'STAND FAST IN THE FAITH'

New Zealand Tablet, 30 May 1912, Page 3

'STAND FAST IN THE FAITH'

(A Weekly Instruction specially written for the N.Z. Tablet by 'Ghimel.') THE LAST THINGS In view of some pronouncements on ' Life after Death,' recently recorded in the secular press, it will doubtless be of use to place before the readers of the Tablet a summary and a justification of Catholic teaching on the subject. The Church does not, indeed, supply an answer to every idle question that may be put to her—we are told on good authority that a fool can " ask more questions than a wise man can answer—but she ( gives a clear, consistent, satisfying statement of all that need at present be known, or can profitably be understood, regarding the eternal issues of life and death for each of us personally, and the final consummation of the cosmos of which we are a part' (Catholic Encyclopedia, v., p. 533). Death.—Relying on the data offered by Sacred Scripture, Catholic theology presents the separation of soul and body to us under the following aspects: (i.) As being in the present order of God's Providence, that is, historically, apart from what might have been, the consequence and the penalty of the sin of Adam. 'lf any one does not confess that the first Adam, when he had transgressed the command of God in Paradise,, immediately lost the sanctity and justice, iniwhich he* had been constituted, and incurred by the offence ofsuch a prevarication the anger and indignation of God, and hence death with which God had threatened' him beforehand ... let him be anathema ' (Council of Trent, Sess. v., Canon 1). The threat is recorded % in Genesis n., 17: 'For in what day soever thou shalfc|§ eat of it (the tree of the knowledge of good and evil) thou shalt die the death'; the sentence is found in Romans v., 12: 'Wherefore as by one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death; and so death passed upon all men.' (ii.) As marking the end of our time of probation and at the same time as deciding our destiny in eternity. And it came to pass that the beggar died and was carried by the angels into Abraham s bosom; and the rich man also died, and he was buried in hell' (St. Luke xvi., 22). 'We must all be manifested before the judgment of Christ, that everyone may receive the proper, things of the body, accordnig as he hath done, whether it be good or evil' (2 Cor v., 10) (iii.) Apart from the case of those living at the end of the world, as being universal (Romans v., 12, above). ~ ~; Future Life.— regard to our Lord's teaching on this point, we may be allowed to quote the following passage from a former article: 'While the greatest philosophers of ancient and modern times feel their spirit hesitate and their hearts quail whenever they try to solve the question of life after death, our Lord confidently assures men of an eternal life for soul and body It is no exaggeration to say that His teaching is simply saturated with this sublime and consoling truth ' Examples of such teaching are to be found in the Beatitudes, which evidently can be fully realised only in another world in the discourse to Martha, the sister ot Lazarus and in the description of the last days fat Matt. xxv). .. J v ™ W l S lS teaching as a guide, Catholic philosophy comes to the following conclusions:— (i.) .The human soul is Oi/ its nature immortal or imperishable. At its creation God gives it the power of surviving the dissolution that takes place at death; He may take that property away if He wishes, but until He does so it J 6!? The proof of this statement lies in the twofold fact that the soul,-unlike the body, is not made up of parts and is not therefore of itself subject to decomposition; that it is not so dependent on the bodv as to be incapable of leading a life of its own when the separation between them takes place, (ii) The soul will, as a matter of fact,, survive the body/ (aV S : has always been the belief of men, and so universal have men acted on the belief, that it must be con

sidered either as the result of a divine revelation or as deeply rooted in some general, necessary, and consequently infallible conviction of our intellectual nature. The universality of the belief is not denied by any serious writer, and it is therefore sufficient to quote the beautiful description of it given by Chateaubriand; ‘ Human nature proves itself superior to the rest of creation, and appears in all its high destinies. Does the brute know anything about a coffin, does he concern himself about his remains What to him are the bones of his parent, or rather, can he distinguish his parent after the cares of infancy are past? Whence comes, then, the powerful impression that is made upon the tomb ? Are a few grains of dust deserving of our veneration ? Certainly not; we respect the ashes of our ancestors for this reason only because a secret voice whispers to us that all is not extinguished in them. It is this that confers a sacred character on the funeral ceremony among all nations of the world ; all are alike persuaded that the sleep even of the tomb is not everlasting, and that death is but a glorious transformation {Genius of Christianity, p. 191). (b) The infinite holiness of God demands such a survival. On the one hand, God, Who by His very nature must love what is good and hate what is evil, is bound to set up sufficient sanctions for the observance of His laws, and on the other hand, the sanction attached in the present life to their observance is manifestly insufficient. Hence there must be another life, where the moral law will find adequate sanction. God is just, also, and therefore He must wish that, sooner or later, the good shall be rewarded in proportion to their merits and the guilty punished in proportion to their demerits. God, for reasons of His own, often allows Vice to go on its triumphant way to the end, and Virtue to bend under the burden of sorrow; but His government would be futile, were there to be no change at some time or other. We refuse to believe that God’s Justice can allow death to be the end of all.