The Last Things
87. Knowledge in Risen Man
1. When a man rises from the dead and comes to the general judgment, he will know all the sins he has committed in his lifetime. St. Augustine says this complete remembrance of all one's sins will be conferred on each person by God's power; it will be a special gift for the occasion. The judgment will be most perfect, and therefore the accuser, the witness, the defendant must know all that is to be judged. Each man's conscience is like a book that contains an accurate and detailed record of his life. And at judgment, the books will be opened (Apoc. 20:12).
2. At the last judgment, each person will know, not only his own sins, but the sins of every other person. For in this judgment, God's justice is to be manifested to all.
3. This special knowledge of one's sins and the sins of all mankind will not be acquired by some time-consuming process, but will be as knowledge that is acquired at a glance.
88. Time and Place of the General Judgment
1. Each soul is judged, in what is called the particular judgment, the instant it leaves its body; that is, each man is judged immediately after death. The general judgment of the last day will not reverse or change any sentence passed in the particular judgment; the purpose of the general judgment is to manifest to all rational creatures the justice of God, as well as his goodness and mercy.
2. It seems likely that the general judgment will take place without words. For all will be judged at once; each will know his own sins and the sins of all others; each, then, will know at once the justice of the judgment in each case. Hence, it seems that the general judgment will be conducted without word-of-mouth discussions. Indeed, it is most probable that the whole judgment will be enacted and received mentally, not audibly.
3. God alone knows the day and the hour of the end of the world and the last judgment. Scripture says (Mark 13:32): "Of that day or hour, no man knoweth"; and (I Thess. 5:2), "The day of the Lord shall so come as a thief in the night."
4. The prophet Joel says (3:2): "I will gather together all nations . . . into the valley of Josephat, and I will plead with them there." This prophecy is usually taken to indicate the place in which the last or general judgment will be held. The valley of Josephat is near Jerusalem, and is overlooked by Mount Olivet from which our Lord ascended into heaven.
89. Persons to be Present at the Last Judgment
1. Christ our Lord will come to judge all men. Scripture says (John 5:22): "The Father hath given all judgment to the Son." Yet there will be holy men associated with our Lord, and these are said to judge, but the active and effectual judgment will be that of Christ alone. The apostles, for instance, are thus to sit in judgment with our Lord, for scripture says (Matt. 19:28): "You [apostles] also shall sit on twelve seats judging the twelve tribes of Israel."
2. Those saints who will be privileged to sit with Christ the judge, and thus to judge with him, will all be saints notable for the virtue of voluntary poverty. For this virtue makes a man free from all creatural influence, and therefore disposes him well for the office of a judge.
3. The angels, who have not man's nature, will not be judges of men. But they will minister to the Judge by gathering all men before his judgment seat (Matt. 13:41).
4. The fallen angels will carry out upon the damned, the sentence of the Judge; for sinners, by their sin, subject themselves voluntarily to the devil and his minions, and it is fitting that they should be punished by the same evil spirits.
5. All human beings without exception, will be present at the general judgment. For we read in scripture (Apoc. 1:7): "Behold, he cometh with the clouds, and every eye shall see him."
6. The good who love God perfectly will be submitted to no judgment beyond being assigned to their reward. The good who are imperfect will be judged as to their imperfections, but will be saved.
7. The evil will be judged and sentenced to eternal punishment of a degree and intensity determined by the degree of their guilt.
8. The angels will not be judged at the general judgment of mankind. For the judgment of angels has already occurred. Scripture says (John 16:11): "The prince of this world [that is, the devil, a fallen angel] is already judged."
90. Christ, the Judge
1. Christ as man will judge mankind at the last day. Our Lord is God the Son who became man by assuming human nature. When His true humanity is emphasized, scripture calls him "the Son of man." And we read (John 5:27): "He hath given him power to do judgment because he is the Son of man." Christ is our Lord and master because he is God; but he is also our Lord and master because he redeemed us by dying for us as man. Hence, as man he has authority to judge us.
2. Christ will come "with great power and majesty" (Luke 21:27) to judge mankind. He will come in the glorified body in which he appeared after his Resurrection. He who came in weakness and "in the body of our lowness" (Phil. 3:21) to be our redeemer, will come in strength and majesty to be our judge.
3. At the final judgment the wicked will behold Christ as man, and, at the same time, will thoroughly realize that he is God. But they will not behold his divinity directly, for, if they did, they would be filled with joy, which is contrary to their condition and their perverse will.
