By Fr. Joseph B Francis –
Our biological death has to take place before we move from this world of 4 dimensions to the next world of those in heaven or purgatory that we mentioned in the last chapter about the Communion of Saints. We are transferred from the Church Militant to the Church Triumphant or the Church Suffering. Regarding one’s biological death, normally one cannot predict the precise moment. It could be very sudden or after a long illness. This does not matter at all for a Christian. What is important for him is: what final fundamental choice he makes IN death. Theologians today make a distinction between: before, after and in death. “Before” death is not yet the final because we could be changing from hour to hour or even minute to minute since the human being is fickle; “after” death is of no use because it is too late, the choice has already been made and stratified; it is the final fundamental choice “IN” death that is important because our eternity depends on it.
Significance of the fundamental choice IN death
We may ask what the significance of the choice is “IN” death. Is it just one moment? Or is it a process? Today’s thinking is that it is a process and not just one moment. We find that people in coma stage sometimes could still hear and sense what is going on but cannot respond. So they can still make a choice. This is why it is recommended for priests called to the bedside of comatose patients to say loudly that they have come to give absolution and the sacrament of anointing and then proceed to administer them in an audible voice. Even if a patient were clinically dead with the stoppage of heart beat, the brain may still be alive and the fundamental choice could be made in the silence of the mind and will and so is the priest recommended to give conditional absolution and anointing up to an hour after heart-beat had stopped. Even in the case of atomic blast we say that the choice could still be made since the choice is made in the immortal soul endowed with intelligence and free will. Why is this insistence? It is because God does not will us to die as animals which have no free choice. He wants us to die as human beings and gives us this very last chance “IN” death to make our choice for him or against him.
Freedom enjoyed by the human beings as “persons”
We should not forget that having created us as human “persons” endowed with intelligence and free will, God respects our freedom of choice. He will not pull us into heaven against our will nor will he push us into hell. The choice is ours and the granting is his. If we choose to be with God forever, he graciously grants it to us. That is indeed to be in heaven where God and all the saints and angels of heaven are in the 5th dimension which is invisible to us who still live in the world of 4 dimensions. It is just around us but we do not see it. Think of it this way: heaven is where God is and God is everywhere and so logically heaven should be everywhere! If on the contrary your choice is to be away from God, you will be forever away from God and that is hell. The choice is yours and God accedes to it with regrets.
It is worth mentioning that the final choice seals our choice for all eternity. You may ask why it is so. The reason is we keep growing or declining as long as we have physical, mortal bodies but once this is gone we get fixated. It is also said that angels were created good and just like us they too were given the chance to make a choice because God had endowed them with intelligence and free will. But they could make only one fundamental choice because they have no human bodies like us and hence the one fundamental choice they make would decide their eternity. It is said a certain number of them chose to go against God and they became the devils. As devils they have intelligence and will but because of their terrible choice they are twisted and choose evil constantly. It has become stratified in them. Similarly the human being who has made the final fundamental choice “IN” death to be away from God is forever away from God and twisted in his intelligence and will, having embraced evil forever and that is to be in the state of hell.
Where is “hell”?
The question is sometimes asked: where is hell? It is not a separate place but rather the whole of reality is hell for one who chose to be away from God who pervades all of reality. While those who have chosen to be with God see him in all of reality in the 5th dimension, the Lost will be in the same place but in a different mental situation voluntarily chosen and fixed of “I do not want God”. So hell is what they carry around them forever.
What we have said in this chapter should make us realize the importance of this final fundamental choice. It is because of this that our Christian life and practices help us to make constant choices for God so that when the crucial time arrives, we would make the right choice. This could be done in spite of our occasional falls due to human weakness. This person has been always seeking God and trying to do the right thing: rising and falling, sinning and repenting but on the whole wanting to be with God; such a person is bound to make the right final choice.
The tree falls, they say, on the side to which it is inclined. A good prayer life (tailored according to one’s situation in daily life), taking an active part in Sunday liturgy, trying to do good to all around us, using the sacraments (if we are capable of receiving them) is all that is needed and when the time arrives for you to make your final fundamental choice “IN” death you will indeed choose God and be with him in all eternity. Therefore a practising Christian need not be anxious about his eternal life. You die as you live or in other words what has always remained at the background of your life, even perhaps unconsciously, will somehow see you through. This also a reason why we insist on catechism for our Catholic Children: at home, in the parish, at school and at the time of marriage. We hope that all these would lay foundation for that all important choice “IN” death.