He’s coming

I’ve been feeling pretty adventy (adventurous?) for a few weeks now, so I’m pretty happy it’s now officially advent, and we’re all waiting together.

What I mean is, I’ve been feeling the need for Christ to come lately. There’s so much in the world that just doesn’t make sense, so much sin and meaningless suffering, and it’s been getting to me. I can’t stand it. And so I’ve found myself thinking, when is Jesus coming to sort this out? And thinking about how great it will be when He does.

Advent has confirmed this desire in me, for Christ’s glorious return and judgment, and has also reminded me, that He has already come, and He comes still, and we’re not just passive observers of His coming. I have to do my part. I must prepare the way of the Lord, into my heart, by repentance. And I must welcome Him, recognising His voice, His presence. And I must bear Him to the world with love, magnifying Him and rejoicing in Him.

Repent, welcome, and bear. Repent, clearing away every obstacle, filling in valleys and levelling mountains, so He can march straight in. Welcome, because He’s already here, so we must say our Fiat, let it be done to me, according to Your word, submitting to His will. Bear, carrying  Him with us to the world’s sin and suffering, because He is already with us, and that is what He came for.

To repent is to turn towards Him, to welcome is to listen to Him, to bear Him is to live in love with Him.

And so, by His grace, with our preparation, He comes to us, to our sin and suffering, and makes sense of it by His love, by His life, death and resurrection.

God bless you!

Thinking about hell…

Lately I’ve been reading ‘The End of the Present World and the Mysteries of the Future Life’ by Fr. Charles Arminjon, and have now begun the section on hell. And it’s got me thinking…

What is time even like in an eternal hell?

Fr. Arminjon makes the point that if hell is not eternal, but only a temporary punishment before joining the saints in heaven for eternity, then it’s of no real consequence or threat. A temporary hell makes no dent in the sinner’s eternal bliss, even if it were a billion years long, and those in hell could comfort themselves that their sin was worth it to get what they wanted, when they wanted. Ultimately, rebellion against God and obedience to God would achieve the same eternal end.

This got me thinking, what does the passing of time feel like in the context of eternity? When there’s a change coming up, we feel time as how close we are to that change. With no end to hell, what concept of time could there be? What difference does it make, and so what does it mean, to have been there for ten, twenty, a hundred, or a million years? Time seems to collapse into meaninglessness. I imagine something similar can sometimes happen to those given a life sentence, although even then, there is the end brought by death…

Or is there change, and therefore time, in hell? Perhaps there is change within the person, but not in the environment… Perhaps the type or intensity of punishment changes…

I imagine those in hell would find eternity itself another torture, as impatience tries to grasp at something, and achieve some kind of progress. ‘Gnashing of teeth’ seems to express this impatience very well to me.

Heaven’s eternity must be different… No impatience for one thing, firstly because we’ll be perfect, and secondly, we’ll have everything we ever desired in full. I wonder if there is change in Heaven? If not, it is not because we have only one moment for the rest of forever, but because the fullness of time will be ever present to us, as it is to God. I believe we’ll be co-creative with God in Heaven, and so there must be some kind of change, though perhaps, like God, our creativity will occur in changing time, while we ourselves are not constrained by time…

 

If it weren’t for hell, would I have given up?

I think pretty much everyone is tempted to despair at some point. Hell makes sin an absolute decision. If I hadn’t been warned about eternal punishment in hell, would I have accepted both sin and punishment as inevitable parts of my inevitable journey to Heaven? I think I might have… I’m naturally pretty lazy and pretty short-sighted in my decisions (I’m working on this).

These days, I know I don’t enjoy sin even when I’m sinning, and hate being separated from God for any amount of time. But would I have learnt to love God and hate sin for themselves, if I hadn’t known of the eternal consequences?

I suppose if I could have seen God clearly enough, and so seen sin clearly enough too, I would have… I think the issue is, I wouldn’t see either of these realities, because I’d be too caught up with the finite realities of pleasure and pain in each action. I need to look to the infinite reality in each of my actions, and pointing forward to the time when that’s all that’s left of them seems to be a pretty good method of doing this.

 

If anyone is lost, does God not lose? How will God then be ‘all in all’?

The Father Almighty desires all to be saved (2 Pet 3:9, 1 Tim 2:4), and that at the end of time, He shall be ‘all in all’ (1 Cor 15:28), with all things subject to Him. So if anyone at all goes to hell, has God failed? Has God not got His desire? Is it enough for God that some things to be subject to His justice, but not His mercy?

