Almost at the end of the journey! After "I believe in the Church" here is "the communion of Saints, the resurrection of the flesh and eternal life". Here that "almost" applies.

 

It is the bond that unites the earth and the sky in the dead and risen Jesus, and in the Holy Spirit... On earth it is the union of all those who live - knowing it explicitly, or recognizing it implicitly with facts - the command of love as man's only duty... "Everything works together for the good of those who love God" (Rom. 8, 28), and there are many who truly love God even without knowing him fully, but recognizing him in their neighbor to feed, to quench, to help... is the lesson of the Final Judgment in Matthew 25, on the lips of Jesus himself. Among all those who love God, and who have known and recognized him, or even just recognized him without fully knowing him, a solidarity of "common union", or "communion" is formed, which in terms of traditional theology, always valid in this , it is called the Mystical Body of Christ... I won't stop on it here, but I believe that anyone who reads it can understand what an ocean of effective and salvific solidarity, in the Holy Spirit, is created on earth, and between earth and heaven, just by thinking in depth to the effects of this sanctifying presence of the Spirit without boundaries known to us... it is what makes us serene in the face of the question about the eternal salvation of many brothers, the majority of humanity certainly, from the beginning of human history and until the return of the Lord at the right hand of the Father...

Ecclesial "communion", in this context, is only one of the visible forms of the universal call to salvation and holiness of which Vatican II became the definitive herald... it is also the mysterious invention, to give just one example, of the "chain ” which unites heaven and earth already now, and which allowed Therese of Lisieux to say: “I want to spend my Heaven doing good on earth”.

Let's move on... Here then is "the resurrection of the flesh and eternal life".

 

But this says something that goes further. The important reality of our “dying” comes into play. A universal mystery on which all humanity has always wondered, and on which perhaps in recent decades we have not been capable, as Christians and Catholics, of translating the faith announced by Jesus and transmitted by the Apostles and martyrs without betraying it, and therefore - taking a look around - we see that in our community - catechisms, homilies, prayers, reflections, spiritual retreats - little or nothing is talked about about it. In fact, let's ask ourselves how long it has been since the celebrant at Mass reminded us of what were once called "the Novissimi": Death, Judgement, Hell and Paradise...

Yet it is a fundamental theme and question: what is dying? And what is being resurrected to eternal life? It is said that the discourse of the Catechism no longer holds up and the remedy would be to continue to believe without questions, without trying to understand. Yet Jesus said to him, and to us too: "I go to prepare a place for you" (Jn. 14, 2). It is said that it is a mystery, but the fact remains that even on this, perhaps above all on this, as believers we have a duty, the one recalled by Saint Peter, to "give an account of the hope that is within us". So it's worth looking into further, maybe not all at once...

First question: what is dying? Malraux wrote that if we don't find a meaning in our death, our whole life risks losing it... And today we don't talk about death: doctors' stuff... No: to talk about what we call the "after" we have to talk after having answered on it…

 

We take “dying” as such. What is it? What does the Christian faith say? In reality two things: that death is both "an end" and punishment for sin, and "a sister" - with St. Francis - and even "the end" of existence itself. The story of creation from the first lines of Scripture testifies to the fact that it is punishment. And Saint Paul makes a perfect synthesis of it: death "the wages of sin" (Rom. 6,23), "the last enemy" (I Cor. 11). But he himself also says it is an object of desire: “I long to be freed (from earthly life) to be with Christ” (Phil. 26, 1). Even Jesus was afraid of death, in Gethsemane - "let this cup pass from me" - but he also told his followers that he wanted to drink that "cup", receive that "baptism", and was in pain until he did so (Lk. 23, 12).

Therefore two faces of dying, connected, but not identical. And to move forward I read about Lazarus, Gospel of John, chapter 11. Was he dead or not? First obvious answer: yes, “for four days, and it already stinks”. Jesus also says it: “Lazarus is dead!” But earlier he had also said that "this illness is not for death... Lazarus, our friend, is sleeping, and I am going to wake him up".

Lazarus is dead, but he is not dead: why? Perhaps - this is the hypothesis that I dare to propose here - because what we call "death" has two dimensions, distinct and different: one is the physical, biological one, from lack of functions up to the flat encephalogram, with a precise date, exhaustion of the vital energies of the concrete person, ascertainable with a legal certificate... And Lazarus had died of this death, and for four days. it is death as punishment, as "end", "last enemy", defeat of the vital energy of every man. And Jesus calls back to life this Lazarus "already dead for four days", who after a few years will die another time of physical death, and will also be the other face, that of death as "sister", as "end" and fulfillment of the "desire" to be with God, entry into eternity and the "joy of his Lord". 

So? Then someone, p. e.g. in the history of Christian and Catholic theology, he comes to our aid. He is a great saint and "doctor" of the Church, John Damascene, who lived between the 7th and 8th centuries: "Hoc est hominibus mors, quod fuit Angelis temptatio" ("death is for men what was the test for the Angels" ). Death as a choice: either with God or against Him... After Damascene, other Christian thinkers, up to the present day, on this path... And this rethinking of dying not only as "getting rid of" the body and the historical condition, but also as a "choice" that becomes eternal life in God - Heaven - or eternal life without God and against God - Hell - will serve us to move forward... 

I apologize to the reader: so the discussion is halfway, but space is tyrant, and we will continue at the next opportunity: the hope is that it can be useful...