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Good companions do much to form people in what is good. But, how can we convert the bad if we ourselves do not know what constitutes good? Many follow the current of least resistance. Today that is a rushing tide dominated by a secular humanism and bad companions. A Christian society has faced a genuine eclipse or collapse. The cliché has taken hold, “If everybody is doing it, it must be okay!”   Like lemmings jumping off a cliff to their deaths or rushing into the sea to drown, many play a game of follow the leader.  Everyone wants to fit in. Behind the troubles of our times remains a spiritual agency, the devil. Extending from the beginning to the end of time and the consummation, Satan has his hand in the mix.  Whenever there is a vacuum left open by the absence of grace, he quickly infests the space.   

We must ask ourselves, are we interested in what the Lord offers us? Do we really appreciate the gifts he holds out to those who believe in him and love him?  Who or what is the Lord of our life? I wonder if we give sufficient consideration that while we are made in the image of God, we are not God. It is true that our Lord takes our nature in becoming a man, but he remains a divine Person, not human. We are likely too quick to assume we understand his unique psychology.  This is probably most true in our assessment of the Divine Mercy as it relates to the Divine Justice.  The latter in past generations was understood as the Wrath of God.  Within this “wrath” there is nothing of the sin of anger by the same name.  It is not out-of-control or disproportionate to the cause of righteous indignation. Like two shades or colors placed alongside each other in a painting project, it is the vast disparity between what God would have us be and become, compared to the actual truth of our identity and how we think and behave. It is not so much that the changeless God is moved to anger but rather his justice is stirred toward our failure to rightly employ our freedom in becoming saints. God’s providence will be accomplished. However, within this wonderful and terrible mystery, some will cooperate with grace and others will not. A few will know the gift of salvation and many will invite damnation.

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When we begin to place our opinions above the teachings of Scripture and the Church, the movement is necessarily away from the true Christ and one God. It is in this sense that modern idolatry is less an alternative theism as it is part of the modern movement toward atheism. If God’s revelation and divine positive law no longer matters, it is only because so few believe. A practical atheism becomes formalized. We have seen this movement in liberal Protestantism— first, rejection of Christ’s priesthood and Eucharist, next, a subjective interpretation of Scripture over the ancient fathers and magisterium, and finally a watered-down religion that turns to an absentee deity not worth worshipping or obeying. God’s word becomes merely literary metaphors without real substance. This allows dissenters to make of Christ anything they like. His identity becomes infinitely pliable and fictional. Lacking the sacraments, he becomes a character sandwiched between the pages of an ancient book that is dismissed by many and worshipped by a superstitious few. The Marxist views Christ within the model of a revolutionary who distrusts the rich and wants to institute an egalitarian society. The radical feminist would negate his incarnational gender and interpret the cross as the empowerment of women in shaking off the yoke of sexist men. It can be very moving, at least until we remember that it is all exaggerated or made up. The Christian kerygma is wrongly reduced to a means toward an ends. However, it should be the other way around. Our objective is to restore all things in Christ.  He must become all in all. He is the ends.  Our approach to God and finding salvation in his kingdom is the goal of life. 

Many would say that the problem is simply our placing human opinions over the dictates of revealed moral law, both divine positive and natural. But the difficulty is far more complex. We are facing not just closed minds but hardened hearts. The Church may complain about the current state of affairs but the stewards of faith and other believers have often been complacent or derelict in passing on our values to the next generation. Why would we expect proper moral behavior or an appreciation for the good, the true and the beautiful, from those ill-formed by ignorance and influences hostile to reality and virtue? Modern art often looks like something that did not survive a car accident. Might this be a tell-tale sign of the ugly semblance we find in souls? A corrupted spirit no longer knows what constitutes beauty. A mind poisoned by lies has lost the ability to discern the truth.  Shepherds of faith compromised by the scandal of sexual abuse, have forfeited their moral authority as teachers. Why listen to them? Many people, not just youth, can no longer even say what is good. Criminals rationalize their crimes, and if there is any reservation, it is not in doing wrong but rather an upset that they got caught.    

