Ignoring Our Afterlife Reaps Soul Destruction

David Martin | The Daily Knight

The Church teaches that all in this life is vanity and passing but to please God alone. As Catholics, we make our exodus from this world that we might arrive at our true common home in Heaven.

A major curse of our time is that people have cast aside the knowledge of the afterlife and have made their covenant with this world. Because of original sin, the human race was infected with the curiosity of Eve where people are lured to be in touch with their environmental surroundings, as if our lot is to see and experience the sensualities of life.

This is the classic pagan mentality of forgetting God so we can “eat, drink, and be merry” without having to worry about the afterlife, but people are called to higher things being made in the image of God. Our Christian calling is to forget our worldly surroundings and be in touch with God who should be our only experience. For this world will perish, so why put stock in it?

Called to be Pilgrims and Strangers

St. Peter exhorts us to keep ourselves as “pilgrims and strangers” in this world (1 Peter 2:11). For the Christian life is merely a pilgrimage as if we were passing through a country whose language and ways we know not. We’re on route with our Cross to the Promised Land with no stopping along the way.

Many today see this as deranged because they’re obsessed with worldly aspirations of pseudo success that blind them to objective reality. They have no concern for the afterlife so that they easily fall prey to the temptation to ‘get all the gusto’ while they can. For they think that their souls upon death will disappear and no longer be so that their lot is to exhaust themselves in worldly pleasure while they have the time. This is vanity.

The Soul Lives on for Eternity

What many fail to realize is that their soul will live on for eternity but where they spend that eternity all depends on what they do now. Those who keep the commandments and teachings of Christ will spend eternity in Heaven but those who waste away their lives in foolish pleasures wind up in “everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels.” (Mt. 25:41)  

The Biblical Book of Wisdom speaks of the wicked who trash their lives for a few years of frivolous joys.  

“For they have said, reasoning with themselves, but not right: The time of our life is short and tedious, and in the end of a man there is no remedy…. For we are born of nothing, and after this we shall be as if we had not been: for the breath in our nostrils is smoke: and speech a spark to move our heart, Which being put out, our body shall be ashes, and our spirit shall be poured abroad as soft air, and our life shall pass away as the trace of a cloud, and shall be dispersed as a mist, which is driven away by the beams of the sun, and overpowered with the heat thereof: And our name in time shall be forgotten, and no man shall have any remembrance of our works. For our time is as the passing of a shadow, and there is no going back of our end: for it is fast sealed, and no man returneth.

“Come therefore, and let us enjoy the good things that are present, and let us speedily use the creatures as in youth. Let us fill ourselves with costly wine, and ointments: and let not the flower of the time pass by us. Let us crown ourselves with roses, before they be withered: let no meadow escape our riot. Let none of us go without his part in luxury: let us everywhere leave tokens of joy: for this is our portion, and this our lot. Let us oppress the poor just man, and not spare the widow, nor honour the ancient grey hairs of the aged. But let our strength be the law of justice: for that which is feeble, is found to be nothing worth… 

“These things they thought, and were deceived: for their own malice blinded them. And they knew not the secrets of God, nor hoped for the wages of justice, nor esteemed the honour of holy souls. For God created man incorruptible, and to the image of his own likeness he made him. But by the envy of the devil, death came into the world: And they follow him that are of his side.” (Wisdom 2: 1-11, 21-25)

Some will say, “If we’re not supposed to live for this world, what are we supposed to do? The Gospel has answered this many times.

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment.” (Mt. 22:37)

Life is only a test; it has no other purpose. It’s a test to see if we will renounce satan and keep our fidelity to God by keeping the commandments and avoiding the occasion of sin.

No Wasting Time

Now if a person was taking an SAT test and he only had 60 minutes to achieve a perfect score, would he be on his cell phone or playing video games, or be outside washing his car? He most certainly would flunk his test if he did that and that’s what happens spiritually to those who waste their time on earth.

Let us not forget the parable of the unprofitable servant who wasted his Master’s talent without multiplying it but instead buried it in the earth. The Master [Christ] then orders the unprofitable servant to be “cast out into the exterior darkness” where “There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Mt. 25: 30)

This is a warning to not waste the talents that God has given us but to use them to prepare our souls for the afterlife. This especially applies today when divine intervention is at our door. As the Apostle Peter says:

“The day of the Lord shall come as a thief, in which the heavens shall pass away with great violence, and the elements shall be melted with heat, and the earth and the works which are in it, shall be burnt up.

“Seeing then that all these things are to be dissolved, what manner of people ought you to be in holy conversation and godliness?” (2 Peter 3:10, 11)

It is for reason that the Apostle Paul exhorts us thus:

“With fear and trembling work out your salvation.” (Phil. 2:12)