Life After Death

(upbeat music) - Very interesting specs is jelly. I'd like to welcome you to that where God is not podcasted where you could join Father Michael O'Lockling and my Godmother, Manny and Talia. - Hello listeners, this is Father Michael today's episode is Father Michael's. I'm only doing both because Mother Natalia had to run with a confession center that she is joking. Today we talk about a topic that Mother and I have found so much life in and she shares a bit of that story about how this topic was where she began to discover that her heart really was in the East, which mine is two, and that is life after death. And we discuss from a book that I quote in some of the fathers that I quote, how what's a proper but often misunderstood way of seeing God of heaven of purgatory of hell and maybe a little bit different from what you've learned and how those differences are not contradictory. The reality of what happens after we die and where we go and what we experience is broader and bigger than anything we have ever heard. And that's an important point of humility to make but we discuss how basically in the teachings of many of the ancient Eastern fathers, heaven, hell and purgatory are the same place. They are going to God, they are the love of God and how we live our life here on earth becoming holy and being receptive to his love helps us to understand that reality and how God is, if we see him as mean or angry or as one who punishes, that's a misunderstanding in our own mind, a mis-miss vision, a mis-understanding of who he is rather than actually receiving him for what is true. So great episode, too short. We didn't get the nearly other things I wanted to and we'll probably follow it up with a few other ones, but I give you some references if you wanna do the research yourself as well. If you are actually a Banta Hater, mother was supposed to keep this down, but I'm guessing we do do some Banta to be getting to meet me on a skip. And I'm guessing if you jumped ahead to about a minute, 11 and a half, you would get to a good space where we'd begin the topic. (upbeat music) - Glory to Jesus Christ. - Glory to him, Prave. - I was telling Mother before we recorded that I'm becoming what sounds like a very, maybe progressive priest. - Oh yeah, you didn't actually explain that. - I didn't. - You got distracted by the Catholic. - You got distracted, exactly. And oh yeah, I have a new Catholic in. Thank you, shout out. - The irony, as you're talking about, how progressive he is seeing your Catholic arrives in the mail. - Well this is the thing, this is the thing. I want to be, there's this saying that says, a young priest looks holy and is not. A middle-aged priest does not look holy and is not. An older priest does not look holy, but is. That's one of these things. And I'm starting to see that my, when I was in seminary, as with most seminarians, you are judging your pastor, your judging, your bishop, your judging, every bitch of this come before you and you're seeing how they're all doing it wrong. You think you're gonna do it better and, but you do not know souls. You don't know souls. You don't know what God's doing with people's souls. You see everything from the outside and you judge everything from the outside and you have these boxes that you check and you just think that everybody needs to be obedient to the boxes that are important to you. And so, as I get older, I start to realize that my job, again, this isn't every priest. I don't want to make it full myself by contradict what I'm saying here, but there are some priests who, and there are some souls that they serve that absolutely benefit from very explicitly and even cursly kind of stating what we should be doing and what we should believe and how that should be carried out. So, like with no nuance, with no pastoral gentleness, I'm the type that needs that. I'm the type that needs the father, your office. If I pulled the camera away right now, you see how messy my desk was. I need people to say father, your office needs to be organized. You need people to walk in and say that is an organized priest. Is that actually true? No, like a messy desk many have said is actually the sign of getting stuff done or of a certain type of mind. But do I need to hear that? Absolutely. I need to better organize my office like that. I do need to do that. So, I'm the type that needs the very black and white, just say what it is, but I, with souls, and especially the souls who have left the church, and I have such a great, such a great love of the soul that have left the church that I just see so much nuance and process and pilgrimage. When I was a seminarian or a nearly priest, I did not see that at all. But I think now my goal is to people to say, look how fluffy he is. Look how gentle. He's way too patient with people, and he gives way to me exceptions in the spiritual life. And then, but then I want them to realize that I'm actually one of the most conservative, traditional orthodox priests you're ever gonna meet. And like, I want that to kind of start a little, 'cause when I meet priests like that, that startles me. And I go, wow, beautiful. I want my parish to be-- For if it doesn't startle you to realize that they're like the most conservative priest, the ones that it doesn't startle you with are the ones that it's like, it's not good that it doesn't startle you. - Right, right, I just want to conclave. I watch conclave on the plane, and don't watch it, don't pay money for it. It's such a attempt at letting the world inform the church. Again, there's some good moments. It could have been a lot worse. Honestly, I was like, wow, I expected more attacks on the church and more of a more of like an explicit attack on the church, and that wasn't there. I mean, there was some things even with kind of a surprise ending that were interestingly nuanced and interestingly not a direct attack. But it's just, I want people to, the world expects that. The world expects no nuance, and the world wants the church to change in certain ways. And it thinks it's doing better than the church is. It's not. And so the church, there's certain things that I want to say, I lean into things like the beautiful traditions. The turtical traditions, artistic traditions, architectural traditions, spiritual traditions. These are the things that I lean into that the world basically says is old, and theological tradition is exactly. The things that the world says don't matter anymore and they're just outdated. But I also want someone to come in and say, the parish, St. Mary's has the best homeless ministry of any parish in Los Angeles, even the most, quote, progressive ones that have sacrificed all these other things for the sake of dealing with the outcasts and people in the peripheries. I want them to say, St. Mary's in Los Angeles, they really do care about the environment. They really do want to make sure that this world is protected and that we aren't unnecessarily creating plastics and burning down rainforests. And I want to say that St. Mary's really does desire living wage for everybody. And St. Mary's really does desire that immigrants are cared for and that we are able to properly discern who is a stranger and then what God wishes for immigration and borders. And he says, I really want to be, like you