How We Know There’s A Heaven and Hell

Anyone who gives you a cup of cold water to drink will not lose his reward. (Mark 9:41) The reward for humble divine love: Heaven. [Spanish]

Better for you to enter into the Kingdom of God than to be thrown into Gehenna. Where the worm of conscience never dies and the fire never goes out. (Mark 9:43) That would be… H. E. double hockey sticks.

Who taught the human race about heaven and hell? Were we born knowing about heaven and hell?

First, this question: How do we know that bodily death doesn’t just mean: The End. How do we know that our souls have an eternal destiny, be it good or evil? How do we know that our souls are immortal?

We know for a fact that our souls are immortal for a very simple reason. There’s nothing, other than God, that can destroy a human soul.

Yes, an iceberg can sink a huge ship, like the Titanic. Yes, a flash flood can turn a four-lane highway into a moonscape of potholes the size of pickup trucks. Yes, a teething puppy can turn a new pair of gym shoes into some very expensive dog bones.

But no known force can destroy the spiritual reality of knowledge and free will that animates the human body. We are obviously more than just a delicate chemical balance of elements. We do things like: Shout out the answers during Jeopardy! And propose marriage. And pray for our beloved dead, memorializing them with stones and monuments.

None of this would make any sense at all, if we were just over-grown orangutans. No: the spiritual dimension of our lives gives definitive evidence that we have a higher calling. To live eternally in communion with everything true and good. In other words, we certainly have immortal souls.

So: Were we born knowing that an immortal soul can suffer punishment forever in hell?

I would say: We kind of were born knowing that. We naturally fear the prospect of offending the all-powerful Creator. And we naturally fear death. Not because we fear “nothingness;” nothingness is nothing to fear. What we fear is: an unknown somethingness that involves just punishment.

But our natural fear of sin and death is vague. Most of the precise stuff we know about hell comes from the great teacher and preacher of hell in the Bible. The biblical figure who talked about hell the most.

The prophet Ezekiel? Elijah? Job? Certainly someone from the Old Testament? No. Line for line, verse for verse, the #1 Hell Preacher in the Holy Bible is… Jesus of Nazareth.

“Enter through the narrow gate. Because the way is wide that leads to destruction.” “Just as weeds are gathered up and burned, so will it be at the end of the world.” “Do not be afraid of the one who can kill the body, but not the soul. Rather, fear the one who can destroy both body and soul in hell.” There’s a lot more, in the four holy gospels.

But before we get freaked-out: The Lord Jesus’ teaching about hell is so stark and precise because hell is hell compared to heaven. Jesus fundamentally came to the earth for one reason: To offer us heaven.

Jesus is Himself heaven. He is the eternal Light, the eternal Beauty. He united the Undying Glory to the human race, in Himself. In the holy… Incarnation.

Some non-Christians object to our doctrines of heaven and hell on the grounds that we unfairly teach that only Christians go to heaven. In point of fact, we don’t teach that. We believe that God offers heaven to everybody.

But we do teach: Only Jesus Christ offers heaven, because only Jesus Christ is heaven. Heaven is something so unimaginably wonderful that only the Incarnation could have given the human race the idea.

The eternal Father has prepared this kingdom–Jesus’ Heart. Where every tear will be wiped away. And, as we read in the Sunday-Mass gospel passage, it comes as a “reward.”

Now, without the saving sacrifice of Christ, we could never hope to receive such a reward. But since He offered Himself for us as a living Lamb that constantly gives forth life, we can not only hope for the reward of heaven, we can actually do things that harmonize with Christ’s love and thereby draw us closer to heaven.

Things like giving a cup of cold water to an honest thirsty pilgrim. As we talked about last week: God, in His humility, reconciled us to Himself as one of us. So when we see someone thirsty, we know it’s Him, giving us a chance to love. When we see someone suffering, someone struggling, someone spiritually at sea: we know it’s Him, beckoning us to love.

We have immortal souls. We fear eternal damnation. We hope for everlasting happiness. We love our way there.

