Once virtually every tenet of the Faith has been called into question and the value of the Magisterium has been weakened, then it is not too surprising that while many Catholics have deserted their Religion, others have abandoned all religious practice.

            Furthermore, despondency and confusion reign even among many Catholics who have remained faithful. The unity and the firmness of the Faith of the Catholic people which had remained intact for centuries seem to have vanished. Ours are times of desolation, well suited to recalling the words with which the Gospel of Saint Matthew describes certain sentiments of Jesus Christ: Seeing the crowds, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were battered and dejected, like sheep without a shepherd (Mt 9:36).

            All men have to endure a lifetime of work in this valley of tears. But we Christians in particular face suffering in a special way because we are called to share Jesus Christ's death. Therefore, our sorrows and anxieties are finally transformed into joy, for they are always shrouded in the Hope and in the certainty that we are going to gather with Jesus in the Father's House.

            Consequently, it would be something very sad if, in one way or another, we were to be deprived of the consolation provided by the eternal life in the manner and form promised us and for which we have always been longing.

            In his homily pronounced this year on the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI stated that when we speak of heaven we are not alluding to one particular place: we are not referring to any given place in the universe, a star or something like it. The Pope goes on to say that when we use that term we want to affirm that God has a place for us; which he explains by comparing it to the loving memory of a deceased person that his loved ones preserve in their hearts: We can say that a part of that person is still living in them; although that part is like a ‘shadow’ because that survival in the heart of the loved ones is also destined to end.  And he immediately adds that because God never passes…we all exist in the thoughts and love of God. We exist in all our reality, not only in our ‘shadow.’ The Pope clarifies his explanation by saying that in God, in His thoughts and in His love, not a mere ‘shadow’ of ourselves survives, but we are introduced and kept in Him, in His creative love for all eternity with all our lives, with our whole being.

            In short, according to the Holy Father, eternal life consists of our living in God; in His heart and in His love.

            Although, in truth and strictly speaking, we are in fact already living in God, in His thinking and Love, as Saint Paul proclaimed in his Speech before the Areopagus in Athens (Acts 17:28). And we might even say that we were in the mind of God from all eternity; which in no way authorizes us to consider the awful falsehood that we have always existed.

            It is clear, however, that the Pope’s words can be understood in an entirely correct sense. Perhaps it may have been desirable to exclude some ambiguities, as well as to add some clarifications.

            It seems more accurate to say that in eternal life we will live with
God rather than in God. For it is in eternity where, at last, the plenitude of the loving relationship between God and man, or the perfect Love our heart always longed for, will take place. A Love, however, that can only exist in a complete and total distinction of persons, which is an essential property to every Love; for Love always demands absolute reciprocity and total distinction between the two lovers (be they divine or human). Otherwise somebody would be induced to think that there is a possibility of falling into Pantheism.

            Other than that, it is absolutely true that the term place cannot be understood, when referring to eternal life, in the same sense in which it is used in this life. Nevertheless, it has to have a real meaning. Otherwise, where are the human bodies of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary now? Moreover, the resurrection of the bodies is a dogma of Faith, and their location in eternal life cannot be reduced to the condition of a mere remaining as a memory in someone’s mind (even if that someone is God). In this regard, maybe it is worth remembering what the XVI Council of Toledo (693) said in Article 35:

             [Jesus Christ] Giving us example with His resurrection that He vivifies us, after two days He resurrected on the third, alive from the dead; in the same way we believe that we also, at the end of this world, are to resurrect in all places; not with an aerial figure or like among the shadows of a fantastic vision, as the damnable opinion of some people stated, but  in the substance of real meat, in which we are now and live, and appearing in the hour of judgment before Christ and His holy angels, where each will render account of what belongs to his body (Denzinger-Hünermann, n.572. The Councils of Toledo always enjoyed great respect and acceptance within the Church, being considered almost equal to the Ecumenical Councils).     

            Neither can we forget Jesus Christ’s very words: In my Father’s house there are many mansions. Were it not so, I should have told you, because I go to prepare a place for you; …that where I am, there you also may be (Jn 14: 2—3). What would the Master mean by these words…?

            It is natural, therefore, that we Catholics, who have been called to live in an age of so many vicissitudes and contradictions, want to live in peace according to the Doctrine in which we were baptized and according to the Gospel that the Church has taught us since ever, without further changes or novelties. For indeed, not that there is another gospel, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the Gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a Gospel different to that which we preached to you, let him be anathema! (The Apostle Paul in his Epistle to the Galatians, 1: 7-8).

The revealed Word of God is not the same as the Magisterium of the Church, which depends on the former. But in the Church there is no individual and subjective interpretation of this Revelation; the interpretation depends on all of the Magisterium, which is the only one that, assisted by the Holy Spirit, can guarantee the truth and the correct understanding of the Word of God. From this it follows that if the Magisterium of the Church would disappear, then any kind of certainty as to the intelligibility of what has been revealed by God to man would collapse.

Any changes or modification in the content of the Magisterium –which has been a closed and granite Body for over twenty centuries—would affect, no doubt, the correct understanding of the content of Revelation; which would then be subjected to all sorts of manipulations, either regarding the admission of apocryphal or false texts, or under the form of changes, additions, or subtractions to it. So we end here with a text contained at the end of the Sacred Book of the Apocalypse:

             For I testify to everyone that hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If any man shall add to these things, God shall add unto him the plagues written in this book. And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from these things that are written in this book (Apoc 22: 18—19).