said earlier, all things to all people. And I think that there's a way of doing that. Now again, I don't want to be the cool priest. I don't want to be the cool church because that's what you risk when you do that. I want to be the one, oh my gosh, everything got everything right. They're so cool. We will never be the cool church. We will never be accepted by everybody. You will never be all things to all people. You'll never be everything. Oh my gosh, these father Michael's rings has a good job. Not gonna happen. And it should not happen. If everybody was saying that, I was doing something wrong. But there is something that you mentioned the classic. Like it is, I love wearing a classic. I, when I walk in my classic, I was walking, I dropped a prisoner off last night and I was walking through the very, very run-down neighborhood of people awake way past they should, when they should be and doing things they really should not be doing. And I walked through my classic and I just felt like I was manifesting the presence of a God more than if I just had my clerics on. You know, like my black collar. There was just something about, I stood out for more of a distance and things like this. But I also understand that I don't think it's proper to wear my classic everywhere I go because there are times when wearing my clerics or my collar open even I have found in 20 years later to be more effective towards the glory of God. That doesn't mean every priest should do that, but that's the case. So I'm about to touch so much. - What's in Pistane is. - It was. What's interesting is, oh shoot. I opened the window and I think I'm letting rain in. - What's interesting is you're saying progressive but you mean politically based on the current climate because actually the love for the poor and the love of the outcasts and the care for the environment is all extremely conservative according to Catholic social teaching. And the point I'm getting into is most parishes have a really hard time not being one or the other. Most parishes have a really hard time being completely about tradition and yet also serving the poor in a very, very effective way. Other parishes serve the poor really, really well but you don't expect to find tradition there and it's just, why not both? - This was my experience. I don't know if you remember this, but this was the experience I had after I graduated college of wanting to do mission work somewhere of, I had such a hard time finding somewhere that was orthodox Catholic, like little orthodox, right? Like conservative Catholic that also cared about Catholic social teaching and I've talked about a simple house of St. Francis and Alfonso's before in the podcast but that's where I ended up going for ministry and I rave about the ministry. Like a simple house is such a good place to go for ministry after college because it was both of those things. Like we lived in community, we prayed morning and evening prayer together from the Brewery every day. You were required to go to daily mass. It's totally orthodox in that sense. We also lived in the hood and lived poverty and we're serving mostly our ministry as well in Kansas City with mostly with single mothers in the projects but also some homeless ministry. In DC it's probably the reverse of that mostly homeless but then also some single mothers in the projects and just radically living that life. And one of the things that I've talked about before in the podcast too is simple houses. So they so beautifully live this because there are lots of organizations that live voluntary poverty amongst the volunteers but simple house also lives voluntary poverty as a corporation. So we were never allowed to have more than, I don't remember if it was two or three months, worth of bills in our bank account at any one time as a corporation. Unless it's like we're saving up for a new property or if there's a particular reason for it but we can't just have extra money in the bank. And you don't experience that with a lot of, so anyways but I was having such a hard time after college 'cause I'm looking at there are Catholic worker houses that live what we're describing, right? This Orthodox Catholic and also, but there's lots of Catholic worker houses that are not, right? That are just really living the social work aspect of it. And so to want both is, yeah, it's weird to come across. I highly recommend, actually I would highly recommend that people read the the compendium of Catholic social doctrine. I read that while I was at simple house and it's really beautiful. - Yeah, it's hard because I am actually kind of riding my homely as we're talking for this coming Sunday, which is the Sunday of the Cross because you cannot get to heaven without carrying your cross. Now again, there's nuances there, you know, again, what does that mean? You talk to your church, your priest. But the cross, the cross is necessary for resurrection and the cross is necessary therefore in a sense for a salvation Christ cross primarily. But the way that we carry ours as well, the Christ has us to say anything with the sheep in the goats. That those who, you know, it's pretty explicit. There's nuances there with even those who were the sheep didn't know what they were doing and didn't know that they were serving Christ. But there still is this. We don't take these, the Catholic social teaching is trying to sum it all up, especially the compendium. That's what it means, you know, to sum it all up so that we know here's all the things that are important for us. But it's really sad that you don't see that more. So yeah, I would actually say, if you guys have, I would love, my mother just talked about a simple house. If you guys have experience to some of you, maybe screaming at your radio right now or where your YouTube saying, - Your radio. - This one is good. I know, I'm so used to, on Catholic stuff, most people just listen to us in the car. That's what we, you know, but now it's like that's what we say. So you used to say radio, but anyway, yes. So if you know of any places doing well, and let us know, maybe we'll have our media team put out some shout outs to things like that or we'll do shout outs here on the podcast 'cause those places are, in my experience, a few of our, that doesn't mean they are, but in my experience, a few of our between and it'd be nice to have some good examples that could, that could show us anyway. And by the way, if we don't give you a shout out, please, it doesn't mean we don't look it up or we didn't like it. Everybody thinks there's the best as well. We're not gonna put the work in and doing long deep dives into making sure that you're perceiving it correctly, according to what we think. So anyway, but why not? Why not share it if you can? All right, anything else, mother? - Maybe we could even, maybe we could even ask our media team to put up an ad hoc post or something like that that people can comment on with their places. - There we go. I like that way. - No extra, yeah. (laughing) - That would be great. I like that idea better, it's quick. It's easy, Valeria knows how to do those type of things, have things really, really quickly with the surveys and such. So, cool. All right. We, I vented last podcast about how I don't read enough and how I don't feel too guilty about that, but that I