Death and Life

What you need to know about death and the afterlife ... ...in order to live this life as you should. In a culture obsessed with material comfort and success, even Catholics can lose sight of their eternal destiny. Hence the enduring value of this book, written in 1942 England, when death and its consequences could not so easily be ignored. Penned by the brilliant and witty Jesuit, Fr. Martin D'Arcy, this profound explication of Catholic teaching on death and the afterlife is bracing. Its chief attribute: laying out the conditions for attaining eternal happiness. Chapters include: The Soul and Its Body * Intimations of Immortality * The Nature of the Self * The Undying Self * The Christian Doctrine of the After-Life * Holiness and Immortality * The Supernatural * Hell * Purgatory * Heaven Topics: # What will eternal life be like? Three terms mystics use to describe the experience of eternity # The glory of aging: How, as our bodily powers fail, our spiritual and moral lives curve ever upward toward fruition # How we suffer in this life when we ignore our immortal destiny # How human thought itself provides sufficient proof of the existence of immaterial reality # The value of using concrete imagery to evoke Heaven, Hell and Purgatory = -- and some pitfalls # Why Heaven will be anything but boring # Two key New Testament verses that make Catholic doctrine on Hell = "painfully clear," and are echoed in dogmatic statements # Why eternal damnation is compatible with -- indeed, required by -- God's = justice and mercy # Why the Church, in its wisdom, does not describe Hell only in terms of = the "pain of loss," but also of the "pain of sense" # How we know that no damned soul can ever complain of lack of justice or = love