Lesson in Real Humility

If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all. (Mark 9:35)

If we really want to understand what this means, I think we have to meditate on Jesus standing before Pontius Pilate. [SPANISH]

Christ had made what St. Paul calls His “noble confession.” That is, Jesus had declared His true identity. He possesses absolute authority. There is only One Who rules all. Christ, only-begotten Son of the eternal Father: He rules the cosmos. Jesus declared this to the Sanhedrin. They convicted Him of blasphemy and sent Him to Pontius Pilate for execution.

So there He stood, the Emperor of All Things, before a feckless, cowardly Roman careerist, at a shabby excuse for a tribunal of justice, condemned for speaking the truth about Himself.

Because this new, divine Adam loves you and me as much as He does, He bowed His head, accepted His death sentence without protest, and took up His cross silently.

Humility.

Could anyone really practice humility, the holy virtue of humility, in a world without Christ? Pagan nations have not generally prized humility as a virtue. At least not in their own citizens. Of course they have loved having humble slaves. As the Lord Jesus said, “The pagans lord it over each other. The masters insist on making their authority felt.”

Ambitious pagan people jockey for position, stab each other in the back, claw their way to the top, stomping on the heads of their closest associates—and for what? Status in some puny pecking order.

Years ago, I had friends among the aspiring avant-garde artists in New York City. One friend of mine got stabbed in the back by a rival. I sympathized. But he said, “It’s par for the course. The fighting is so fierce because the stakes are so low.”

Maybe that brings to mind another example of vicious infighting for low stakes? While the outside world goes on with its business, paying no attention? Maybe the upper hierarchy of the Church?

Anyway… Meanwhile, here stands Christ—with omnipotent power, glory, eternal beatitude in His sovereign hands. With those very hands, He grasped the cross He carried for us.

Of course, the most humbling thing for us about Jesus Christ’s incandescent humility is this: this is Divine Mercy for us. Let’s humble ourselves and acknowledge two things.

1. For all our vain human ambitions, we have absolutely no hope at all for anything truly good, without Christ, without His self-sacrifice, for our sakes. And…

2, He loves us enough—loves us, lumps and all, foolishness and all; Almighty God, our Creator, loves us enough to stand before Pilate and bow His head, so that we won’t have to bow our heads in shame for our sins, when the day of reckoning comes. And He loved us enough to satisfy for our sins as one of us. God Himself satisfied for human sin as a human being. This is even more humbling.

So we can say to God Almighty, “Look, Father! Our brother Jesus is just! The human race does not totally suck. Not at all. We have Jesus. We have all of His saints, especially His Blessed Mother!” And when we cry out to God like this–which is what we are doing every time we pray Holy Mass together–He smiles and says, “Yes, My children. Yes.”

Speaking of people we can boast about: Three years ago tomorrow, I–along with hundreds of priests–concelebrated Mass with the pope at the National Shrine in Washington. For the canonization of a saint. The apostle of California… Junipero Serra.

Father Serra abandoned all comfort and security in order to bring the good news of Jesus into a violent, pagan world. California had no order and no peace back then, because the natives had never heard of the Prince of Peace, and the Spanish colonial authorities didn’t abide by His teachings. Father Sera and his brother Franciscans risked their lives to establish their missions as oases of prayer, peace, and good order.

Why doesn’t California have any peace and good order now? Well, we can’t blame St. Junipero Serra for that.

What we can do: Pray to the saint who is also one of the Founding Fathers of the USA. Pray that he will help us bear witness to the love of Christ. Humbly, patiently, through thick and thin.

Elephants and Ireland

One hundred thirty-five years ago today, the Brooklyn Bridge opened. Twenty-one of P.T. Barnum’s elephants paraded across, to prove to the public how strong and safe the bridge is.

Exactly one hundred twenty years later, to the day, Theodore Cardinal McCarrick, a native of New York, ordained your unworthy servant a priest.

Everyone will be salted with fire. But if salt becomes insipid, with what will you restore its flavor?  (Mark 9:49-50) You can’t salt salt. Salt has to stay salty.

The Church of Christ must salt this earth, with the message of justice, truth, and selfless love. We do not merit such a mission. But God has summoned us to it anyway.

When Holy Mother Church met in solemn Council at the Vatican in the early 1960’s, She articulated a vision of universal solidarity among all the people of the earth. Our Church gave the human race hope for a worldwide civilization of love.