do need to be reading more. So I planned on putting a lot more research into this topic. So this is a disclaimer, but this is a topic that I talk about often and I basically just give my pastoral reflection upon it. But today, I'm gonna do that and I'm also gonna give some substance from a book and from the fathers, which I wanna do, but I did want to put more work into this and better organize this and life, the life of a priest guy in the way. So, I kind of apologize and kind of don't. But this book, this is what we were given as seminaries, called "For Those on My YouTube, I'm Holding It Up." "Life After Death" by Metra Paulton of Naf Paktos, "Hero Thales." It's what we used as our textbook in seminary about the perusia, about the second coming, about what happens after we die. This is what most people, by the way, who are not practicing Christians, think that all Christianity is about. They all think it's about where we're doing all these things in this world so that we know it's happening after we die, we go to a better place and we make sure that we earn that. Of course, that's horribly wrong. Faith is about union with God here on earth and the next and the two go together. And, but there's some passages and I've been asked many times and maybe I'll give you a little teaser about a possible future episode on what happens to babies if they die before they're baptized. There is some nuanced differences between the traditional way, mother had phones off for a few minutes, I should have said something funny, I didn't. There's some differing views in the traditional ways that are not obviously explicit dogmatic church teaching on these issues about what happens when babies die before baptism and before the age of reason. In other words, there's some research I want to do into that so I give it the proper depth and preparation. But one of the things that I talk about often when people always ask me, what's the difference between the Roman Catholic and the Byzantine Catholic Churches? And again, I've been asked that so many times, but I give different answers every time, kind of based upon the new things I've learned while other things I've learned. But I almost always talk about if we have time, the visions of heaven and hell and purgatory. That's, and one of the reasons for that is because there I have found one of the Eastern views. Again, the Eastern Church, there is kind of, there are certain aspects of what happens after we die that there is a consensus of the fathers, that almost every father, almost all the early theologians talk about one general process that after we die, we basically go through a journey or a process where our life is analyzed and basically the angel of the demons argue, they both argue as if it was like a court of law for our soul. - Have you ever read "Leaf by Niggle?" - No. - That's what it makes me think of. "Leaf by Niggle." - Well, I read it, so anyway, read "Leaf by Niggle." - It's a short story. - You would totally-- - It's not actually by Niggle, it's by who? Who wrote it, Chester Tinner's, Lewis? - I feel like it's Chester Tinn. I can look it up, keep talking. - Okay, so anyway, mother's gonna look it up. So there's this process of what happens after we die. So I'm not gonna get into that today, but what I am gonna get into is some reflections from this book that was our textbook that talk about heaven and purgatory and by extension hell. And what that is, you know, in the West and in the Roman Catholic Church, we tend to take the writings of one person, whether it's Thomas or some saint, and that kind of becomes the authoritative teaching of the entire church. Is it by none of those, none of the above? - Oh, this is such a fail. I totally knew this. - What do you do? - I was talking, I almost said that. I almost thought that was gonna be my third thing. Uh-oh, it's lawn mowing day. Sorry, all of you can hear me lawn mowing. So yes, so in other words, what is heaven and purgatory? And the reason I bring this up when people ask is because there are various views on this. And Saint Paul says, "I is not seen, ear is not heard." So there needs to be a great humility. And when I say humility about these teachings, especially when there's a difference between the East and the West, what now we would say is, you know, the Roman and the Eastern churches between these two different churches, there does need to be humility. And I was telling a friend the other day, you know, the fact that there are, we talked with this in an episode, a couple of episodes ago, the fact that there are different churches. And I was actually, it was last night, I was talking to a Jewish guy, to an Orthodox Jewish guy. And he was saying that kind of all the different sects within Judaism, he said he misused the word later on, but he was basically saying it kind of chips away, like all these different sects of Judaism watered down Judaism. And he was saying, this is the same thing happen within the churches, within the Catholic church, like the 24 different Catholic churches, since they're different, do they water down the truth, do they water down the faith? And I think the opposite is true. It actually provides, it mandates a humility. The example I used with him was, you know, the Roman Catholic architecture, to overly generalize, I can use that word a lot here, to overly generalize, Roman Catholic architecture points up. So you go into a church and you are in a sense, transported up the steeples and the Gothic architecture, everything points you up. In a Byzantine church, it's the opposite. Everything comes down. So you see, the domes or tongues has a fire, there's a dome in the church because the heavens come down, it's the condescension of Jesus Christ. So in heaven, here's where we meet, here's in a Roman Catholic church to over generalize. Here's where we go to be transported to heaven. In a Byzantine of the church, here's where we go because here's where God descended. Here's where God descended to meet us. So it's a slightly different nuanced thing, but which one of those is correct? Neither one, they're both, neither one and both. So they're both inadequate. They're both not explaining the whole thing and they're both beautiful in what they show because the reality is beyond both of those. So how distracting is the lot more by the way? - It's not terrible, it's not bad. - Okay, great, great. I'm gonna continue then. So anyway, so this is the way it is. So this is also the case with these teachings about. - That's just the way it is. - Exactly, about life after death. You're gonna get a sued mother. So it's how it is with life after death. So I wanna read from these Easter Mothers 'cause the way I portrayed is I think a way that this generation really finds helpful. And it is giving into the trends of the world and it is kind of trying to meet people where they are, but that there is a way of. There is an authentic teaching. I'm not even gonna present that, I'm gonna read it and I'm gonna read from the fathers here and they're a flesh from the scriptures that are in this book. So you can see what I'm talking about. This isn't just some progressive sounding hoki way of seeing heaven, hell, and purgatory, but it's actually ancient. There's a consensus of the fathers on this and what may seem a paradox or contradictory