91. The World After the Last Judgment1. In Isaias we read (65:17): "Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be in remembrance." And the Apocalypse says (21:1): "I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven, and the first earth was gone." The earth will be renewed after the last or general judgment. All bodily things were created for man, and when man is renewed in the resurrection of the body, the earth should receive a splendor of renewal for renewed man.
2. "Time shall be no longer," says the Apocalypse (10:6). It appears then that the movement of the heavenly bodies must cease, for it is this movement which enables man to measure time; the movement itself is the reality of time.
3. After the last judgment, the renewal of the earth will find its counterpart in a new splendor of the heavenly bodies. Isaias says (30:26): "The light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold."
4. As we have noted, all bodily things are for men and will somehow reflect his glory in heaven. There will be brightness in all common things. Earth will gain a transparency; water will be as crystal; fire will have the beauty of the most wondrous stars.
5. Plants and animals will have no place in the renewed world; no living things except those that are deathless will be there.
92. Heaven: The Beatific Vision
1. In heaven the blessed will directly see the very essence of God. "We shall see him as he is" (I John 3:2). God is supremely intelligible or understandable, and is himself the determining of the creatural intellect to know him in his essence. To know God thus is to behold the beatific vision.
2. After the general resurrection when bodies and souls will be reunited, the blessed will not behold God's essence with their bodily eyes. For bodily eyes, even when they are glorified, behold bodily things, and God's essence is not bodily. Those that see God in heaven (before or after the resurrection of the body) see him with the mind, the intellect-strengthened, elevated, and illumined by the Light of Glory.
3. No creature can know God exhaustively, so as to know all that God knows. This would mean the encompassing of the infinite by a finite understanding; this is utterly impossible. Therefore, the blessed see God in his essence, but they do not see all that God sees. Even the angels "who know all things in God," do not know all that God knows. The term "all things" means "all that they know."
93. The Happiness of Heaven: Mansions
1. After the resurrection of the body, the blessed in heaven will find an increase of happiness. For then their happiness will be that of the complete man, body and soul, and not of the soul alone.
2. The degrees of heavenly happiness are called mansions. A mansion is literally a remaining. It is a goal attained in which the attainer rests or remains. It is the reaching of the home for which one strives and is a remaining in it, a dwelling there. Now the heavenly city or kingdom has "many mansions," as our Lord says (John 14:2). Each of the blessed finds his mansion in the degree of reward and happiness which he attains in heaven.
3. The various mansions of heaven are distinguished according to the degrees of charity (which is love and friendship with God by grace) in the blessed themselves. For in each of the saints or blessed, their degree of charity determines the measure of the light of glory which is imparted to them; this, in turn, determines their degree of reward and happiness, that is, their mansion.
94. The Saved and the Damned
1. The sufferings of the damned will be perfectly known to the saints or blessed in heaven, and will only make them the more thankful to God for his great mercy towards themselves.
2. There can, however, be no pity in the saints with reference to the damned. For, on the other hand, they know that the damned are suffering what they chose and still perversely choose. On the other hand, pity is painful in the one who experiences it, and there can be nothing painful in heaven.
3. The blessed are in full conformity with the will of God who wills justice. The saints rejoice in the accomplishment of God's justice. To this extent it can be said that they joy in the pains of the damned.
95. The Endowments of the Blessed
1. When the blessed, or the saints-for the names mean the same here-are brought to the glory of heaven, they are dowered with suitable gifts.
2. These endowments do not constitute beatitude. Beatitude is perfect happiness in the beatific vision; this happiness or beatitude is what the soul has merited through Christ and by his grace. But endowments are gifts that are not merited in any sense.
3. Christ our Lord as man has all possible perfections and every gift and endowment, for his humanity is united to Godhead. Still, strictly speaking, it is not proper to say that Christ as man is adorned with gifts and endowments. For Christ is God as well as man; endowments are his to give, not to receive.
4. Now, an endowment is a dowry, and a dowry suggests a wedding and a bride. Human nature is wedded to the divine nature in Christ; Christ himself is wedded to the Church. Hence, when speaking of human beings, we may use the term dowry or endowment with propriety to indicate the perfections of the blessed. But this is not the case when we speak of angels, for the metaphor of marriage and bride does not apply in their case. Of course, angels have all the perfections that can adorn a rational being in heaven. The point we make here is merely that the term dowry or the term endowment is not suitably employed to express angelic perfection.
