Pastor's Corner: All Saints - All Souls - life – death - Hell - Heaven

I would be suffering delusions of grandeur if I thought I could full address all topics that the above title implies in one brief article. On the other hand, as Christians, all the subjects listed in the above title are very likely on our mind and heart each and every day. So perhaps - considering the time of year - it might be wise for me to spend some time "chumming the water" about the six very relative topics mentioned in the title above.

In the last few days, all the craziness of Halloween has taken place - my grandson has enough candy to feed an army. While I didn't mention Halloween in the title the reason for that holiday's existence rests in the Holy Day, we as Catholic call All Saints Day, Nov. 1. This is a Holy Day that calls us to remember and also to celebrate with great joy, hope and anticipation the lives of those Christians who have lived lives of great holiness while on earth as they chose to live God's will for them. We who call ourselves Catholic believe that after their death they have been admitted to life everlasting in the presence of God in Heaven. I am not going to take time to go into how we know that this has happened - I just ask you to accept that this is part of our Catholic faith. Perhaps in another article I can address what leads us to believe this.

Then comes All Souls Day, November 2. This day, we Catholics call to mind all those who have died but as yet have not been recognized as attaining the goal of life everlasting in Heaven. Again, I am not going take the time in this article to explain how or why we as Catholics arrive at this understanding, I just ask you to accept it as part of our Catholic faith.

Now we arrive at the third topic in the above title, life. Now I am pretty sure that being Catholic or not does not change the facts that we all recognize about life. It is a gift from God, it is fragile, and it gives us the opportunity to know God's will for us.

God's will as opposed to our will. This brings us to the topic which holds in tension all the topics listed in the title above - free will. There are those who look at the gift of free will and say that God made a mistake in giving us a free will. We also say that God is love and, that being the case, God knows that the only way we can love fully is to choose to love - with all our heart, mind, and soul. Love cannot be forced or coerced and truly be love. So, God gave us a free will so that we could choose to love Him. When we do this, we have life to the fullest = Heaven. When we choose not love God but to love our own will, it is then that we begin to experience death and hell.

As a Catholic Christian, I believe in Heaven. I believe this for a couple of reasons. One, I have been given the gift of faith and this gift, coupled with Sacred Scripture, proclaims the reality of Heaven. The second, is that I have experienced Heaven here on earth a number of different times. These experiences of Heaven encourage and empower me to choose to live God's will and trust in God more fully. Heaven is a reality that begins here and now and will continue for eternity in a more complete way after we die. I see people on a daily basis who are living in Heaven because they are choosing to live in God's will.

At the same time, as a Christian, I believe in Hell. As a result of choices, I have made that were my will and not God's I have had the opportunity to personally experience Hell. I didn't like it much. In fact, I see people around me every day who are choosing to live their own will not God's, and because of that they are living in Hell. Most often they are blaming God and everyone else for their situation but in the end, it comes down to them living their will instead of God's. In those cases when someone else chooses to live their will and the hellish effects of their choices has a hellish effect on our life, we can choose to ask God to be with us in that situation and it will cease to be Hell because Hell cannot exist in God's presence.

All of us are called to be saints living in loving relationship with God for all eternity. Sometimes we choose to live as souls - (sometimes poor souls - just getting by because we choose to live outside God's will, but that does not change God's will for us. God still wants us to come to Him seek forgiveness and live with Him.

To be a saint is to enter into life fully admitting our sinfulness, walking with God and passing through death into Heaven in loving relationship with God and God's people for all eternity.

As far as Hell is concerned - well - to hell with it.

Blessings.

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Deacon Tim Maroney

St. Jude Thaddeus Catholic Church