to maybe what you've grown up with Roman Catholics. I do not want to, I would never want to contradict the writings of what had become the kind of consensus or the main focused way of understanding heaven, hell, and purgatory in the West. - I will say before you read it, I just wanna say the context of like the reason this even came up is because you and I were talking about it last week because I was sharing with you, I don't know if I had ever told you this, but I was sharing with you that this teaching, when I learned this, it was the first time that I realized that my heart is Eastern because this is like what I have intuitive for my whole life and I remember getting into an argument with my boyfriend about it and he was not on this side. I had never read anything and I'm like, well, he's extremely knowledgeable about philosophy and theology. And so clearly if we disagree on this, he must be right and I'm wrong because I've never studied any theology and so and I was just going around like with my tail between my legs, so sad and dejected because I'm like, but this feels like it's gotta be true. And then like a week after that conversation, I heard this teaching and it was so settling to my heart and I was like, it's not that, like neither of us was wrong, actually and both can be held as differing. But it was like for me, it was that first confirmation of like, oh, this thing that's been in my heart for my entire life is actually a tradition in Eastern theology, in the theology of the church, actually, because these, yeah, anyways. And I will mention it because there's these teachings but there's also a way that I, as a Byzantine Catholic, have tried to say, what is this gonna look like when we get to heaven and kind of see the fullness of the reality of it? And I think that that's a good goal to have to say that how do I acknowledge these two traditions that have emerged in hundreds and hundreds of years in the churches and what may that look like so that when I get to have a rejoice in the reality that it was beyond everything I thought and beyond whatever we think it was thought and again, that can sound like a cop out so I don't want it to be a cop out. So I want it to be here, let me find some possibility. So here's just a way, a lot of this is pious using our human mind to try to concede as something that the human mind cannot conceive of, but all right. So here is a, first of all, in this book, he reflects upon where we find heaven and where we find paradise and hell or heaven and hell in the scriptures and I'm just gonna cut one little paragraph out of this before we get into what the fathers say and how the fathers interpret this and that's the main book of this other father's too. So he's reflecting on the scriptures. And this is what he says. It is not God who punishes, but a person punishes himself because he does not accept the, accept God's gift. I think there's a typo there. In any case, the lack of communion with God is man's punishment, especially when we think that man was created in the image of like this of God. And this is the deepest goal of his existence. I love that line. In any case, the lack of communion with God is man's punishment. It's not God saying you didn't follow my word. You are, I'm mad at you. Let's just put it that way. It's not that God's saying I'm mad at you that you're punished. I'm punishing you because of the emotions you caused me to have, right? So many parents do that. You know, we don't, I hear that in confession all the time. I got mad. My kid did not deserve the level of anger that I had, that I showed them and they did not deserve the punishment I gave them. And we tend, I think, to think that that's how God is. So God gives these general rules. And then if we don't follow them, he gets mad. And he may even get mad. He's just picked these particular things that he happens to not like as opposed to when you do these things, it harms your relationship with me. So I'm telling you not to do them so that you don't harm relationship, not because I just happen to, yeah. Like it's not like I'm saying, you know, don't, don't like put any of the yellow sour patch kids in the bowl just because I don't like yellow sour patch kids. It's like it. Yeah. And it's, and I think the people that the people that tend to online or in person kind of use, use their understanding of God's rules that they don't have any real reason for. It's just God said this so we need to do it. I think the people that tend to use those as a weapon are the ones who are already pretty good at those things. Either they're really good at those things. So it's not a cross for them and they don't understand how those things can be a cross for others. So they say, well, this is easy for me. So you just, it must be easy for you too. So you just need to do it. You know, you just need to do it. You know, we really should not have, in the court of the ancient teaching of the church, we should not have vigils on Saturday nights, Saturday evenings, the day for the divine literacy, the day for the Eucharist celebration is Sunday, typically in the morning, that is the time. And there are people that will read this about the ancient church and will say the really, the proper time for the Sunday liturgy, Eucharist mass, divine liturgy is Sunday morning. And so they will preach this into the blue in the face and they'll condemn anybody who goes to a vigil Saturday night or anybody who goes to a church Sunday evening and they'll condemn parishes that have these opportunities. But I guarantee you, most of the time, that's doable for them. It's pretty easy to get up on a Sunday morning. You don't have other things going on, you don't have family things going on, you don't have kids' sports going on, and you can just do it, or your kids don't play sports, or whatever, or you just don't want to give your kids' sports, whatever it is. Again, sports should be happening Sunday mornings. I wish our country changed that. I wish there were Catholic sports leagues so that there was no sports on Sunday mornings. There should not be sports on Sunday mornings. But what I'm saying is there is usually the case that either, it's really easy for the people of these semi-experience or it's actually really hard for them. And they feel actually a lot of shame about these things. This is, there was that evangelical minister down in Colorado Springs when I was in Denver. And he basically, every single homily was condemning homosexuality. And then of course, it came out later on that he was homosexual. And he was practicing it in a devious and moral way. And so he came back, he was acting, he was reacting to his own shame for this. So that's usually one way or the other. So if we want to use the word punishment, which many places and scriptures and the father do use punishment, the punishment he's saying here is not God's ambivalent punishment because you frustrated him, you angered him about some random rule he made because he wants to create a well-ordered church or whatever the punishment is says here again. This is just reflecting upon the scriptures. He replies, he replies upon the word about hell. He reflects upon the pruning of the fig tree, things like this and to come out of this conclusion. The God-managed punishment is the lack of communion, that