5. The dowries or endowments of the blessed are: vision, love, and fruition. These gifts may be said to correspond, respectively, to the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity. Faith is fulfilled in vision; hope, in loving possession; charity, in the fruition or full enjoyment of what is loved.
96. Special Heavenly Rewards
1. The essential reward of heaven is called the aurea, that is, the golden crown. All the blessed have this aurea. Now, it seems that some saints-by reason of the special type of victory they won in saving their souls: by martyrdom, by virginity, by notable teaching of the truths of faith-have a special crown or aureola in addition to the aurea. Aureola means a little golden crown; sometimes it is called nimbus or halo. Christian art often depicts any saint, and even our Lord, with the nimbus or halo. But the precise meaning of aureola is not something general and to be attributed to all the blessed, but something special, bestowed in recognition of a particular excellence, on certain saints.
2. In addition to the aurea, which all the blessed possess, and also in addition to the aureola which certain saints have, there is a special gift called fruit which belongs as a reward to certain saints. We may say: (a) the aurea is the joy that all the blessed have in God, who is their reward exceeding great; (b) the aureola is the special joy that some saints have in the perfection of their works done on earth; (c) fruit is a special joy that some saints have in the disposition, that marked their lives on earth, to be fertile fields for the seed of God's word.
3. The fruit of fertility for the implanted seed of God's word belongs especially to those saints whose lives were characterized by continence.
4. Scripture (Matt. 13:8) tells of the planting of the seed of God's words in human souls, and "they brought forth fruit, some a hundredfold, some sixtyfold, and some thirtyfold." The three fruits fittingly apply to the three types of continence, namely, the continence of virgins, the continence of widowed people, and the continence of married people. The continence of virgins is complete and perpetual and receives the fruit called "a hundredfold." The continence of widowed people is like that of virgins, but was not always so; it receives the fruit called "sixtyfold." The continence of married people is the lawful use of sex under the rule of reason and God's law; it receives the fruit called "thirtyfold."
5. Fruit, then, is the special heavenly reward of virgins, widowed persons, and faithful spouses. Virginity has both fruit and aureola. The virginity that has the reward of the aureola is not the virginity of the innocent who never knew temptation, but is rather the award for shining victory in the war where "the flesh lusteth against the spirit" (Gal. 5:17).
6. An aureola is assigned to martyrs. For martyrdom is the gaining of victory under special difficulties. It is a notable triumph. And so it has its special little crown.
7. Those who have been notable teachers of God's truth have gained much, not alone for themselves but for all who profitably heard their teaching or preaching. Such teachers are the saints called holy doctors. A special reward or aureola rightly marks their victory over error.
8. Since the aureola is the mark and reward of those who shared the victory of Christ, it is not properly assigned or ascribed to him who won the perfect victory, that is, to Christ himself. The aurea belongs to the perfect humanity of our Lord. But the aureola would indicate rather a failure to award Christ his due than to express his perfection. The aureola means participation in the work of Christ; it means conforming by grace to the perfection of Christ. But Christ does not merely participate or conform with himself and his perfect works.
9. Angels have not an aureola; at least, not in the sense in which this award is found in certain saints. For an angel has by its nature as confirmed in grace what the haloed saints have by reason of their brave warring against contrary forces.
10. The aureola is a reward possessed by the soul of a saint; it is not an ornament to appear in the risen body, although the risen body may be the more beautiful by reason of the overflow of joy from the aureola. The symbols in Christian art which indicate the aurea (glow of light about the head) or the aureola (circle of gold, halo) are not actual pictures of these heavenly rewards, for, as we have said, the rewards are spiritual.
11. It is suitable that aureolas should be assigned to virgins, martyrs, and doctors. These three types of saints represent, each in its own way, a special and notable conformity with Christ.
12. Speaking generally, or in the abstract, we may say that the ranking order of the aureolas seems to be this: first and greatest, that of martyrs; second, that of doctors; third, that of virgins. Yet in concrete particular cases, a virgin's aureola might be more excellent than a martyr's, or a doctor's aureola might be greater than that of either virgin or martyr.
13. The rank of the aureola in excellence depends, in individual cases, upon the greatness of the act or reality (with all implied in it -purposes, circumstances, and conditions) for which the aureola is conferred as a reward.
