Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come forth, those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment.

— John 5:28–29

Either before you arrive or as you wait for class to begin, find this short passage from Sacred Scripture in your Bible or through an online search. Reading it will prepare you for this week’s material.

— John 5:19–29

O God, source of all goodness, fill our hearts with your love and increase hope within us. May we never be discouraged by difficulties but reach forward in expectation to the good things you promise to those who love you. Give us the boldness to seek the things of heaven and confidence in your desire to bring us everlasting life. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

As you watch the video lesson, refer to these key highlights. Feel free to use the space provided to take notes.

• Hope is the opposite of despair. In hope, we cling to God as our promised final good while contending with the obstacles that we meet on the way to him.

• Although hope acknowledges the difficulty of arriving at heaven, hope nonetheless looks with confidence toward enjoying our eternal paradise. As a result, hope prompts us to contemplate our future. We look ahead in expectation of the glory that awaits us.

• Christian reflection on our future has traditionally taken the form of a meditation on what are called the four last things: death, judgment, heaven, and hell.

• Death constitutes the final earthly hurdle that we must overcome before enjoying our final happiness. It is a mystery through which we must pass through if we are to arrive at the other side of life. Jesus Christ is our shepherd and guide through this mystery.

• We should have utter confidence in the justice and mercy that will attend our judgment before God.

• Persons condemned to hell condemn themselves insofar that they die in mortal sin, their wills turned decidedly away from God and his grace.

• Purgatory provides the dead destined for heaven a final moment of purification that readies them for the joys and delights of heaven.

Wisdom of the Saints

Our home is heaven. On earth we’re like travelers staying at a hotel. When you’re away, you’re always thinking of going home.

— St. John Vianney

Take a moment to go through these questions with the group. For larger classes, divide them up into partners. Answers are provided to assist you in leading discussion.

1. What is the difference between faith and hope? Explain what both are.

   Faith reveals to us the supreme good of human life: God as the object of our final happiness.

   Hope is the virtue by which we cling to God as our promised final good while contending with the obstacles that we meet on the way to him. Hope spurs us along the path to heaven.

2. What are the four last things as taught by the Church?

   Death, judgment, heaven, and hell.

3. Is it accurate to say that God sends souls to hell? Why or why not?

   No, it is more accurate to say that persons condemned to hell condemn themselves insofar as they die in mortal sin, their wills turned decidedly away from God and his grace. At death, their choice against God in life is confirmed for eternity.

4. What does the Church teach about the doctrine of purgatory?

   The Church teaches that purgatory provides the dead destined for heaven a final moment of purification that readies them for the joys…and delights of heaven. They die with their minds and hearts fixed on God but still carrying the effects of their sins, either in a dulled mind or in disordered affections and desires. Purgatory allows for persons to endure certain punishments aimed at atoning for their sins. The Church prays constantly for the souls in purgatory in order to support and speed along their purification.

Each man receives his eternal retribution in his immortal soul at the very moment of his death, in a particular judgment that refers his life to Christ: either entrance into the blessedness of heaven—through a purification or immediately—or immediate and everlasting damnation. —CCC 1022

Discuss these questions with the group, pair them with a partner, or ask them to meditate on their own.

1. How could the virtue of hope help you in your everyday life?

2. Are you scared of being judged by God? How do you think fear can be a good thing? How do you think fear is balanced by hope?

3. Many people think that death is the end of our existence. How do you think the belief in everlasting life changes the way you act? Does the need to be purified from sin in purgatory make sense? Does it go along with a sense of justice?

After concluding your group discussion, return to watch the second video where converts to the Catholic faith discuss their conversion and how they live today as Catholics.

Rome to Home

A distinguishing mark of Christians [is] the fact that they have a future: it is not that they know the details of what awaits them, but they know in general terms that their life will not end in emptiness.

— Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, no. 2

Hope: The theological virtue that enables us to desire and expect from God eternal life and the grace we need to attain it. Hope allows us to cling to God as our promised final good while contending with the obstacles that we meet on the way to him.

Four Last Things: The final realities human beings must face; they include death, judgment, and heaven or hell. Meditating on the four last things helps us to consider our moral choices with the proper seriousness.