Vatican II did not base that vision on empty optimism or naïvete. The Church knows that She always faces a battle against evil. She spoke as She did at Vatican II because of the preaching of Her founder Jesus Christ, and because of Her hope in His unfailing grace.

Last week the Apostolic See published a moral study of the contemporary world financial system, which sounded an echo of James 5 and Psalm 49 (which we read at today’s Holy Mass).

The Catholic Church continues to have the guts to point out to the world that no one can adequately understand “the economy” without adequately understanding man—human nature, the meaning of life, of work, of social interactions and exchanges among people. And no one can understand the meaning of human life without Christ, the Son of God.

Even with the supposedly wonderful internet, it seems obvious that we have not really progressed toward a more unified and peaceful world over the course of the past generation. The rich have gotten richer and the poor poorer. Greedy people have enriched themselves by taking irrational risks with other peoples’ money, including public money belonging to entire nations and peoples. Someone has to have the guts to say this isn’t right. The Catholic Church has the guts.

Speaking of the poor and defenseless, and of entire nations and peoples, and of having some guts: Let’s pray hard for the voters of  mother Ireland. Tomorrow they vote on making abortion legal.

Someday, to be sure, they will look back with horror and shame that they ever thought it prudent or good to put the human rights of the innocent to a majority vote. But still we must pray hard for a pro-life outcome of tomorrow’s national referendum on their constitutional amendment that protects the unborn child.

Those agitating for a repeal of the pro-life amendment argue as if making abortion legal involves a step “forward.” They forget that killing infants was perfectly legal under the inhumane emperors of old, like Nero and Caligula.

In fact, Ireland has the kind of forward-looking abortion laws that every country ought to have, including ours. May the Civilization of Love gain an electoral victory tomorrow, so that Ireland can continue to show the world the right way.

“Whoever is not against us is for us.”

(Mark 9:40)

Whoever is not against us is for us.

This sentence has given us, as Christian and Catholics, one of our most fundamental principles. St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of Pope Francis’ religious order, expressed it at the beginning of his Spiritual Exercises. The first Jesuit wrote:

Let it be presupposed that every good Christian is to be more ready to approve what his neighbor says than to condemn it. If he cannot approve it, let him inquire of his neighbor how he means it.

In other words, a good Christian always gives his neighbor the benefit of the doubt. We presume the neighbor a friend.

Now, actually exercising this kind of trust in others can prove a lot more difficult than simply talking about doing it. Ever since we human beings first built the Tower of Babel—actually, ever since Cain killed Abel—we have contended with antagonisms among us, language barriers and cultural misunderstandings.

Sometimes the idea of a unified human race, living at peace, giving each other the benefit of the doubt—often that seems like nothing more than a pipe dream for hippies. Our tvs hum with news of wars and rumors of wars. Pope comes to visit the US, conservative politicians call him a Marxist, and his environmentalist allies tell him to ordain women as priests. Seems like something less than unity, fraternity, and mutual trust, something less than giving the brother the benefit of the doubt.

But, you know, there actually are a lot of people in this world who prefer to get along, rather than fight. The blessed unity of the human race does not shimmer solely in a hippy fantasy. There’s a bona fide human institution, one that has been in business for many centuries now—an institution which really does strive tirelessly to bring about solidarity among all men. What’s this institution? The one led by our visitor from Rome this week.

Washington, D.C., hardly has days of genuine good cheer and open friendliness on the streets. Days when Metrobus riders applaud their drivers, or people waiting for hours to get through security checkpoints use the time to make friends. But this past Wednesday was such a day.

The secret was not just Pope Francis’ beautiful personality, though that hardly hurt. If I might, I would like to focus on one way in which Christ actually accomplishes true communion among disparate human individuals, by gathering them into His Church. Jesus unites us by giving us the answer to the most fundamental question of life.

What is this question? There are different ways to put it, but they all come down to the same thing. Can I be right with God? Can I find the right path? Am I headed towards true happiness and fulfillment–toward heaven? Can I face death without paralyzing fear? Am I who I am meant to be?

The whole human race is in search of the answer. The desire for a good, solid answer to our common religious questions is a tie that binds the whole human race as one family. And, if we find a good answer, and can live in the confidence of God’s friendship, then we also tend towards friendship with our neighbors.

