Chemistry, Death, Judgment

Suppose you had a Chemistry final in two weeks time and the material that you have to review/study seems to be infinite.  You are stressing over it yet five of your friends tell you that the final will not be difficult.  They say that you should relax because everyone passes it and that preparing for it would be a waste of time.  Seeing that they seem convincing, you believe them and you spend the next two weeks doing everything but study.  Finally the day of the test comes and you walk into the exam room with complete confidence that you are going to pass.  The horror arrives at the moment you see the first question and realize that you do not know how to answer it.  You look at the second....third...and fourth page and the sense of dread increases in you.  Unsurprisingly, you fail the test.

Now, suppose that you are a Catholic who attends Mass on Sunday yet never hears about the reality of death and Judgment.  Everyone around you seems to already canonize their dead realtives by saying things like,

"Uncle Jimmy was such a good man.  He's smiling in heaven right now and playing golf with Uncle Thomas."

Hearing things like this make you happy.  You say to yourself,

"I am a good man.  I go to Church on Sundays.  I don't really go to Confession that often but then again I don't commit those really big sins and the sins (wait, maybe they're not even sins!) I do commit are really minor.  Heaven is going to be great and after my great life here is finished, I am going to be there."

My friends, I bring up these two situations because I find a theme in both of them.  In both cases, we see two people who are overly confident in the reaction of their peers when it comes to a huge future event.  Sadly for them, their friends/fellow Catholics are wrongly mistaken and instead of following the time tested advice of working hard, the two folks have taken the wide path.

When our short journey here on earth is over, we will be judged.  Either we will go to Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory.  If we die and we have a mortal sin on our soul, we will go to hell.  If we die in a state of grace, we will most likely have to enter Purgatory before entering Heaven.  If Catholics around us are not taking the reality of a strict Judgment seriously, we should never let them influence our view(s).  The Church has always recommend for Her children to take this topic of death with the utmost seriousness.  Prayer, penance, and hard work.

Labor in the Lord's Vineyard while you still have time.



Salve Regina!