[Thanks to The Catholic Gentleman for the picture]

My question isn’t whether eternal damnation is just, but whether it is good and glorious enough to be befitting of God and His creation at the fulness of time?

There is a common theological explanation of hell today, that says that those in hell choose to be there, in their rejection of God, and that this privation is the pain of hell. C.S. Lewis, for example, said that the gates of hell are locked from the inside. This works nicely to shift the blame away from God, but it means some eternally refuse to bend the knee and submit to God at all. I think it would be better, and kinder too, if those in hell loved and desired God, even though they could not have Him.

This question really has me stumped…

 

If you have any answers, thoughts, comments or questions, please comment or, better yet, write a post about it. I think we don’t talk enough about hell. I don’t mean that we should start threatening people with fire and worms, but it is too important to ignore, and we are far too ignorant. What’s more, I think we seem on the one hand, incoherent, believing in both mercy and hell, and on the other hand, like we don’t really believe at all, because we seem to quietly ignore the scary or inconvenient parts.

Thanks for reading, and God bless you!

Why did God create?- God’s plan

Why would God, who is infinitely and definitively good, create? No quantity or quality of creation will ever increase the total amount of good that exists, since He is infinitely good already. Why should there be creation, if creation adds nothing to its creator?

Because of the nature of good itself. Truly, good is not like mere human desires and pleasure. It is not something to hoard, and seek for yourself. God’s goodness is not His being perpetually pleased with Himself. God is not the perfect drug.

Rather, it is in the nature of good to give itself. Goodness is inherently diffusive. At all times, the good desires to give itself, and to be united to others. Consider how a flower’s scent gives itself to those nearby, and is especially good as we are united with it by breathing it in, and how the flower advertises itself with beautiful colours, and invites in the butterfly, to drink of its sweet nectar, and so be even more perfectly united by nourishing the butterfly’s flesh.

Goodness entails a thing pouring itself out, into the other. Consider how the Sun doesn’t only illuminate itself, but all of creation. And consider how Brother Sun is actually destroying his own mass, at a rate of about 4 billion kilograms per second, to provide heat and light for the cosmos, and how the Earth receives this energy, and turns it to life! The Sun gives itself, and so is united with and internalised by Earth, and the Earth, filled with the Sun, leaps and hops and sings and rejoices!

So God did not create seeking goodness, but expressing and sharing and pouring out His goodness. And this gift is everything, because God created from nothing, ex nihilo, giving all things even their very being. God creates because He is good, not because He wants good. God made all creation, in order to share His goodness.

But God’s goodness is not content to stop at creation of the universe, but desires this universe to be bursting with God Himself. He is determined to share His very person, His very self, with us.

To this end, God sent His Son to us, as one of us. Jesus was in the heart of the earth three days and three nights, that the eternal life in him who is the resurrection and the life, might fertilise even the dirt of death, that life may burst forth. The only begotten Son of God comes to us as the Bread of Life, giving himself completely in the Paschal sacrifice, to unite himself to us, to fill us with his own life, that we may live because of him, even as he lives because of the Father (Jn 6:57).

God created the whole world, that He could give Himself to it. God gathers the whole universe under Christ Jesus, the head of all things for the Church, which is his body, the fulness of him who fills all in all (Eph1:22-23). God’s plan is for all creation, in the fulness of time, to rejoice with the children of God, perfectly united with Him, and unveiled in the glory of the children of God (Ro 8:21-22, 1Jn 3:2).

What is this incredible, self-giving, diffusive, unifying good? It is none other than love.

‘God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.’ 1 John 4:16

It is love that is good. Love is always in motion, always giving itself away. If God is love, and love is self-giving, what exactly is God giving? Doesn’t there have to be something existing itself before it can give itself? But God’s existence itself is not something passive, but His gift of Being. This is a great mystery, but I know, through and through, God is love. God is the ultimate giver, and all He asks is to be received!

We are to be thoroughly transformed by God’s love, through and through. We are to be full of God to overflowing, and we shall share in His glory, and rejoice with all creation, to all eternity.

‘God has placed you in this world not because he needs you in any way–you are altogether useless to him–but only to exercise his goodness in you by giving you his grace and glory.’ St. Francis de Sales

God bless you!

P.S. I just want to acknowledge that so much of this is informed by the wonderful book, ‘The Humility of God’ by Sr Ilia Delio. This book is quite incredible, and revealed a great deal to me, although there are parts I find myself disagreeing with still, and many times had to pause and check how what she wrote aligns with Church teaching, only to find she makes this clear on the next page. It was difficult but incredibly rewarding.