I think the Holy Father’s visit has reminded us of this fact:

In the face of humanity’s fundamental religious questions, a lot of other things don’t matter. What clubs I belong to don’t matter. The neighborhood I live in doesn’t matter. Whether I am white, black, Latino, Filipino, Caribbean, Chinese, Indian, or Puerto-Korican doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what my favorite football team is. God is merciful: Even Dallas Cowboys fans can live in the state of grace.

What matters is: Am I okay with the Lord? Can I hope for God’s goodness? Am I on the right track? And, if I am with Jesus, the answer is Yes, Yes, Yes. What language do I speak? What kind of education have I had? How much money do I make? What’s my favorite food? Interesting questions, to be sure. But nowhere near as important as: Do I have communion with God? When Jesus is the answer to that all-important question, there’s no sense getting hung-up too much on the other questions.

My point is: what Jesus unites, nothing can divide. What God has united, let no man put asunder. Whoever is not against us is for us. Whoever is with Jesus is with us. If we are with Jesus, we are really, truly together. And, just to make one point and encourage everyone to participate in the 40 Days for Life campaign: if we are with Jesus, we are consistently pro-life. If we are with Jesus, we stand up for everyone’s right to life, from conception to natural death.

In Washington on Wednesday, we hundreds of priests and bishops prayed alongside tens of thousands of people. We were together in a way which no other circumstances can bring about: we were united in prayer to God, united with the Vicar of Christ on earth, imploring love and mercy from on high through the only-begotten Son of the Almighty Father.

Unity. Trust. Peace.

The Catholic Church is not perfect and does not pretend to be. But She is the universal church. Our faith and way of life are open to all. We have no secret codes, no hidden teachings, no admissions exams, no dues, no prerequisites. The Catholic faith is right there for everyone to reach out for and live by. And when we let Jesus bring us together, then we can live the dream of true mutual trust.

Humble Pope, Humble Savior

Shepherd One

—

If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all. (Mark 9:35)

If we really want to understand what this means, I think we have to meditate on Jesus standing before Pontius Pilate.

Christ had made what St. Paul calls His “noble confession.” That is, Jesus had declared His true identity. He possesses absolute authority. There is only One Who rules all. Christ, only-begotten Son of the eternal Father, is that One.

Here He stands, the One Who actually is truly the first, standing before a feckless Roman careerist with highly limited insight, and less courage. The Emperor of All Things stands in the dock, at a shabby excuse for a tribunal of justice, accused of blasphemy for declaring what is true. And, because this new, divine Adam loves you and me as much as He does, He bows His head, accepts His death sentence without protest, and takes up His cross.

Humility.

Lately, the airwaves have coursed with news of Pope Francis and his visit to these shores. This week we will certainly see a lot of Pope-Francis coverage. Your unworthy servant will have the privilege of concelebrating Mass with His Holiness on Wednesday afternoon in Washington, when the pope will declare the Apostle of California, Fr. Junipero Serra, a saint. Holy Father will use Fr. Serra’s language, the original vernacular language of the Church in North America…Spanish.

Anyway, people love Pope Francis for his humility, as well we should love him for it. He occupies the office with the world’s greatest responsibilities in a perfectly unassuming way. Now, those of us with functioning memories can recall that Popes Benedict XVI, John Paul II, John Paul I, Paul VI, and John XXIII all occupied the office of Successor of St. Peter with unassuming humility, also. But that doesn’t make Pope Francis’ humility any less powerful and beautiful. To really understand the power of the pope’s humility, though, we have to try to understand its source.

The Holy Father does not practice humility because his enormous ability to influence people and events embarrasses him. Much less does he practice humility in order to out-humble previous popes. No. Humble Pope Francis is as humble as he is for one reason, the same reason that humble St. Francis walked the streets of Assisi as humbly as he did: because of the humble Savior.

One of the best devotional exercises we can do, I think, is to try to imagine how the world would look to us if we had never heard of Jesus Christ. Of course, we can never completely succeed in imagining this. Most of us have fed on Christ as our spiritual food since our earliest years. But, since the world around us has fallen back into paganism, we can do this spiritual exercise a lot more successfully than our grandparents could.

