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Life Everlasting and the Immensity of the Soul: A Theological Treatise on the Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell
A serious, theological treatise on the Four Last Things - Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell - but purposely written for the average reader. Shows the exalted \"immensity\" of the human soul and that only possession of God in the Beatific Vision can completely satisfy man\'s desires. The author touches on many theological aspects that bear fruit on our final end - the roots of vice and virtue, the grace of a happy death, the pain of loss, the nature of eternal beatitude, and many more. An enlightening study of man\'s final destiny that will inspire the reader with its many insights. 288 pgs, PB
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1950
33 people are currently reading
245 people want to read
About the author
Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange
96 books147 followersRéginald Marie Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. (February 21, 1877, Auch, France – February 15, 1964, Rome) was a Catholic theologian and, among Thomists of the scholastic tradition, is generally thought to be the greatest Catholic Thomist of the 20th century. He taught at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, commonly known as the Angelicum, in Rome from 1909 to 1960.
Father Garrigou-Lagrange initially attracted attention when he wrote against the theological movement later called Modernism. He is also said to be the drafter or "ghostwriter" of Pope Pius XII's 1950 encyclical Humani Generis, subtitled "Concerning Some False Opinions Threatening to Undermine the Foundations of Catholic Doctrine."
He is best known for his spiritual theology. His magnum opus in the field is The Three Ages of the Interior Life, in which he propounded the thesis that infused contemplation and the resulting mystical life are in the normal way of holiness of Christian perfection.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reginald...
Father Garrigou-Lagrange initially attracted attention when he wrote against the theological movement later called Modernism. He is also said to be the drafter or "ghostwriter" of Pope Pius XII's 1950 encyclical Humani Generis, subtitled "Concerning Some False Opinions Threatening to Undermine the Foundations of Catholic Doctrine."
He is best known for his spiritual theology. His magnum opus in the field is The Three Ages of the Interior Life, in which he propounded the thesis that infused contemplation and the resulting mystical life are in the normal way of holiness of Christian perfection.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reginald...
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January 27, 2021
Garrigou-Legrange was probably one of the foremost Thomists of the last century, hence those who come to any work of his might be understandably intimidated. However, the book is written in a very down-to-earth format, despite occasional drifts into Scholastic questions. Even then, those passages can be understood if read more slowly and mulled over. This is an excellent discursive text to accompany Fr. Martin van Cochem's The Four Last Things and St. Alphonsus Liguori's Preparation for Death.
"Love when thwarted begets hate, and that hate becomes boundless." (p. 5)
"[O]ur will has a depth without measure...Therefore God alone can fill the will of man." (p. 9)
"But if God Himself, who is the infinite good, were immediately and clearly presented to us face to face, we could not but love Him. He would fill perfectly our affective capacity, which would be drawn irresistibly toward Him. It would not keep any energy to withdraw itself from his attraction. It could not find any motive to turn away from Him, or even to suspend its act of love. This is the reason why one who sees God face to face cannot sin. As St. Thomas says: 'The will of him who sees the essence of God without medium, necessarily also loves that essence and cannot love anything else except in its relation to God, just as here below we wish everything in virtue of our desire for happiness.' God alone seen face to face can make our will invincibly captive." (p. 14)
"We see from this point of view that it is never by chance that two immortal souls meet, be it that they are each in the state of grace or that one only has the divine life and can by its prayers, its attitude, its example, bring back the other to the right road which leads to eternity. It was not by chance that Joseph was sold by his brethren to the Ismaelite merchants. God has determined from all eternity that these merchants would pass at such and such an hour, not earlier, not later. It was not by chance that Jesus met Magdalen or Zacheus, or that the centurion found himself on Calvary." (p. 18)
"Judas had remorse and anguish, but he did not have repentance which gives peace. He fell into despair instead of confiding in infinite mercy and asking pardon." (p. 45)
"[T]hose who have received Communion in honor of the Sacred Heart on the first Friday of nine successive months can have the confidence of obtaining from God the grace of a good death." (p. 53)
"A very good practice is to have Mass celebrated for obtaining the grace of graces, which is that of a good death." (p. 56-57)
(quoting St. John of the Cross) "'In the evening of our life, we shall be judged by love, namely, by the sincerity of our love for God, for our own soul, for our neighbor.'" (p. 59)
"There are no merits after death." (p. 61)
"[T]he soul begins to determine itself by the last free act of the present life, and it attains this fixation immutably, in regard to its knowledge and its will, in the first instant after death. Thus it immobilizes itself in its own choice. Hence it is not a lack of God's mercy which fixes the soul in obstinacy." (p. 66)
