15. The next world: Between the grave and Resurrection

Where have our parents and friends gone to? When our turn comes, what will be our destination? What is that interval between the tomb and the Resurrection like? The question is simple, the answer less so!

Jesus promised paradise to the Good Thief, there and then, without any delay. Now the Gospel speaks of the Risen Christ, but never is there question of the resurrection of the repentant thief, so what became of him? The ecumenical translation notes that for Jesus'contemporaries, paradise is a place where the dead await the great final day of reckoning. So what is the significance of this time-interval between tomb and resurrection? Is one dead or alive? Can one be alive without having been resuscitated? Where are the dead and how do they live?

Images are not wanting in this kind of speculation. Men have always exorcised their fear of the unknown by forming images. In the past, there was a whole geography of the great beyond, with rivers and valleys, a boat and animals. There were even reports of money having been found, for Charon the ferryman had to be paid for his services! Today, one talks of a tunnel, a bright light, music and singing. I'm not finding fault with any of these representations, but I'm simply saying that the Bible is not - as we say familiarly - "into" images, the reason being that its concern is with a wholly different aspect. For believers, the essential is not a question of where? but of relation. The other world is not apprehended as a geographical landscape, but as a theology, as a discovery of the living God. So where are the dead? Answer: the dead are living in Christ. When Jesus promises paradise to His companion in ill-fortune, the accent is placed not on the "in paradise" but on the "with Me". Paradise is "to be with Christ". "This day I say to you, you will be with Me in paradise". For both Jews and Christians, life is first and foremost, relationship, exchange, friendship. Life is communion, while isolation is death; exclusion is hell.

A good relationship with God would seem to be the guarantee of a life that flourishes like a well-watered garden. Still, trials will beset us, ever more demanding, even to the point of scandal which seems to block out all hope. When the people are forced into exile and the prophets persecuted; when the wicked triumph and increase in numbers, and when Job languishes on the dung heap; when the song of the Suffering Servant bursts forth from the heart of Isaiah's prophecy, then the tables are turned. The road of life often passes through suffering, and being faithful to the living God can lead to martyrdom. It is better to forfeit one's life here below, than to reject love and lose the source of life; it is better to die rather than betray the covenant, to be calumniated rather than to abandon the God of truth.

This is how Jesus -to the very end - gives witness to a relationship that cannot be destroyed. Neither men's deceit, nor the torture inflicted on his body can force him to yield. He gives back his life into the hands of the Father, not esteeming it to be jealously defended. The relationship is His life, it does not belong to Him! And this is why His death is a total gift of self in a relationship so perfect, that the Resurrection is a natural sequel that is -so to speak- assured of reciprocity.

Now it is through faith that we commune with the Son of God; it is through faith that we enter into that living relationship which unites the Son to His Father, in such wise, that our death does not open a door to nothingness. It is by faith that at our moment of death,, we too can abandon ourselves, as we did perhaps one day on the occasion of our adult Baptism. When the end does come and we have to let go, we can abandon ourselves to the Father, certain in faith that He will be there to receive us and to welcome us into His presence: "I say to you, this day you will be with Me in paradise."

The unbeliever has not this chance of being able to dialogue with the living God. He knows not the name of the Father, nor the Face of His Son, our Brother. He is an orphan, but is none the less alive. So it is in his relationship with his family and friends that he can live this gift of self, this call to a relationship which is both free and disinterested, which is love and life, and already a deep reflection of God's intimacy. When those without faith meet Christ, and when in their delighted astonishment they ask: "When did we see you in prison, hungry, naked, frozen with cold and wounded on the roadside?" He will reply: "Each time you..." Matt. 25.40

Everyone knows that love and friendship are a foretaste of heaven. But there are shadows in our life here below. So I'll have to say a word here about those who prefer death, self-interest, violence and contempt. This is where I have a question to ask: ought we take away from people that liberty which leaves them their dignity? Must we renounce love because it may lead to failure? Not to mention the half-hearted, the ditherers, the "neither cold nor hot", those who are neither totally closed nor truly open. They are going to find God's wishes for them completely overwhelming, incomparably greater and truer than the timid and easily discouraged searching which they have perhaps undertaken in their lifetime.

But in the presence of the Innocent One, nailed one day to the wood by the creature's refusal to love, my eyes at last opened to Him who slipped into my night and did everything to wake me out of my sleep, I will with a sad heart, realise my unworthiness. It will be too late to deserve such love, but it will always be possible to regret the missed occasions. It will never be too late to let the tears flow, to allow the shell to crack and permit myself to be transformed, in order to meet this wonderful God ever waiting for us, impatient to allow us get to know Him as He really is.

Some imagine that this will be the end ("after me the deluge" floats through our subconscious). But history is not going to end with my death. Others will go on their way. My entrance into God's presence far from making me indifferent, will plunge me into His passion for humanity..

As long as there remain beings in evolution, as yet incomplete, still enmeshed in the nets of evil; as long as there remain men and women who are suffering, struggling, accepting or rejecting the love of the living God, how could there be total peace anywhere, even in paradise?

The saints too are waiting, precisely because they have greatly loved, and because now they love with even greater intensity. Yes, they are waiting for the final liberation of each one, and for the great assembly of all. As for the others, they are no less concerned, and for the reason not difficult to understand, that their faults too follow the normal outcome. Let's take the simple case of an assassin. He will be relieved to see the results of his crimes slowly compensated for, by concrete acts of love performed by others rather than by himself. We are all in solidarity one with the other, and evil and good diffuse themselves and intermingle.

They snowball as it were, until that final day, when each will be accorded his true place and - let me add - his true body.

That is why, with two exceptions - that of Jesus needless to say, and she whom both Orthodox and Catholic churches celebrate on I5 August - it is not true for Christians that the dead have already risen. This is why in the Creed we say: "I await the Resurrection of the dead", yes, I await! For to say as do the Valentinians of the second century, and certain modern theologians, that resurrection immediately follows death, because it by-passes space and time, is to encircle the difficulty by simplifying it in an exaggerated way. The Resurrection would then be de-materialised, and we would be returning in a subtle way to the old abstract notion of the immortality of the human soul. Not of course that I have anything against the immortality of the soul, but all I am saying is, that to rest at that position, would be inadequate to the proclamation of the Christian message.

We could never have thought up a promise that could go so far. There was no need for us to do so. Our God loves man more than he could ever hope for; He loves the whole man with all his loyalties and all his relationships. Our God is mindful of man's body, if not there would not be so many cures in the Gospel narratives, nor bread and wine at the Table of the Eucharist. Above all, He would not Himself have taken a body, been born of a woman, in a certain place at a certain time!

In one way or another then, the Resurrection will have an effect on the body, if not, it is no longer a question of Resurrection, and the word would have to be changed. It is true that we shall know another type of body, that of the Risen Christ, where no sickness is possible, and which becomes the perfect expression of the Spirit. But the Christian affirmation of the Resurrection implies body, and is inconceivable without a certain link with matter.

Our God loves the whole man. He also loves His entire creation without excluding anything, so the entire cosmos is involved here. When the love of the living God is completely manifest; when God will be all in all, then no one and no thing will be forgotten.