we've kind of instilled upon ourselves. We suffer because of lack of communion, but that communion is always, we are always being invited into it. God doesn't push us out of it. We in a sense break it ourselves to overly generalize again. And as we see, he mentions the passage I mentioned as sheep in the goats. Hell is identified with everlasting fire, which has been prepared for the devil and his angels. So when God in Matthew 25 in the last judgment, when he invices the sheep, he says come inherit the kingdom of heaven prepared for you. And then when he sends them to hell, he says the hell prepared for the devil and his angels. It's not prepared for you. You were not created for hell. You were created for heaven. So it can feel like punishment. - Wow, I've never thought about that. - Yeah, because you're going somewhere where you were not created for you. You broke, you mutated your own creation. And therefore you're going somewhere else that is not built for you. And you weren't built for it. So that feels like punishment. Again, if we sabotage our own life, we get mad at God. It's like, oh, that doesn't work. I get it, I get it, I've done it. But that's not how this works. If we sabotage our own life or our own happiness, and we blame God for it because he's an easy person to blame. It's just, that's a dangerous, dangerous thing to do. All right, you're going to have to interrupt me, Mother, 'cause since I'm reading, you just got to speak. - Okay, it's good. - Okay, please do it again, many times. All right, this is then, then he, the author here, Metropolitan Herotheos, he then gets into the fathers. Now they interpret the scriptures and the tradition. So he says, "The general teaching of the Holy Father to the church is that paradise and hell do not exist from God's point of view, but from man's." All right, let that sink in for a moment. The general teaching of the Holy Father to the church is that paradise and hell do not exist from God's point of view, but from man's. By the way, this is page 254, if you have the book, top of the page. It is true that paradise and hell exist at two ways of life, but it is not God who created them. This is just, God himself is paradise for the saints and God himself is hell for the sinners. This is the, let me read the whole paragraph. In general, the teaching of the Holy Father to the church is that paradise and hell do not exist from God's point of view, but from man's. It is true that paradise and hell exist as two ways of life, but it is not God who created them. In the petristic tradition, it is clear that there are not two ways, but God himself is paradise for the saints and God himself is hell for the sinners. So I've heard it reflected upon real quick that when Jesus is telling the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, and Abraham in that parable says, he's talking to the rich man, he says, there is a chasm between you and us. Lazarus is here in my bosom, you're in the torments of hell. There is a chasm. He can't cross that chasm to bring you water and you can't cross that chasm to come to us. And there are many who will say, this was before, this is the Hades, this is the place of the dead. There was only one place. The rich man and Lazarus were not in two different places. They were all in the same place as we conceive place in our rational minds with time and space, but the chasm was in the rich man's mind because he decided that Lazarus is still a slave. You can still order Lazarus to come give me water. He decided what this looks like for himself and because of his deranged and misunderstanding of what was happening on earth with Lazarus, that maintains, he dies. He didn't, I was gonna change. He still has the same mindset in hell that he had on heaven. The chasm that he has now in a more real place, the place of the dead, in this case, he still sees a chasm because he created a chasm in the world between him and Lazarus. So he still sees a chasm and Abraham is just letting him see the chasm that's in his head. So the same thing is true here. Heaven and hell is basically according to this teaching that's from the fathers is not just made up by some crazy progressive. This teaching is that, and again, I also wanna say disclaimer, there are also multiple teachings of the fathers, but this is, there is a certain consensus here that we need to acknowledge that it's in our head. Hell is, according to this, can maybe be explained as being in union with God, being with God and hating it and hating it for all eternity. Pergation then purgatory would be not liking it because you have become addicted to other things, not liking it because it is good and beautiful and you haven't treasure the good and beautiful but you want to treasure the good and beautiful and you've done certain things in your life and believe certain things that allow you to appreciate the good and beautiful, but you need to be purged. You need to go through detox. You need to detox off of the addiction to sin and you wanna detox off the addiction to sin, but it does take time, whatever time looks like in eternity to get there. - I am this. - And this. - Still have it. - Yeah, this, I mean, this specifically is that teaching that I was like, this is the thing that my heart is eastern because this is how I've always just intuitive the afterlife, you know? Like, it doesn't sit right with me when, and I know like, this is gonna make so many people upset 'cause I know a lot of people believe this and this is like one of the prevalent beliefs about hell that it's separation from God. But the reason that doesn't jive with me is like, we still exist, we still have being. And how can we have total separation from the creator and still exist? Like, there's gotta be something there. We can't just not even, but it's like, but so in my, yeah, in my mind, in my heart, it's always been like this concept of hell being, I've spent my life not wanting the presence of God and having to spend eternity in that presence. Like, that is hell in my mind. And I think it's, you know, to make a couple very simple analogies from here on Earth, it's a couple of the analogies that come to mind are like, if people have been accustomed to contemplative prayer to silence and you've gradually spent more and more time in prayer, you know, it's like you start with five minutes of silence a day and then eventually get up to 10 minutes, eventually get up to, you're praying a holy hour every day, then to sit in silence in a holy hour can be a very beautiful experience for someone who never practices any silence, to sit in silence for an hour is torture and it's awful. And the other very simple analogy that comes to mind is just if you imagine someone that you just hate, like you can't even stand being in their presence and they just wanna give you a big long hug, then the whole time they're hugging you, you're just like miserable and angry and you don't wanna be there. But if you're thinking of a person that you deeply love and desire relationship with and wanna be with, then to have that big long hug from them is glorious, right? It's love and it's like the same experience, but no, not the same experience, that's a point. It's the same objective reality, but experienced so differently. - Yeah. - I can't tell you as I'm looking ahead in this