Purgatory: A place of purification for those who died with their minds and hearts fixed on God and who have been entirely forgiven of the guilt of their sins but who still carry the effects of their sins. Purgatory allows for persons to endure certain punishments aimed at atoning for their sins. The Church prays constantly for the souls in purgatory in order to support and speed along their purification.

God’s Word

Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.

— Luke 23:43

O my God, relying on your infinite goodness and promises, I hope to attain pardon for my sins, the help of your grace and life everlasting, through the merits of Jesus Christ, my Lord and Redeemer. Amen.

This serves as a review of the material that your students can read after each class, but it may be helpful for you to read as well. Consider reading it before each class to better prepare you for group discussion.

Facing Our Mortality with Hope

Imagine for a moment that you are Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark. You’re running through some thick jungle, chased by angry cannibals. You stop dead in your tracks as you come up to an impassible river. Your heartsinks in your chest; that’s the feeling of despair. You see the good, that which your heart desires—the other bank—but it lies beyond your reach. You despair of arriving at the other side of the river.

As you look to your left, you see an old, tattered rope bridge suspended above the water. Your heart jumps in your chest; that is the feeling of hope. You see the good, and it remains difficult to attain, but at least there is a chance of attaining it. You can now hope to arrive at the other side of the river.

The theological virtue of hope operates in much the same way. Faith reveals to us the supreme good of human life: God as the object of our final happiness. In faith, then, we can see life’s goal—heaven—and begin to move toward it. But many obstacles lie between this life and the next, hurdles that we must overcome if we are to arrive at the life of beatitude.

Our sins constitute one kind of hurdle, while the sins of others constitute another. Then the final hurdle that we must overcome, the one that presents the most difficulty, is death, something we all naturally fear. The moral virtue of courage is the virtue with which we contend with the fear of death; the theological virtue of hope, however, offers us more. In hope, we cling to God as our promised final good while contending with the obstacles that we meet on the way to him.

Although hope acknowledges the difficulty of arriving at heaven, hope nonetheless looks with confidence toward enjoying our eternal paradise. As a result, hope prompts us to contemplate our future. We look ahead in expectation of the glory that awaits us. Pope Benedict XVI has said that this looking forward constitutes a special mark of the Christian life: “A distinguishing mark of Christians [is] the fact that they have a future: it is not that they know the details of what awaits them, but they know in general terms that their life will not end in emptiness” (Spe Salvi, no. 2).

There are two great sins against hope that are especially prevalent in our age: despair and presumption. Despair is the opposite of hope in God’s goodness and mercy. One who despairs might think that God is not merciful or that he will not forgive sinners. Much more common, though, is a thought like this: “Okay, God forgives sinners, but this sin is so bad (or I am so bad), there’s no way he will forgive me.” After we’ve committed asin, this is precisely what the devil wants us to believe, because he does not want us to return to God. Yet this is a lie: God is perfectly good, and he forgives us not because we deserve it but purely out of his infinite goodness and his perfect and unyielding love for us. Despair is especially dangerous because when one loses hope and decides to give up on God’s mercy, one will tend more easily to fall into other sins and will not try to rise up from them. This is why the Church emphasizes that God is always ready to forgive our sins. No sin is more powerful than God’s mercy.

Presumption is opposed to hope in a different way. In presumption, one thinks: “This sin isn’t really very bad, and surely it wouldn’t cause me to lose eternal life.” One might even think: “I don’t need to stop committing this sin because I know God is going to forgive it.” In essence, presumption thinks that eternal life is not difficult to arrive at, or that “I really do deserve heaven,” or that “God wouldn’t possibly punish me.” The result is that, instead of turning away from sin and relying on God’s help to arrive at heaven, one expects to be pardoned while at the same time intending to continue sinning. The root of presumption is often pride (thinking we are better than we really are) or vainglory (thinking we are strong enough to obtain heaven without God’s help).

Christian reflection on our future has traditionally taken the form of a meditation on what are called the four last things: death, judgment, heaven, and hell. While hopeful, this meditation is one of the more sobering that the Christian can undertake. When we consider the four last things, we examine death and the mysteries awaiting us after death, and while we look ahead confidently to enjoying our final happiness in heaven, we nevertheless take seriously the possibility of failing, through our own fault, to arrive there. Let us look briefly at each of the last things.

