I heard about the Four Last Things many years ago, and I must confess that I've thought about them quite often ever since.
Today being Good Friday, it's an appropriate time to discuss these end-of-life issues. The Four Last Things are as follows: Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell.
As to the first item, well, we're all aware of it. Every human being will die. Even Jesus Christ did. In a world of subjective "truth" and ever-shifting relativism, death is what one is compelled to identify as an objective fact.
From that point on, opinions diverge widely. Our modern secular world, even many religious philosophies, would disagree with the other three things. It's considered almost quaint, perhaps even foolish, in our modern world to believe we will be held accountable before God for our actions in this life. But Catholics believe that each of us will be answerable to God for our sins. Can you think of a more daunting scenario? This particular Catholic cannot.
Then there's the question of heaven and hell. In the Gospels, Jesus talks about hell more than any other person in the Bible. If you don't believe heaven and hell exist, you won't think or worry about them. But going back to objective fact--what if heaven and hell are real? What if each of us is going to spend eternity in one or the other state of being? I know where I want to be, but I have no assurance that I actually will make the cut. That's where faith comes in.
The Four Last Things, by Fr. Martin Von Cochem, addresses all these sobering topics in detail. It is not light reading; I wouldn't recommend it at bedtime. But it is an important book, underscoring the spirituality inherent in the universal experience of death and the inevitable realities that Catholics believe will follow.