and how they say that seminaries are taking a sip of water out of a fire hose, you know? All you want is a sip and you're trying to take it out of water. So there's a lot more things thrown at you than you actually need or retain. But as I'm reading through this again right now, this was something that I, this is what formed this whole thought of my mind. If you guys can have access to this book, if this intrigues you, in other words, this is translated by Esther Williams and it's the birth of the Theotokos monastery, is the publisher, birth of the Theotok monastery. So good luck finding it, go ahead and try. Hopefully there's even a kind of version like this, but yes, what mother is saying is at the heart of, it's sometimes this is a whole different transition. So for instance, he quotes saying Isaac, this is a saying Isaac the Syrian, who by the way, you just look him up because a lot of the stuff comes from him as kind of one of the voices or many voices. - Isaac him from our books, just incredible. - Yes, so it says, Isaac says that it would be improper for a man to think that sinners in Gehenna are deprived of the love of God. It would be improper to say that sinners again are deprived of the love of God. It's not, you cannot be deprived of the love of God. And that's what he's saying. And this is, again, this is ancient and so incredibly important. These things mean that men's experiences of God will be different to each. By himself, the master will give a cord to the measure of his excellence and to his worthiness. For there, the order of those who teach and those who learn will cease and in each will be the ardent love of all. Thus there will be one who will give his grace to all and that is God himself, but men will receive it according to their capacity. Again, this is why our holiness here on earth is so important. Hell is the torment of the love of God. Again, the love of God becomes a torment, not because of him, but because of us. Besides, as St. Isaac says, the sorrow caused in the heart by sin against the love of God is more poignant than any fear of punishment. We so many, we fear punishment, we do. But the sorrow is what is truly going to be, is what's gonna be, what's gonna cause hell to be hell. It's in a sense sorrow, but there's no, I would argue that in my understanding, there is no desire to repent. It's not a regret. It's not a regret that says, I wish I could go back and do it again. That's not what this is. You don't say as I think many think, if I could do it all again, I would do it differently to end up in heaven. You're in heaven and heaven is hell to you. It's not like, you know, now again, there may be some semblance of that in whatever way our minds can conceive and say, I want to feel differently. Maybe there's a way for me to feel differently, but I generally think that that's pergation, that that's the process. If that's how we think, then we will be purged. We will end up in the joys of heaven. We will see heaven for what it is, rather than seeing heaven as hell. If we have even that inkling hell, hell is only for those who really do form themselves. And I truly believe there are these people, others would disagree with me. I really do believe there are people that have lived this life and formed themselves to be so antithetical and so against truth, and beauty, and goodness, and who Jesus is, that they have become, they've become in a sense of demon. They're not, 'cause they're humans, but the demons outside of space and time have decided to live this way in eternity. And hell, if we can say hell was created, hell is for them. You know, it's a place built for them. So wait, why not for those who like the demons have decided that they're gonna be in the presence of God, be receiving the love of God for all eternity and hating every minute of it, you know? And I'm gonna, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna go into too much of this now because we need to make sure we end a little bit early today because of things going on in both of our days, maybe we'll do a second. - Mother Natali, you need to go to confession. So, but look up Isaac the Syrian, look up this book, because this is where I think it can say, and there are the Western fathers who say that hell is separation from God and purgatory is a created place where there is a created fire that purges those who have sinned. But it's a created place, as I understand it, because it's separate from God. And hell is even more separate from God where you're separate from God for all eternity. Now that would seem to contradict in one way of this. Again, I think the reality is bigger than all of this. I don't even know what Western fathers said that. And so, call me out if you'd like. But I do, I would the way I can understand it is the way for our measly created human rational minds to understand how can both of these things be true, you know? Again, so basically what we're saying here is sum it up. Heaven, hell and purgatory are all you die and you go to God. That's what happens. You die and you go to God. That is either heaven to you because this is what you were created for. You've grown in holiness. You've desired this your whole life. Or it's purgatory to you because you are not ready for this. You're addicted to things other than this, but you don't want to be. So there's a process that will end. One day you will be in heaven because purgatory is a process of purgation. That's where we get the word from. And when that process is done, whatever that means in eternity, you will be in heaven. Or there is hell where there is no process. You are, you do not want to process. You have decided that you will be happier. If you can use that word, happier being angry and bitter against God in all of his ways for all eternity, you don't even want to go under the process. And if that's the case, I could see how God in whatever it means outside of time and space, I can see how God would say, let me hold you at arm's length. Let me in a sense separate you from my mercy and from my love because it is so torturous for you. So that in your eternal misery, you're slightly less miserable. Exactly. There's a lessening of it because what is torturing you, what is what you're calling punishment, what you're mad at me for is just the way I love you. You're looking at my love of you and saying, you're punishing me, you're looking at my love of you and you're saying, why do you hate me so much? You're looking at my love of you and you misunderstand it, you don't see it. And you don't want to see it for all eternity. It's not just you misunderstand it. And then when you see it more clearly, you understand, like I see it as clearly as I will ever see it and I hate it. And I'm not only that, I'm blaming it on you, God. You're punishing me, you're hating me, you're looking for me to fall and that makes me happy, happier to think that way. So why wouldn't God, if that's who we formed ourselves to be, why wouldn't God, in a sense say, it will be less painful for you little one if I actually move you further away from my heart, further away from my embrace, further away from my love, whatever that further away means. So that God is saying, I love you and so I want you to be less in pain even if you're just throwing a tantrum. A child, this throwing a tantrum. Just