"[B]etween penance and remorse there is an abyss." (p. 68)
(regarding the particular judgement) "[T]he execution of the sentence is also immediate. There is nothing to retard it. On the part of God, omnipotence accomplishes at once the order of divine justice, and on the part of the soul merit and demerit are, as St. Thomas says, like lightness and heaviness in bodies. Where there are no obstacles, heavy bodies fall, light bodies rise. Thus separated souls go without delay, either to the recompense due to their merit (unless perhaps they have to undergo a temporary punishment in purgatory), or to the eternal punishment due to their demerits. Charity, like a living flame, ascends on high, whereas hate always descends." (p. 74)
"Judgment Day will show how much value is to be assigned to certain histories of philosophies, to many studies on the origins of Christianity, written in a spirit absolutely rationalistic. It will show how their perpetual variations and contradictions come from their fundamental error, the negation of the supernatural. It will manifest all lying propaganda. It will unmask hypocrites who enslaved religion instead of serving religion. Universal history will no longer be seen as a mere horizontal line of time, passing from the past to the future, but as a vertical line which attaches each event to the unique moment of an immovable eternity." (p. 82)
(words said to St. Bernadette) "'I promise you happiness, not in this life, but in the next.'" (p. 84)
(quoting St. Thomas) "Crosses well borne are a sign of predestination." (p. 85)
"One great act of self-sacrifice may decide not only our whole spiritual life on earth but also our eternity. We judge a chain of mountains by its highest peak." (p. 93)
(quoting the Summa) "If mercy were not mingled with justice, the damned would suffer even more." (p. 114)
(quoting Lacordaire) "It is not justice that is without mercy; it is love. Love is life or death. and if that love is God's love, then love is either eternal life or eternal death." (p. 116)
(regarding the soul in hell) "But the soul is incapable of changing its remorse into penance, its tortures into expiation." (p. 122)
"[I]t is certainly better to go to God by the way of love than that of fear." (p. 134)
"In the just man, servile fear can continue throughout life, but it grows less with the progress of charity. The more we love God, the more does selfishness diminish. The more we love God, the more do we hope to be recompensed by God. But servile fear, fear of divine punishment, can certainly not exist in heaven." (p. 140)
"Whereas servile fear diminishes with progress in charity, filial fear grows continually, because the more we love God, the more we fear sin and separation from Him." (p. 140-141)
(on the souls in purgatory) "They pay this debt progressively, not by merit and satisfaction, for the time of merit is gone by, but by satispassion, that is, by enduring voluntarily the satisfactory suffering inflicted on them." (p. 147)
(quoting St. Thomas on the remains of sin) "These dispositions grow weaker in a soul that lives in a state of grace. They do not have the upper hand. But they do solicit the soul to fall back into sin." (p. 163)
(quoting St. Catherine of Genoa) "No peace is comparable to that of the souls in purgatory, except that of the saints in heaven. On the other hand, the souls in purgatory endure torments which no tongue can describe and no intelligence comprehend, without special revelation." (p. 167)
(quoting St. Thomas) "Pain corresponds less to the gravity of the sin than to the disposition of the suffering soul." (p. 171)
(quoting St. Thomas on the pains of purgatory) "The soul, though it had not courage during life to impose upon itself this deep interior suffering, now accepts that suffering voluntarily." (p. 175)
"Life everlasting is the standard whereby to judge of life here below." (p. 188)
"Among the good religious whom St. Theresa knew, only three had completed their purgatory on earth." (p. 194)
"The effect of a universal cause is limited only by the capacity of its subjects to receive the influence of that cause." (p. 199)
(regarding the beatific vision) "It is a gift, not due to our nature, not even to that of the angels." (p. 211)
"We may understand this argument better if we note that philosophy, reason alone, can prove with certitude the existence of God and of His chief attributes. But there remains for reason a great obscurity in the intimate harmonizing of these attributes, in particular in the harmonizing of absolute immutability and sovereign liberty, of infinite justice and infinite mercy, especially of omnipotent goodness and the divine permission of the greatest evils, physical and moral. Hence arises the natural desire, conditional and inefficacious, to see the very existence of the first cause, because this vision, without medium, would show the intimate reconciliation between these attributes, which flow from the essence of God." (p. 213)
(paraphrasing Plato) "He says that we must rise from the love of sensible beauty to the love of intellectual and moral beauty, to the love of the supreme beauty existing eternally in itself." (p. 213)
(quoting St. Thomas) "Only the uncreated and infinite good can satisfy fully the desire of a creature which conceives universal good...Perfect good is that which quiets and satiates the appetite." (p. 216)
"The natural or connatural desire of the will reaches forward, then, not to the abstract idea of good, but to a real and objective good. Hence it cannot find beatitude in any finite and limited good, but only in the sovereign and universal good." (p. 216)
"Our will, illumined by our intelligence, has a depth without measure, a depth which only God can fill." (p. 217)