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We can only imagine what it would be like if we did not have to struggle with concupiscence. Sometimes it resembles a kind of schizophrenia or madness. Indeed, it often perplexes us as to how a person can seem so holy and moral and yet struggle with addictions and dark desires. This duality has been explored in Robert Louis Stevenson’s STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE. While many speak of it as an allegory for good versus evil, in truth, it is not so simplistic. It is true that Hyde signifies the bestial, the lower nature, the part of us about which we are ashamed and seek to keep secret or “hide,” (note his name). But Jekyll is not the paragon of virtue. Rather, he is the ordinary man who earnestly seeks a place in civil society and to act appropriately.  In other words, Jekyll is “every man” struggling to keep rational control and to master his concupiscence.  The impulses he resists, Hyde follows.  The wicked designs he brushes aside as repugnant, Hyde celebrates. The passions he denies, Hyde fully realizes.  Hyde is evidence of what a person would become if human intellect and will were so damaged that no resistance could be mustered against base desires. While we might imagine that Hyde is the most free, such would be untrue. Hyde has lost control and thus his self-dominion and freedom are forfeit. The work is fiction and yet we live in a world populated by Jekyll and Hyde and those in-between. The most libertine parade a freedom that is a sham. They are slaves to their appetites.  Their passions own them instead of the other way around.   

Those who are closer to Hyde than Jeckyll would give greater weight to proximate ends over and against the supreme good and our ultimate end. The rapture of sensual gratification is wrongly preferred to general happiness and the joy of being in right relationship with God.  By contrast, Christian man and woman are called to self-discipline. The directives of Scripture, the moral formation of the Church, the pursuit of virtue over vice and the acquisition of grace are the factors in living our moral discipleship. We are part of the animal kingdom but we are not animals.

I am befuddled as to how all this will translate with perdition. If even the souls of the damned will be given back their bodies, then would this necessarily mean that the animalistic and the craving for sensual gratification would follow them into the afterlife? Is it possible that God would strip away the senses from the flesh, leaving the damned only with memory and imagination about the sensual? Might there be as many hells as there are damned— a colloquium for meaningless intellectual blabberings for some, a gluttonous feast for others and a licentious brothel for many more? I really cannot say. The usual description for hell refers to torment and fire. Maybe the fire or pain to the senses is eternal because what it seeks to cleanse refuses to be purified?  The sins of the flesh are rooted in pride. The question in my mind is what does God allow in hell? Will he permit blasphemous and lewd conduct?  If not, is this inhibition part of the price paid by the fallen? Is it akin to an alcoholic wanting a drink and never being able to have one? The sins of the flesh are readily connected to idolatry or false worship. But the afterlife forces one to see the truth.  I have a hard time imagining the damned and the demons worshipping Satan in an infernal parody of heaven. We might pretend to be God, but men are only weak creatures. The devil may play the part, but there is nothing truly creative about him.  He can only distort and corrupt. While God still loves him, it is not love that binds the damned to one another. What does provide for their union? I suspect it has to do with need and hunger and the divine withdrawal.  

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A conundrum arises with the Virgin Mary. As the new Eve, she is preserved from sin and thus would possess the preternatural gifts.  Death is a consequence of sin and yet tradition suggests that at the end of her life in this world, Mary died.  The late Pope John Paul II believed she died to share the pattern of Christ on his Cross. The Eastern churches are so offended by this notion, that they call the Assumption by the title, The Dormition (Falling Asleep) of the Blessed Theotokos (Mother of God). Just as we drift off into dreams with sleeping, Mary is thought to drift from this world into eternity.

I am reminded of the three species of Martians (Malacandrians) in C.S. Lewis’ science-fiction trilogy. Having not fallen like humanity on the Silent Planet “Earth,” the Martians know something of death and yet there is nothing of mourning. Indeed, they speak and relate to the dead as if they were still alive. At the end of their mortal lives there is a smooth transition to immortality and a new state of being. They join closer to Maleldil or God. Their unity or communion with one another is sustained. Had Adam and Eve not fallen, it is suggested that death might have been as easy as opening a door and stepping from one room to another— it would lack finality or the darkness that threatens to consume us. Indeed, we might argue that this is not true death at all, at least as we know it. In any case, we experience no easy or casual transition. Death changes everything. We experience the absence of the deceased. The door closes quickly and we are fearful as to what awaits us on the other side.

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While sins of the flesh might steer many men and women toward perdition; it should be noted that a third of the angels were cast out, and they did not have bodies at all. Their natural superiority did not make them morally better than ourselves. Sins of the intellect and will, define the angelic fall. Along with angelic beings, our first parents of flesh and spirit succumbed to the serpent’s temptation despite the availability of preternatural gifts. While our humanity is wounded, the benefit we have is a full store of divine mercy and the sacraments. But will we take advantage of what God offers us for salvation?  Will we use our freedom wisely or misuse it?