take that back, a child throws a tantrum, he's still growing. An adult throws a tantrum, that's where what this is. You've had a chance to be formed and you've decided something, you're gonna throw a tantrum. And so it doesn't even matter, if I bring you close, you'll be mad at me. If I push you further away, you're mad at me. You're gonna mad at me either way for all eternity, but out of my love for you, even in your anger for me, God says, I'm gonna separate you so that there's a little bit less pain whether you acknowledge it or not and whatever that means. So that's in my mind how I hope to get to heaven and then say, wow Lord, like this is how all these theologians, all these fathers, much smarter and holier than me for centuries have come up with seemingly two and or 50 different ways of understanding what happens after we die because we see it. Here's how people that have died and come back could say, this is what I experienced and to be able to do that, seem to contradict each other and yet they're both in their inadequate and the reality is beyond them. Here's one way where I can say instead of just raining against those who believe something different than I do 'cause they read different fathers and different theologians. Here's one way way I can say, here's the way I see it. I think it's very important to see it this way. This fits with my tradition and my church and my path and holiness. You may see things a different way. It's probably bigger than both of these and so let's not let this be something that makes us angry or give it to the devil's tactics of turning us against each other or creating further schisms, you know. - Can I share just one story of something that was really beautiful to me that really applies here? I was at a funeral and yeah, I just think this applies so well and yeah, I think to be very, I just wanna be very clear with everyone who's listening and if you've listened to the podcast before, if you know Father Michael and I already know this and it goes back to what we were saying at the, was it this podcast that we were talking about being Orthodox versus yeah, yeah, yeah, it was this one that you were like talking about how you think people - Oh, in the beginning, yeah. - I think that you're progressive, yeah. But if you know Father Michael and I, you know that we're very Orthodox on this. I'm not saying by this story or by anything we've said on this podcast that like, you shouldn't try to pursue holiness and like none of it's gonna matter and as long as you like kind of want God then you're just gonna go to heaven and so it doesn't matter. Like we're not saying that at all. So, I just wanna be very clear about that. So this funeral that I went to, the priest, it was one of the, it's probably like top two funeral homelies I've ever heard. Because honestly, when I go to a funeral I'm typically, if it's just like funeral at a random parish not like a priest has died in the bishops preaching or something like that. But if it's just like a funeral that I'm going to at some random parish, I'm always bracing myself at the homelie because funeral homelies are so rough. Mostly because yeah, oftentimes they're just not theologically sound and as the priest is preaching I'm like, I'm sorry, did you just canonize this person? Because you just told everyone here that this person's in heaven and they're not suffering anymore. And so, and I'm like, you're not motivating anyone to pray for this person. So, I don't like that. We need to preach hope, right? We need to preach hope and love and mercy and compassion and all of that, but not certainty and not, yeah. So anyways, I like braced myself at this funeral as I usually do and and it was so beautiful. And there were a lot of reasons. Like I could do a whole episode on this priest homelie, but I just want to share one part of it. So, the young man who had died, he was young in his 20s and died of just like a random thing, that random health thing that happened that seemingly he just like couldn't get help in time. And so, very tragic, very sudden. And this young man hadn't been in the church for several years. He'd been pretty far from the church. And the priest, he was a family friend. He was actually like one of the closest friends of this guy, like they had grown up together and the guy who died had been like at this priest, how was basically a part of their family as they were growing up. And so the priest said, like he acknowledged that. He said like we all know so and so has been far from the church for the last several years. And I was grateful that he acknowledged that because I'm like, everyone here knows that. So let's just be real and not pretend like so and so was in the pews every Sunday, whatever. So that was part of what I appreciated about it. But then he said, he said, but I want to tell you why I have hope for him as we continue to pray for him after his death. I have hope because growing up, we always invited him into our family, like he was like an adopted brother basically. And he's like, you know, and it was always so hard and such a struggle to get him to receive that love and to just, you know, when we take a family picture and he wants to be the one to take the picture and we're like, no, you're in the picture. And he just always fought and he just, but he always eventually gave in. And that's the hope that I have for him after his death is that I know that God will not stop loving him and I have good reason to hope that he's going to give into that. And I think that's very much what we're talking about here, right? And I should say the reason he was far from the church was because he had been very wounded by people in the church. And it wasn't that he was far out of some sort of obstinacy or hedonistic anything. It was just like, he wanted truth and he struggled to find that in the church. And it wasn't like he wasn't seeking. And but I just thought I was like that explains perfectly what we're saying here. Like if you die, if you die, like desperately desiring God's love, but maybe fighting against it and then like just having the hope that his love will prevail. But it's not like rejection of his love and willful choice to live outside of his love. It's like the difficulty of receiving his love that gets purified in his presence, yeah. - Thank you, that's beautiful. And I think I may even steal that for a future funeral homily because I think that's where there's hope in showing some, this person has resisted love and resisted communion his whole life and everybody eventually gave in. The same thing could be, that's a microcosm of what can be this whole life. The other thing I will say is that I just want to relate something to make sure that I'm clear about, about at least less misunderstanding than there may be. I've shared this story before that a priest called me out one time and he said, I think you assume that children are holier than adults because they're innocent, but they're not, he says, that's not a child is not what God intends. You have to mature, you have to grow, you have to change, you have to convert, you have to put the work in. An adult who puts the work in and actually grows and matures, we are not ready for heaven at seven, eight years old. You know, I'm using the age of reason for a reason there. But