Playing favorites

Bishop Peter Muhich
Homily from the Televised Mass, NewsCenter1
Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time, November 6, 2022

He is not God of the dead but of the living for, to him, all are alive. 

You know, I forget things at times. Maybe you do too. I have a habit of forgetting passwords and pin numbers. It’s a little frustrating, even a little embarrassing. I forget to write them down, or I forget where I wrote them down, or in the passage of time that piece of paper goes missing and I no longer have the correct password or pin number. I forget things like that sometimes. What about you? What do you forget? 

We all forget some things. We forget lots of unimportant things and sometimes we forget a good deal of more important things. That’s why when it comes to the more important things, we should review them from time to time. And when it comes to the truths of our faith the church helps us with that in the liturgy to make sure we’re going over the territory that is the spiritual life, life in Christ, on a regular basis and remembering the important things about it. 

Because of the prominent theme of death and life after death in this Sunday’s scripture readings, I’d like to review what the Lord and the church teach about the last four things — death, judgment, heaven, and hell. Or to put it another way I’d like to review with you what happens when we die, or our loved ones die. You can find this in the Catechism of the Catholic Church from paragraphs 1020 to 1060. 

So, death, judgment, heaven, and hell, and then some words about purgatory. First death. What is death? Death is what happens to the body because of sin. We live in the fallen world now. God didn’t make it a place of death, but because of sin, we are mortal, and we die, the part of us that can die, our physical bodies. 

But our souls are immortal, and they live on. Death marks the time, coming to a close when we can either accept or reject God’s love. So, death is significant. It brings things to a conclusion. The body dies and we pay great respect to the body and lay it to rest in the ground with a Mass or rights of Christian burial, and we pray from the soul of that person now as it travels through death. And of course, we’re very active in doing that now in the month of November, the month of all souls. So, death, the body dies because of sin. The soul lives on.

Judgment. This happens at the point of death. Our particular judgment is when we face God after the moment of death, and he looks at us and the sum of our lives. We, by our own free choice, will determine what happens after that. All the choosing has come to an end at the moment of death and then we see our lives clearly and see what we have chosen for all eternity.  Our particular judgment at the moment of death is definitive. We have the parable of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke’s Gospel, that talks about this. When the rich man dies, he’s on one side of that chasm and Lazarus, the poor man, is in the bosom of Abraham. You can’t cross over from one side to the other. Your life’s decisions have made that particular judgment — where you will face the rest of eternity. There is also the final judgment, the church teaches, that will happen at the end of time when Christ comes to judge all the living and the dead. 

But our particular judgment happens at the moment of death, and it determines how we will spend what happens after that. And so, we get to heaven. Those who die in God’s grace and friendship and are perfectly purified, they’ve undergone a real conversion that’s complete. They’re ready to see God face to face and so they go into the kingdom and experience the perfect love of God with all the saints in the angels. That’s what we pray will be our destiny. It’s certainly what God wants for us. 

But there is another possibility and that’s hell. We can separate ourselves from God, if we choose to, using our free will. Our free will makes it possible for us to certainly love, but also to freely reject love and to reject God, and to get lost in sin. Hell, the catechism says, is “separating ourselves from God by our own free choices. To reject him and his life of faithful, truthful, selfless love.” And it’s a possibility, a very frightening possibility, for all of us. 

What about purgatory? Well, Purgatory is for people who do love God, but they haven’t undergone a complete conversion. The catechism says, of those who die in God’s grace and friendship but still imperfectly purified are indeed assured of their eternal salvation, but after death, they undergo purification so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter heaven.

The church gives the name purgatory to this final purification of the elect, which is entirely different than the punishment of the damned in hell. Our teaching of purgatory also comes from what we see in the scriptures where there’s evidence of praying for those who have died to help them to receive God’s mercy and the church has done this since the very beginning. 

So, the last four things, death, judgment, heaven, and hell, and some words on purgatory. During this month of all souls, and the beginning of the Advent season in early December, these themes will come up again and again, in the readings. It’s good for us to reflect on these four last things and to contemplate where we are in our life of following Christ. The Lord, in his mercy, is ready to forgive us for whatever we’ve done, but we need to cooperate with God’s grace in order to be ready for life in heaven.