Last Things

From the Diocese of Shrewsbury:

Catholics in Shrewsbury are being encouraged to use Lent to consider final judgement, heaven, hell and purgatory.

The Rt Rev. Mark Davies, the Bishop of Shrewsbury, said in a pastoral letter to be read at Masses in the First Sunday of Lent that meditation on the “Last Things” might help the faithful to accept the invitation to conversion in their lives.

In his letter, the Bishop noted the observation of Blessed John Paul II in his book, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, that many people today have lost the sense of the “Last Things”, the body of teaching that deals with death, judgement, the destination of our immortal souls and the bodily resurrection.

“Being aware of this limited time on earth and all that is to follow – our judgment, our purgatory, heaven or hell forever – becomes an urgent invitation to conversion in our lives,” the Bishop said. ...

Bishop Davies ... also explained why the Catholic Church resists the temptation to simply look back in a “celebration of life” at funerals, saying that the focus is instead the final destination of the soul of the deceased in view of the pledge of eternal life promised by Our Lord.

Read Bishop Davies' entire pastoral letter here. Here writes in refreshingly stark terms about the reality of hell. Here's an excerpt:

There is also a terrible reality of which the Gospel repeatedly speaks: “immediate and everlasting damnation” (CCC 1022). For “to die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God’s merciful love,” the Catechism explains, “means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice” (CCC 1033). Yes, this is the real and everlasting choice of our lives.