ACCORDING to St Mark’s account, Jesus came proclaiming the Gospel that ‘the Kingdom of God is coming near’ (Mark 1:15). For this reason, he called every human person to believe this good news, and to repent of their rebellion against God so that all might enjoy the coming reign of God.

The English translation of the Apostles’ Creed speaks of ‘life everlasting’.

This might sound as if it means simply an endless life in terms of chronological time. But the Nicene Creed says we believe in ‘the life of the world to come’. In the original Greek of both creeds, the term ‘life everlasting’ is literally ‘the life of the age’. This coming age is precisely the ‘Kingdom of God’ which Jesus proclaimed in his Gospel, and life in this coming Kingdom will be ‘life everlasting’.

One way in which Scripture regularly describes this age is in terms of a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17, Galatians 6:15) or ‘new heavens and a new earth’ (Isaiah 65:17, 66:22; 2 Peter 3:13, Revelation 21:1).

 The Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church asks this question: What is the hope of the new heavens and the new earth? After the final judgment the universe itself, freed from its bondage to decay, will share in the glory of Christ with the beginning of ‘the new heavens’ and a ‘new earth’ (2 Peter 3:13).

Thus, the fullness of the Kingdom of God will come about, that is to say, the definitive realization of the salvific plan of God to ‘unite all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth’ (Ephesians 1:10). God will then be ‘all in all’ (1 Corinthians 15:28) in eternal life. Look at the words the Compendium uses to speak of this hope: ‘final’, ‘fullness’, and ‘definitive’.

 The new heavens and new earth are the goal of our faith and hope. In his Kingdom, God’s love will fill all creation and every creature. But this passage also speaks of the necessity of judgment prior to this fulfillment, because what happens in this world (the age in which we now live) is not of no account.

For justice to reign in God’s Kingdom, judgment must be carried out upon every life lived in this present age. This is not something we should fear, but rather something for which we should long with eager hearts. As the Psalmist says:

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth; break forth into joyous song and sing praises! … for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with equity (Psalm 98:4, 8-9).
Judgment is one of the ‘four last things’ in classic Christian catechesis. The others are death, hell and heaven. Since all human beings are destined to receive God’s justice, the Apostles’ Creed confesses that we believe ‘in the resurrection of the body’:  What is meant by the ‘resurrection of the body’?

This means that the definitive state of man will not be one in which his spiritual soul is separated from his body. Even our mortal bodies will one day come to life again.

The Compendium explains the Christian understanding of the meaning of death. It is ‘the separation of the body and the soul’ in which ‘the body becomes corrupt while the soul, which is immortal, goes to meet the judgment of God and awaits its reunion with the body when it will rise transformed at the time of the return of the Lord’ (Comp. §205).

The very idea of the resurrection of the body was first formulated by the Jewish people, who experienced persecution and martyrdom in the centuries before Christ. How, they reasoned, would God show his faithfulness and justice to those who had already died on account of their faith in him?

To be continued………………………….