The opening chapters of the Sacred Scripture articulates the invariable destiny of human being. God, the life-giver intervenes in the realm of existence of man with a radical statement. Namely, he is destined to die. It implies that where there is life, there is death too. To live means to die. God the Creator of life has decided that human being should die. However, at the same time, when he was brought to the domain of life, he had the possibility not to die, comments St Augustine (AD 354-430), the bishop of Hippo (posse non mori – possible not to die). Unfortunately, when he decided to withdraw his gaze from the Creator and opted to limit his being to his own self, the death became unavoidable. Hereafter, therefore, he cannot but die (non posse non mori – not possible not to die). He shifted his being from the existential axis of the possibility of ‘not-to-die’ to that of ‘cannot-but-die’.
God did not terminate His intervention at the verdict of death. He made a second decisive intervention, in and through the person of Jesus Christ which is narrated in the New Testament. Opting out the epic road/way of kenosis he pitched His tent among us and dwelt among us (homo factus est). He decided to enter into the core of the already promulgated judgement of death. By resolving to die, He really died and made possible His entry into the content of the death (passus et sepultus est). He transformed the death from within, entering into its content. Thus, the so far prevailed infamous impressions of death were radically revised. Instead, the death received an unprecedented new fame and name.
Consequently, man is given the opportunity to fly from the domain of death, where reigns only the unfathomable darkness, to the Christ-made horizon of life which is called heaven, the house of light (CCC, 1023, 1026, 1027). Heaven is not a place situated in the created universe or out of the cosmos. It is nor a state that awaits the man after his death. Heaven is a person, hereafter (CCC, 1024). That is to say, Jesus Christ is heaven, says St Augustine. Man and his history is journeying towards Christ, the heaven (CCC, 1025). One who resides in Him has no more predications of judgements of mortality on his destiny. For, He has taken up and rewritten all the to-be-issued verdicts forever. Jesus Christ, thanks to the unfathomability of His love and luminance of His mercy, has owned the beginning and end of our being.
Jesus Christ invited us to the domain of being and existence in and through His love. He loved us even before our creation. It is after loving us that He created us. His love precedes our being (Wis 11, 24). The same love flows to us and protects also in and after our death. Thanks to this uninterrupted current of His love, He does not allow our journey to decay and non-being (CCC, 1026).
Rev. 1, 7 reads as follows: “Behold, He is coming”. The One who comes is the same one who descended from His glory and dwelt among us. He is God and man simultaneously, according to the Nicaean Credo. He is our brother by His incarnation. We will be seeing Him, our Brother, face to face on the day of the final judgement. He will repeat the same phrase to each one of us: “Behold, I am coming”. The one who comes again is our own Brother. He comes to invite us to the eternal bliss. Thus the judgement of death of man is transformed into the message of hope personified in the person of Jesus Christ.
Rev. Dr. Thomas Thadathilputhenveettil
