D
dcana
Guest
Thank you, Bob, for sharing your experience, as well as all of you. Even though you have described it “ad infinitum,” it is the first time I’ve heard it. Keep praying for your dad. I personally agree very much with what you have been saying, that we basically judge ourselves. When we die we are stripped utterly naked of all our pretensions and falsehoods. We become who we really are, good and bad, and in God’s presence we see ourselves as God sees us. What a potentially terrifying experience! I think our judgement goes basically like this: if we are completely devoid of all love (love being God Himself and a gift of God) - in other words, if we are in a state of mortal sin - the sight and very thought of God, who is Love, repels and disgusts us, and we willingly go to the only place where God is not present at all - “our own place,” as Jesus says, in contrast to the “Father’s place,” in whose house are many mansions, and where God is present “over all and in all and through all.” If we have that “piece of God” in us which is Love, we are attracted to Him as two magnets, by invisible but very real “bonds of Love.” In that case, we possess the “likeness of God.” But if we see that there are stains of sin left on our soul, we cannot bear or even imagine entering heaven in such a state, and we willingly go to Purgatory, to be purified by the flames of God’s Love in order to enter heaven spotless - as it says in Scripture, “nothing unclean shall enter it.” If nothing is in our way, we fly straight to God, unimpeded. As St. John of the Cross says, “in the twilight of life, we will be judged on our love.” Of course, this is just a simplistic way of looking at something that only God knows the full details of, whose “thoughts are as high above our own thoughts as the heavens are above the earth.” The thing we can be 100% sure about is that God is infinitely merciful, but also infinitely just. Entering heaven, as opposed to “being saved” at some point in life, is always described in Scripture as conditional on the way we have behaved. We will be judged by our works and whether or not we have done the Father’s will. But isn’t it the Father’s will that we do good (works) and avoid evil (sin)? Naturally. “He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
I think this applies to people of all religions. Now I’m being even more speculative; take it for what it’s worth, if it’s worth anything. If someone even has a shred of Love within them, they will be saved. Does a person need to be a Christian to do genuinely good things for their neighbor and to have Love within them? I don’t think so. Who or what is the source of goodness and Love if not Christ Himself? As we say at every Mass, “…through Jesus Christ, from whom all good things come.” If God chose through His gracious will to give the person a chance to accept the Gospel of faith and salvation in His Son, and they reject it, then it’s another story, objectively speaking. Would Love then remain in such a soul? Maybe at the very moment after death they are given a chance to accept or reject Christ, in some mysterious way. Only God knows.
I wonder how atheists, or even anybody who discounts the whole phenomenon of NDE’s, explain this. There is no natural reason for such a drastic change in personality. Why don’t people come back “evil” instead, seeking to do as much damage in the world as possible, or have some other remarkable change in personality? I’ve never heard of such a thing, personally.