I resume my reflection on the mystery of dying. Death is a true "mystery", as is life, and if a meaning is not found in death, life also risks losing its...

What is “dying”? An end and an end, we said: in the Christian tradition a punishment, but also a goal towards an "other" reality. A punishment for sin, announced in the book of Genesis (chapter 3) but also "sister" and object of desire of brothers and sisters that we call Saints: "I desire to be loosed, and to be with Christ!" (Phil. 1, 23). 

I began to propose - in the wake for example of the great Doctor of the Church Saint John Damascene, and taking up themes treated more recently by illustrious theologians such as Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Karl Rahner, Ladislaus Boros and others - a vision of dying in which two different dimensions: physical death which marks the end of a way of existing in space and time, and personal death, which would be the passage from this earthly dimension to the eternal one, in God and in the light of the offer of grace of resurrection of Christ, the first among many brothers, He Son of God by nature, their children of God by His grace, in the paschal mystery of passion-death-resurrection-ascension-pentecost which changes both life and death for those who they welcome the invasion of God's grace.

To understand this, I gave the example of Lazarus, dead for four days, but then called back to life by Jesus' imperative: "Lazarus, come out!" Was he dead or alive? Physically he was certainly dead, Lazarus, but his personal death, as a passage into the light of the paschal mystery, had not touched him: friend of Jesus, he was not "yet" in Heaven. Truly dead – Jesus says it openly: “Lazarus is dead” – but – Jesus again: “Lazarus is sleeping…”.

Here then are two dimensions of dying: a physical one and a personal one as a passage to another life. Physical death can be ascertained and dated with the place and time of the event, personal death is a passage of state, of essential condition of the individual who has died physically: a mysterious passage.

 

Death as a “final option”

But what is? What could this “passage” be? Here lies the aforementioned intuition of Saint John Damascene, endorsed by the theologians indicated above. Physical death, as seen as datable and verifiable by all, is accompanied by a reality of choice on the part of the dying man, because "not everything is mortal", and this choice is the acceptance or rejection of the life-giving presence of God, love, light, life, joy offered to all human creatures who have more than ever before the possibility of definitively choosing what they want to be in the definitive dimension of their being men: with God or against God, with uncreated and creative Love or against him.

A final choice, therefore, or rather "the" final choice offered to all men, small or large, innocent children or sinful adults, in the act of passing from this life in space and time and the eternal life offered by the just and without limits to their freedom...

An obvious immediate difficulty comes to mind: but then those - even illustrious theologians like Von Balthasar - are right in stating that Hell is empty!

They may well be right, but the Catechism always speaks not only of Heaven and Hell, but also of Purgatory. Here then is the condition of the dying person, different for each of us: an innocent child rejected at his birth will only have to turn to the light, to the Love that opens up before him in his death. 

The Catechism says he will go to Heaven immediately. An average sinner - like us, between those who read and those who write - has to "convert" the whole reality of the sin that has marked his life... Our sins, with which our badly used freedom has burdened us, like the our merits with which Grace has embellished us, are the fabric of which our entire life prior to the event of death is woven. And this reality has its weight in the act of final choice...

Let me use some examples: if the innocent child I spoke about above dies, obviously his availability to the light, to the truth, to the Love, which is God, is total. This applies to all innocent children, even those created by God who have not had Baptism: the redeeming blood of Jesus applies to them, even to them: He and He alone is the Savior of all... It will be said that innocent children they immediately go to Heaven... If a sinner like me, who writes, and you who read, dies, it will happen that in the face of Light, Truth and Love, sins, even forgiven ones, will have a weight that in some way will resist the immediate change and total attitude… 

Our Catechism calls this resistance, in need of purification, with the name of Purgatory: in the act of personally dying the creature purifies in the merciful fire of God's Love his baptismal garment, or his garment as a creature loved in any case by the Creator, the Father of everyone, and not just the baptized and aware of being such... If finally a hardened sinner dies - let's say as an example a Hitler, a Mengele, a Stalin who caused hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens to die on purpose from hunger, or a Pol Pot, a rapist of children, a willful murderer of innocents, his life will be a total resistance to acceptance and - assuming that a purification of Purgatory is impossible given the enormity of the state of sin - it will be Hell...

Last, but not least: will it really be possible to resist the Love that forgives and purifies up to this point? Perhaps it must be possible – therefore Hell must exist – but perhaps this possibility can be overcome by infinite Mercy… and therefore – claims Von Balthasar – perhaps the possible Hell is empty…

This is no reason, of course, to try to fill it with our resistance to Love… Our dialogue continues…