction of the great mystics who were enlightened on this reality was that there is no happier place or state in all creation outside of Heaven than what we call Purgatory. The souls there have the great joy of knowing that they are saved without any possibility of loss. They would no more want to enter Heaven until they were finally purified and prepared than a young lady would enter the ballroom until she was sure that everything about her was ready for her grand entrance.
This article first appeared in The Messenger (April 2008), a publication of the Irish Jesuits.
