Parousia question

[Franciscan]

When Jesus returns for the final Judgment do the good people who are still alive die before they are taken into heaven? Will everyone die? How much suffering will the good have to endure so much so that they die? Or will they just be transformed into resurrected type beings?

 

[Todd_Easton]

St. Paul seems to indicate that those who are living at the time of Jesus’ Second Coming will not die but will be changed, putting on immortality.

15For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first; 17then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord. 18Therefore comfort one another with these words. (1 Thessalonians 4:15-18)

50I tell you this, brethren: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51Lo! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. 53For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality. (1 Corinthians 15:50-53)

 

[Fidelis]

From the Rosary Light & Life Page:

As regards those who are still living when the world comes to an end, the more common opinion is that they will die in that final conflagration. The Catechism of the Council of Trent speaks of that as follows:

"When we say all (die) we mean those who will have died before the day of judgment, as well as those who will then die. That the Church acquiesces in the opinion that all, without distinction, shall die, and that this opinion is more consonant with truth, is the teaching of St. Jerome and St. Augustine. Nor does St. Paul in his epistle to the Thessalonians depart from this doctrine when he says:

‘Those who have died in Christ will rise first. Then we, the living, the survivors, will be caught up with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Thenceforth we shall be with the Lord unceasingly.’ (3:16,17)

“St. Ambrose explaining these words says: ‘In that very being caught up death shall take place, as it were, in a deep sleep, and the soul, having gone forth from the body, shall instantly return. For those who are alive shall die when they are taken up that, coming to the Lord, they may receive their souls from His presence; because in His presence they cannot be dead.’ This opinion is supported by the authority of St. Augustine in his book THE CITY OF GOD.” (St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that those alive at the world’s end will die in that conflagration. - Suppl. 74, 7, ad 3)

There are some Scripture scholars who hold that those living at the end of the world will be taken up to Christ without undergoing death. However, it is difficult to reconcile that opinion with the fact that the punishment of original sin imposes the obligation of undergoing death on every member of the human race with the exception of Christ and His Mother, both of whom voluntarily accepted death for the redemption of mankind. (CCC 1008, 1018) “If we die in Christ’s grace, physical death completes this dying with Christ (begun in Baptism) and so completes our incorporation into Him in His redeeming act.” (CCC 1010)
rosary-center.org/ll49n6.htm