97. The Punishment of the Damned
1. Those who undergo the punishment of hell are tormented by fire and also by other afflicting agencies. As the person condemned to hell has, in earthly life, put various material things in the place of God, he is justly punished by a variety of afflictions.
2. "The worm that dieth not" will afflict the condemned soul in hell. This means that remorse of conscience (but not repentance), will incessantly trouble that soul.
3. The "weeping" that will be in hell after the bodily resurrection will not be the shedding of tears (for there will be no bodily alteration in hell), but will be a steady affliction of the head and the eyes.
4. The darkness of hell is a true and material darkness. After the resurrection of bodies, this darkness will afflict the bodily vision of the damned. The fire of hell, as St. Basil says, will have heat but not light for those punished by it.
5. The fire of hell is a bodily fire which now afflicts and detains lost souls; after the resurrection it will torture the bodies of the damned in hell.
6. It seems that the fire of hell is essentially the same as the fire we know on earth, although it doubtlessly has different properties, since it needs no fuel and does not consume what is cast into it.
7. No one can say for certain where hell is located. It seems, however, to be suggested by some passages in scripture that hell is "under the earth," that is, that it is located somewhere in the interior of the earth, under the earth's surface.
98. The Will and the Intellect of the Damned
1. The will of a person in hell is, by its own perverse choice, confirmed in evil, and is changelessly and wholly devoted to evil. Every act of such a will is a sin.
2. Repentance in the true meaning of that word, is a hatred of sin as such. There is no repentance of this kind in hell. But if repentance be taken to mean merely the regret that sin causes suffering, and hatred of sin merely as the cause of suffering, then we can say that there is repentance in hell.
3. The condemned in hell cannot wish to be annihilated, for this wish is in conflict with the nature of every being. But doubtless the damned wish for some kind of sleep or death or extinction of consciousness that would bring surcease of suffering.
4. As in heaven there is perfect charity, and happiness in the fact of each soul's being saved, so in hell there is perfect hatred and envy, and malicious desire to see others suffer the pains of hell.
5. The damned hate God (not in himself, for this is impossible) in the effects of his justice which they have perversely brought upon themselves.
6. Strictly speaking, there is no meriting or demeriting in either heaven or hell. For the time of meriting and demeriting is the time of life on earth.
7. Knowledge acquired during earthly life will remain in the damned and will be a factor in their suffering.
8. The condemned who are in hell will never think upon God directly, but only in so far as the thought of him is involved in the thought of the divine justice which afflicts them.
9. The damned have knowledge of the glory of the blessed in heaven. When the resurrection of the body restores bodily eyes, the damned will look in vain to see the glorified bodies of the saints. But they will know of heaven, and they will feel the punishment of not being worthy even to look at it.
99. God's Mercy and Justice Towards the Damned
1. Scripture repeatedly tells us that the punishment of hell is everlasting. For instance, St. Matthew says (25:46) that "the wicked shall go into everlasting punishment." As reward is measured to meet merit, so punishment is measured to meet guilt. But the guilt of mortal sin is the guilt of completely rejecting God and offending him whose majesty is infinite. The guilt of such a sin deserves unending punishment.
2. There is no place for mercy in hell, for mercy cannot be exercised upon what, by its very nature, rejects it. The perverse will of both men and fallen angels in hell is ceaselessly opposed to any mercy that might be shown them. Further, if mercy were to bring an end to retribution, justice would bring an end to the happiness of heaven.
3. Despite God's wondrous mercy, the fallen angels and lost human souls, cast themselves into hell. While they hate their torments, they still retain their perverse will against God. Sorrow for sin, in the sense of rejecting evil and turning to God, is utterly impossible in hell. Hence, even the mercy of the all-merciful God cannot penetrate the rebel wills of the lost and bring them relief.
4. Christians who go to hell are there eternally, just as non-Christians are. Indeed, Christians who knew more than many others who are in hell, are more deserving than those others of endless torment.
5. It cannot be said that those who perform works of mercy during life on earth will necessarily escape the punishments of hell. Even great sinners may sometimes do remarkable deeds of mercy. During earthly life, such deeds may be the means of winning (congruously) contrition for the one who performs them, but they are no guarantee that contrition will be accepted, or that it will endure to the end of life, and so enable the performer of the good deeds to escape hell.