So, let’s ask ourselves: Could anyone really practice humility, the virtue of humility, in a world without Christ? Pagan nations have not generally prized humility as a virtue in their own citizens, though of course they loved having humble slaves. As the Lord Jesus said, “The pagans lord it over each other. The masters insist on making their authority felt.”

Ambitious pagan people jockey for position, stab each other in the back, claw their way to the top, stomping on the heads of their closest associates—and for what? Status in a puny pecking order.

Years ago, I had friends among the aspiring avant-garde artists in New-York-City. One of them said to me, after a supposed friend of his had trashed him viciously in order to get a leg up for an obscure gallery show: “It’s par for the course. The fighting is so fierce because the stakes are so low.”

Meanwhile, here stands Christ—with power, glory, eternal beatitude in His sovereign hands. With those very hands, He grasps the cross He carried for us.

Of course, the most humbling thing for us about Jesus Christ’s incandescent humility is this: this is Divine Mercy for us. We have to humble ourselves enough to see that… 1. For all our vain human ambitions, we have absolutely no hope at all for anything truly good, without Christ, and 2. He loves us enough—loves us, lumps and all, foolishness and all—Almighty God, our Creator, loves us enough to stand before Pilate and bow His head, so that we won’t have to, when the day of reckoning comes.

There is nothing we ever could have done, or ever could do, to deserve such love. Yet He loved us enough to satisfy for our sins as one of us. This is even more humbling. We can say, “Look, Father! Our brother Jesus is just! The human race does not totally suck. Not at all. We have Jesus, and all of His saints, especially His Blessed Mother!” And when we cry out to Him like this, which is what we are doing every time we pray Holy Mass together, He smiles and says, “Yes, My children. Yes.”

The humble pope will soon give us a special holy year, a jubilee year, of mercy. So that we can share more fully in what Christ has humbly done for us. Jubilee Year of Mercy begins December 8, the fiftieth anniversary of the conclusion of the second Vatican Council. More on that as the day gets closer. In the meantime, let’s pray for our Holy Father’s safe travels and rejoice that he has come to visit us!

Salt and Fire

Everyone will be salted with fire.

Not being fundamentalists, we freely acknowledge that the text–not to mention the versification–of the Mark 9:40’s has inconsistencies among the various manuscripts and translations.

Does Mark 9:49 read: “Everyone will be salted with fire?” Or does Mark 9:48 read, “For everyone shall be salted with fire, and every victim shall be salted with salt?”

Yes.

But I think we can say without doubt that the moral of the story is: No one can understand the Bible without grasping one salient and salty fact.

Until the coming of Christ, God took pleasure in the sweet smelling aroma of fresh flesh meat burning on the altar which stood at the very place where Abraham had been willing to sacrifice Isaac, until the angel staid his hand.

The People of God pleased Him by offering pure, non-putrefied offerings in their holy Temple.

What is the Bible? It is books written by God, using the human authorship of men who smelled the sweet smoke rising from Mt. Zion and rejoiced.

Now, of course, we also know that some of the Bible was written during periods when the Temple lay in ruins. And God also spoke through his prophets to condemn the offering of sacrifices by people with impure, selfish hearts.

Leviticus 2:13 commands us to season our sacrifices with salt. In all your oblations, offer salt. Do not remove the salt of the Covenant from thy sacrifices.

Earlier in the chapter, the Law commands that the priest must burn the sacrifice as a sweet-smelling oblation to the Lord.

What does it mean?

Easy. Sweet-smelling smoke must ascend to the one true God. No ifs ands or buts.

But, as we read, He takes no pleasures in rams or bullocks. And the priests of the Old Covenant entered the sanctuary over and over again, with what became a rather absurd gravitas, without ever really accomplishing anything.

Christ our Priest pleases the Father. Christ the Victim; Christ the altar; Christ the Temple. Christ: Head and members. Christ the celebrant of the Holy Mass, which demands our whole and entire selves be laid on the altar with the bread and wine.

May His Gospel be the salt that makes the sacrifice of our entire lives into sweet-smelling smoke for God.

And, lest the salt grow insipid and useless: may we have frequent recourse to Confession!