As we said above, death constitutes the final earthly hurdle that we must overcome before enjoying our final happiness. It is not a hurdle, however, that we can run around or jump over. It is a mystery through which we must pass if we are to arrive at the other side of life. Jesus Christ is our shepherd and guide through this mystery. Through his passion, death, and resurrection, Jesus has trod the safe path through death that leads to everlasting life. Just as we pray to live a good life with Jesus, therefore, weshould pray also to die a good death with him, knowing that death remains for us a graced path to life and not a source of unnecessary fear. In this regard, we should pray for the grace of final perseverance, that our struggle with death at life’s end does not separate us from the love of God.

Judgment also sits between this life and the enjoyment of final beatitude. Often, artists and spiritual writers portray the judgment to which God will subject us as something terrifying. But this isn’t the image that Scripture portrays of the judgment. The “accuser”—the devil—“has been thrown down,” (Rv 12:10), and we have an “advocate”—the Risen Lord—who pleads for us before the Father. Accordingly, we should have utter confidence in the justice and mercy that will attend our judgment. Though none of us should presume an easy entrance into glory, none of us should fear getting taken unawares by God’s verdict. If we spend our life striving to stand transparently before God, especially through the regular celebration of the sacrament of confession, we should have little trouble standing transparently before the Father after death as we render an account of our earthly life.

Heaven, the life of beatitude, is our great hope. It is the destiny offered us by God in the resurrection of his Son. When the Risen Lord ascended tohis rightful place at the Father’s throne, he opened up the gates of heaven, taking our human nature with him into glory; thus, he made God’s glory a home for mortal flesh. As coheirs with Christ in his victory over death, we hope to follow where the Risen Lord has gone. Heaven is man’s life in eternal glory, praising and adoring the eternal Godhead, together with Mary, the angels, and the saints, as the Blessed Trinity draws us into an ever greater and everlasting participation in its divine communion.

If heaven is everlasting life with God, then hell is everlasting life separated from him. Persons condemned to hell condemn themselves insofar as they die in mortal sin, their wills turned decidedly away from God and his grace. At death, their choice against God in life is confirmed for eternity. As a result, the condemned suffer an unimaginably miserable existence. They remain so fixed on their own wills that they hate God and the things of God, including his justice, which is honored in the sufferings of the damned. The condemned also suffer everlasting isolation because their perverted wills make even friendship with others a good too unbearable to enjoy. As heaven is marked with divine joy and communion, hell is marked with hatred and isolation.

Purgatory provides the dead destined for heaven a final moment of purification that readies them for the joys and delights of heaven. They die with their minds and hearts fixed on God—that is, with the virtue of charity, with their sins forgiven—but still carry the effects of their sins, either in a dulled mind or in their disordered affections or desires. An analogy can help understand this: Suppose I steal twenty dollars from you. That ruptures our friendship, and I cannot restore our friendship on my own. For that, I will apologize to you, and then you forgive me. This repairs the rupture. But in justice, I still owe you twenty dollars—this debt is the lasting disorder resulting from my sin, which is distinct from my guilt in relation to you as my friend.

Our sins against God work the same way: in order to be forgiven, we must return to God and seek forgiveness, and God will always pardon us and restore us to his friendship. Souls in purgatory have been forgiven of the guilt of their sins. But because of their sins, there may still remain many ripple effects of disorder, and if someone dies while still carrying the debt…of restoring what was broken by sin, purgatory allows him to satisfy what is left over. The Church prays constantly for the souls in purgatory in order to support and speed along their purification (just like a friend of mine might, out of love for me, pay back the twenty dollars I owe).

These are the final realities, then, to which the Christian looks forward in hope. He hopes for a happy death, he hopes for a just and merciful judgment, he hopes for everlasting life in the communion of the Holy Trinity, he hopes to avoid the fires of hell, and he hopes for every help from God to arrive safely in heaven, even the help of purgatory.

Pieper, Josef. Faith Hope and Love. Ignatius, 1997.