Heaven and Hell

Death is the moment that our body, due to different reasons like age, sickness or accidents departs from the soul. This is when the body will follow a path towards decay, while the soul will follow the path to his Creator, where he will be judged. 

How do we receive the knowledge about death?

Through faith we receive the Revelation, and through Revelation we are able to discover the life beyond this one. 

Activity after death 

We witness everyday that life assumes movement and activity. This means that the life after death will also involve activity and movement. The one we live here on earth is often seen as just a simple reflection in the mirror of what the next life will be. The activity will actually be even more advanced, specially because we will be confronting the reality face to face.

In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, we can deduct from the conversation of the rich man with Abraham that the soul remains active with all his functions. 

These are few of the moments that help us understand some of the functions of the soul after death.

 1. The rich man acknowledges and knows the reason he is in hell, which means that he has reason and judgement,

2. He feels pain and discomfort, which means he can feel

3. He can see and hear Abraham 

4. He hopes for some alleviation, which shows the he has will 

5. He remembers his brothers and family on earth, which means that he has memory

Time 

The souls also have a conscience and a sense of time after departing from their bodies. 

“And they cried with loud voice saying, How long o Lord, holy and true, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on earth?”

“… they should rest a little longer …”  Revelation 6, 10-11

We can see in these verses that there is a perception of the time that passed and the waiting of the time to come. 

The place

Divine Revelation didn’t share more with us about this aspect. The Holy Fathers advise us to look less where the exact location is and focus  more on doing good deets in oder to receive / gain Heaven. 

The older theology is talking about Heaven and Hell as a spatial place. The righteous would enjoy happiness in Heaven while sinners would suffer in Hell, and between the two places it would be such an immense abyss that would never be crossed from one side to the other.

The newer theology added also that Heaven and Hell are also like an existential state. 

St John of Damascus said that “The fire from Hell is the depravation of the material things that [sinners] would desire to satisfy themselves. On the other side, the righteous because they desire God, they receive Him as much as they want Him”

Saint Isaac of Syria was saying that sinners in the fires of Hell will be whipped by the flames of love. Those who realize that they have sinned against Love, they will suffer more than any suffering done by the darkest and scariest tortures. Because love works in two ways. It becomes happiness for those who receive it and pain for those who are rejected. 

This being said we can understand that the souls will suffer in Hell as a result of their incapacity of directing their desire towards communion with God, and they are left in the pain caused by the depravation of the material goods that they were bound during their life on earth, and also the absence of love. 

Those who lived in communion with Christ here on earth, in Heaven the communication with Christ will increase and will be closer as well. 

What happens in Heaven 

Heaven is the place and state in which the righteous find themselves after their personal judgement.  

Heaven is known by many different names: Kingdom of Heaven, Kingdom of God, The house of the Heavenly Father, Life with Jesus Christ, the happiness of the Lord. 

These are some of the things that are being shared with us in Revelation that happen in Heaven. 

1. The righteous are free from any kind of problems, pain or sufferings. They live in a continuous state of full happiness with no desire that is not satisfied or changed in time. They celebrate at a never-ending feast. 
2. In Heaven the righteous will receive some spiritual gifts that don’t have an analogy in the world. Just as St Apostle Paul said: “But as it’s written: Eye has not seen, nor ear has heard, nor have entered the heart of man the things that God has prepared for those who love Him” 
3. The soul in Heaven is in communion with Christ the Saviour, with the angels and the saints. The soul will keep his human aspect as a social being and happiness would not be attainable in isolation, but only in a communion where love, justice, peace reigns. 
4. Those in Heaven see God. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” Matthew 5,8
   Some church writers used to say that a created spirit cannot see an uncreated one. This observation wasn’t necessarily wrong, if you only look at it from the capacities of a created soul. What we also know is that with the help of Grace that the soul can receive, he can rise to a supra-natural state, and then he would rejoice in being able to see God. 
5. The righteous in Heaven will not all be in the same state, because everyone will receive their reward in accordance with how much they strived and worked on this earth to be closer to God.
   “In My Father’s house there are many mansions” John 14,2
   St Basil the Great said “Because the Heavenly Father has many mansions, some will rest in a higher and more perfect state, and others on a lower state, but all will be honoured with the Peacefulness”

What happens in Hell

Hell is the state and place where the souls of sinners go after their personal judgment and where the evil spirits are. 

Dostoyevsky described it in Brothers Karamazov as: “The pain of not being able to love anymore”.

Just like Heaven, Hell is a place and a state, not of joy but of pain. Also here, souls are not omnipresent either and that means they are bound to one specific place. 

By saying that Hell is a place, that doesn’t mean we can specify precisely where it is. St John Chrysostom said “ do not try to find where Hell is, but try to stay away from it.”

The existence of Hell can be justified from a rational point of view. It is logical that if someone has the freedom and does something bad, then it should be punished. This means that God must have these kind of sanctions as well. Many times bad actions on earth are not punished, which means that in order to keep this balance, those will be receiving their punishment in the next life. 

God created the world in such a way that virtues will be rewarded, and sins will be punished. Also because of God’s holiness, He would not let virtues to be treated the same way as sins. 

What are the punishments that will happen in Hell?

1. Distancing from God is death. 

Getting further and further from God means that you are moving away from His gifts. Without God’s gifts, there’s only pain left.

2. Lack of communion with the saints
As we saw earlier, people are made as social beings. Because of their relationship with God and the saints during their life, and their desire to not be connected with the holy ones, the souls of sinners will keep their state, without being able to change it, and in Hell they will live without any kind of communion with God or the saints. 

3. The existence in the society of evil spirits.
Not being able to be in communion with the good, the souls in Hell are only interacting with demons who will only produce more pain and suffering to them.

4. Remorse
Sinners will forever be persecuted by remorse of not living a life following the will of God. 

5. The fire and the darkness

 The fire in Hell is not the same as the one on earth. Saint John Chrysostom painted a very vivid picture of this fire by saying: “ The fire here burns and it consumes, and then it becomes something else, while the fire in Hell burns for eternity and never stops.”

The purpose of Hell in not so God can see people in pain, but to keep them away from sin. If there would be no sin, there would be no Hell. 

Hell ends up being after all a self inflicted punishment of rational beings by divorcing themselves more and more from God and His will. For the person who lives in communion with God, there is no more Hell. 

So far we talked about the state of souls after personal judgement, one that souls undergo immediately after departure from the body. 

The Universal judgement will be a little different, and we cannot tell from now what the final sentence of a soul is, because the acts that it did in this life are not the only ones weighed. One will also be judged by the effect that their doings had on those who came after them. These effects cannot be known right away, and that’s why they will be taking in consideration at the Universal Judgement 

Through the grace of God the christian should not be afraid of death. The eschatological condition of the christian is represented in this world as of a pilgrim. 

Unfortunately today, we often forget this truth, and the modern person keeps sinking more and more in this swamp full of sins. The illusion of an eternal livelihood on this earth takes over and with that the thought about death and the life after death is being buried by a hedonistic conception that everything is here right now.