we're not ready, like God intends for us to grow and to learn his ways and to be enlightened by the Holy Spirit and to respond to that light and to become holy and grow in union with him. Heaven is theosis, heaven is union with God and that needs to be engaged with. And so it's not just like if we grow up in a cave somewhere and we never experience the temptations of the world that we will somehow go to heaven because we've avoided all the things of the world. No, like we need to grow, we need to change and that that is part of the life of holiness. The spirit in lightens our heart, we need to go through the purgative and elumative and unitive ways, we need this journey and the journey is actually a journey of becoming God, of becoming like Christ. So I think some people can read what these fathers say and just think that well then I will do, I will just won't do anything. And therefore I will never sin and therefore I will be fine. You know, baptism is the beginning, baptism isn't the end, baptism is not the greatest holiness we have. Baptism is the beginning of a journey that leads to holiness and that comes through all the struggles of carrying the cross, we have to carry the cross, we need to feed the poor, we need to receive the holy sacraments, we need to become holy in prayer. So it's not, I just don't want people to think 'cause we only had a short period for this that it's just avoiding sin. It's just sitting back and not rejecting God's love. No, it's actually also accepting God's love and that takes growth and holiness in conversion. - Yeah. - And he nuance it to that mother. So I mean, you're not saying that if a seven or eight year old dies, they don't go to heaven. So just be clear. - No, but when you're seven or eight, you can have committed personal sin. So therefore you can go to hell, seven or eight years old as well, you know. - I'm just saying, like you said, a seven or eight year old isn't prepared for heaven. But you're not saying that just because a seven or eight year old dies, they can't go to heaven. - Thank you, thank you for that. That's a good point. I didn't want to say younger than that because that's one of the differences in our history of theology is that if you die before committing personal sin, oh, this is a teaser. If you die before committing personal sin and yet you're not baptized, there still is an understanding of it is assumed that you're in heaven. Once you've committed personal sin, that's not the case. But you can absolutely be ready for heaven at seven or eight years old, of course. Of course you can. You'd be ready for heaven at any time. And God knows that and He's prepared our hearts and He does what He does. But it's also not the case where I think many assume also, if you just avoid serious sin your whole life, you'll go to heaven as well. No, you need to become holy and that God wants us to do. It's a becoming as well. And that's from receiving. Well, I just heard the priest come into the chapel who's going to hear my confession. So if we can wrap up. Just to invite him in, we'll close that with your confession. That's a great idea. Public confession, bring it back. All right, thank you, Mother, for the time. Thank you, Father. Thank you all. Feel free to do some research yourself. Again, say, in Isaac the Syrian, as Mother mentioned, also, after the Syrian Christians. Probably, and I hope that they're misunderstanding emails. If you and you guys who can correct me, you absolutely know how to get hold of me. Do correct me, please. If we don't do it through Mother, it's how you can show Christ. Yeah, don't do it. Do it through me. Just put four Father Michael in the memo lines. And Mother, it's how you can read it. Put confidential Father Michael like that. And then we will provide nuance. We'll provide nuance where there maybe was lacking in this episode, of course. We haven't done that in a while. We probably should. All right, we are on all the social medias. We are not on all the social medias. We are on Facebook, Instagram, and I'm on Twitter, @PodayMichaelow. We are on all the platforms for podcasts if we're not on something, let us know. We are on YouTube. We have a Goodreads page. We have a nonprofit called FOTINAPHOTINA, where you can help us do this ministry through your financial contributions. Please do, of course, pray for us. FOTINA.org is our website. We do have a podcast website. The Catholic stuff, oh my gosh, it's been years. - Wow. - What God is Not. I'm getting a shout out to my old podcast. WhatGodisnot.com. You can email us at [email protected]. We are on Patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N, there as well. So please do engage with us in these various ways if you would like. I'm gonna start saying I love you now. Twice, if you, we talked about that last episode at the beginning and at the end, I don't care what you say. And so I love you, Mother. We'll get to a prayer in a moment. Thank you for the time and thank you always for your wisdom. - I love you too, Father. - Prayer intentions. - Are we also gonna get prayer intentions? (laughs) - I beat you to a high. Yes, it's my job to go first, isn't it? I'm gonna ask, I'm gonna ask you to pray. Just honestly, pick someone, pick someone in your life who has died that you haven't prayed for in a while, and pray for them. Just think about someone who is not the first on your mind when you think of praying for the dead and pray for them. Just let that be, that's your penance, if you will. It's your homework. Just find, think of someone who died maybe a while ago. Some of you haven't thought of a while, pray for a while, just pray for them. - That's great. I'll ask for prayers for the repose of the soul of Father John Kachuba, 'cause he's on my heart. He's very dear to me and died a couple of years ago, and his funeral was absolutely beautiful. So, it's gonna be Father John. - All right, thank you all. May the Lord bless you and keep you, 'cause his face is trying to ponder of mercy on you. May you always find the teachings of the church to be full of hope and conviction. May you always find them to be a good challenge and a challenge to pergation of all the things that are keeping you from union with God and from seeing who he is and what the kingdom of God is with great joy. May you always be open to the illumination of God where he will help you to mature and become holy, the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit. May you always pray for those who have died and fear God in the sense of standing with humility before him and having the proper humility of the unknown of what happens after we die, and yet knowing that God is there and therefore having great hope and joy in being closer to him in that way after you die. May you not condemn those who have died before you but rather be hopeful about their salvation. May you not canonize anybody or a future pray for anybody who may still need our prayers and be in that pergation. And may you see this journey as one of great struggle as we are sinners but also with a great reward in this life and in the next. Mayor Lord, give you everything you need and soften your heart to receive that great gift of salvation even the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. - Amen. - Love you, Mother, thank you. - Love you. (upbeat music)