When pondering the ends of human beings, one must consider our origins and our current status in the created order. Catholicism would insist upon a definite Christian anthropology. Thus we reflect upon the following: the circumstance of our first parents, the effects of the fall and original sin, the scientific evidence for development of species, the question of preternatural gifts, and the current human condition. There is much dispute and argumentation about the manner in which we were made. Was our creation spontaneous with God’s word and his breath of life or did the first men and women develop from earlier life forms or proto-humans? God can do as he wills and there is increasing evidence for the latter. However, the Church would insist upon two points:  one, that the soul does not evolve but was immediately infused into the first man and woman; and two, we did not develop from multiple couples but from a single pairing of a man and woman. They set the trajectory for the entire human race. They could have remained faithful and, for all we know, the consummation of all things would have come earlier in history. As it is, they commit original sin and that rebellion has a disastrous impact upon them and their descendants.  Suffering, sin and death enter the world.

We often imagine Adam and Eve as naïve fools or children who are easily swayed by the serpent. The Scriptural account affirms this impression. Eve is definitely intimidated by the satanic dragon. Adam simply seems to feebly cave in to Eve in accepting the forbidden fruit. And yet the Church has discerned that humanity before the fall must have had some sense of its great calling and the wherewithal to live it out.  Unlike the creatures around him, the first man stood up on two legs and stared in awe at the creation around him.  He was aware of himself and of the one who had fashioned him.  Indeed, a residual memory (the fact that we remain wired for God) could be discerned after the fall in how tribes of men sought to worship or render sacrifice to the divine mystery.

What had humanity forfeited in the fall? The Church speaks of preternatural gifts: (1) infused science or knowledge (the opposite of ignorance); (2) physical integrity (the opposite of concupiscence); corporeal immortality (the opposite of death); and original righteousness (the opposite of original sin). Given these great gifts, it is indeed a mystery that our first parents fell at all. It may be that they did not have these gifts for long. The smallest spark of rebellion would have brought disgrace upon them. They hide themselves in shame because they are naked. They have been stripped of these wonderful gifts. As with the angels, there was likely some veil or separation that allowed them to turn against God as the greatest good. However, while each and every angel is a species unto himself; men and women belonged to a single unified species.  The choice they make would not merely impact upon them but upon the entire human family.  Fallen man prefers the path of the beast. One can imagine him falling to all fours, finding it easier to follow the flesh instead of the spirit— choosing ignorance over awareness— choosing rebellion in his members over self-control— choosing violence and death over peace and life— choosing to play God instead of humbly walking with him in the garden. Evolutionists have joked that monkeys became men. Christians had argued that in truth it was the other way around. Men and women became beasts! After the fall, we are not entirely abandoned. God promises a Messiah who will heal the rift between heaven and earth. We know him as Jesus Christ. He grants us sanctifying grace and actual graces. We become equipped with virtues to do battle with vice.

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Certain evangelicals place much of their confidence in a faith profession in Jesus as their chief saving act. However, the Scriptures define “saving faith” in terms of loving obedience. Faith must be made real, not simply in a moment of inspiration but in a lifetime of witness.  Sanctifying grace comes along with faith and baptism but can be lost through mortal sin. A saving faith can sour. It is for this reason that the sacrament of penance is of paramount importance. But few seek out the priest’s absolution. Jesus has given his Church the benefit of his healing and mercy but too many shun the sacraments. What happens to a person obstinate in sin who takes his spiritual intransigence to the grave? As of this writing there are some 62 million Catholics in the United States.  Lapsed or defecting Catholics who are likely never to return is assessed at about 41%. Not counting the possible number of non-Catholics who will be counted among the damned, this means that around 25 to 26 million will be convicted by Christ for deliberately forsaking his Church. Maybe they blame the scandals or maybe the world was better with its message of greed, lust and power?  Warmongers make poor messengers of Christ’s peace. People who are angry with God have no room in their souls for grace. Those who hate, a political epidemic in our society, can know neither the love of neighbor nor of God. Disappointment in God and pointing the finger at others, while excusing ourselves of culpability, allows for no repentance and amendment of life. Those who delight in the excess of the senses, especially regarding lust, not only defile themselves but strip others of value and treat “persons” as “commodities.” Those who refuse to pray or worship God would not want any part of heaven’s constant adulation of the divine. Those who strip the innocent unborn of any right to life are enemies of the incarnate Christ Child— the God that comes to save.

Too many profess “Jesus” with their lips or claim incorporation in  Catholicism like a club membership, while not walking the walk with our Lord.  They live immodest lives of impurity. Their hearts are cold. They live like beasts, subject to the passions, but unmoved by the spirit. The idols of new age religion or confessions that reinvent Christ are given their loyalty. Some may literally worship the “almighty dollar.” All will have to render an account to the Lord (1 Peter 4:3-5).  While we speak of the Lord as judge, we will each convict ourselves. 

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