(quoting St. Augustine) "'God is the goal of all our desires, He is the one whom we shall see without end, whom we shall love without weariness, whom we shall glorify forever without fatigue.'" (p. 218)
"Knowledge takes possession of beauty, and joy follows knowledge...Love, a characteristic of vision, follows that vision as liberty, morality, sociability follow man's rational nature." (p. 219)
"Beatific love will flow necessarily from the vision. This beatific love is not free. It is something higher than liberty." (p. 220)
"The will is subordinated to the intelligence which directs it. The will is carried on to a true real good, but only on condition that it follows the right judgment of the intellect, a judgment conformable to reality." (p. 221)
"In this intellectual vision, never interrupted, they see also how the infinite fecundity of the divine nature blossoms into three persons. They see the eternal generation of the Word, who is the splendor of the Father, figure of His substance. They see the ineffable spiration of the Holy Spirit, who is the terminus of the mutual love of the Father and the Son, who united the Father and Son in the most intimate and mutual self-communication. Such is the primary object of the beatific vision." (p. 228)
"In heaven, seeing the uncreated Light, we shall see how the divine perfections, even the most widely different, are harmonized in Him and become one. The blessed see in God, in the Word, also teh holy humanity which the Son assumed for our salvation." (p. 228)
"In this same vision, the saints contemplate the eminent dignity of the Mother of God, her plenitude of grace, her virtues, her gifts, her universal mediation as co-redemptrix. Further, since beatitude is a perfect state which satisfies all legitimate desires, each saint knows all others who are blessed, particularly those whom eh has known and loved on earth. He knows their state, be they on earth or in purgatory. Thus the founder of an order knows all that concerns his religious family, knows the prayers which his sons address to him. Parents know the spiritual needs of their children who are still in this world. A friend, reaching the end of his course, knows how to facilitate the voyage of friends who address themselves to him. St. Cyprian speaks thus: 'All our friends who have arrived wait for us. They desire vividly that we participate in their own beatitude, and are full of solicitude in our regard.'" (p. 229)
(in heaven) "There is no longer danger of being too intent on secondary goods or of losing the chief good...The line of view is no longer horizontal, stretched out between past and future. It is the vertical view, which judges of everything from on high, in the light of supreme Truth." (p. 230)
(quoting St. Thomas) "God alone, it is true, can love Himself infinitely, love Himself as far as He is lovable, but each blessed soul will love Him with all its power, with a love that no longer knows obstacles." (p. 232)
(quoting St. Augustine) "[O]n earth, we could become weary by repeating the words: Amen, Alleluia. This heavenly Amen, this Alleluia, will not be expressed by sound which passes away, but by the emotions of love, the emotions of the soul embraced by love...(in heaven) Insatiably satiated by this truth, we shall repeat forever: Amen. Rest and gaze: that is our eternal Sabbath." (p. 233)
"Heavenly joy has a newness which cannot pass away. The first instant of the beatific vision lasts forever, like eternal morning, eternal spring, eternal youth." (p. 234)
"God penetrates the depths of our will. God seizes and wounds the soul, that it may possess him fully." (p. 235)
"Heaven's joy is an everlasting morning." (p. 237)
"The saints in heaven, too, cannot cease to love God, seen face to face, but they cannot be tempted to turn elsewhere. They are indeed free to love this or that finite good, this or that soul, to prefer one soul to another, to pray for it, to follow the commands of God to assist us. But this liberty never deviates toward evil. It resembles the liberty of God Himself, which is at the same time free and impeccable...The soul confirmed in grace has no longer need to merit." (p. 238)
"Eternal life is measured by the unique instant of immovable eternity, an instant which cannot pass, which is like an eternal sunrise." (p. 239)
"If we cling so closely to the present life, in spite of all its sadness, how much more will we cling to the life of heaven? Hence nothing can bring the beatific vision to an end, neither God who has promised it as recompense, nor the soul which has reached it." (p. 239)
"Not in heaven do we learn to love God, but here on earth. The degree of our life in eternity depends on the degree of our merits at the moment of death. There are many mansions in the Father's house, corresponding to varied merits. 'He who soweth sparingly shall also reap sparingly; and he who soweth in blessings shall also reap blessings.'" (p. 240)
"Here we find the true meaning of the term, 'spiritual gospel.' This is written by the Spirit, not with ink on parchment but with grace on our minds and wills. This spiritual gospel is the complement of the one we read in daily Mass. It is being printed day by day, century by century, and will be finished on the last day. It is the spiritual history of the mystical body. God knows it from all eternity. The blessed read it in God." (p. 244)
"Be supernaturally yourself. That means, eliminate your faults, that the image of the Father and the Son may be formed in you. Let each reproduce that image in his own fashion. Unity in diversity is the definition of beauty. And spiritual beauty is deathless beauty." (p. 245)
(out of room - remaining quotes in the comments)
"Love when thwarted begets hate, and that hate becomes boundless." (p. 5)
"[O]ur will has a depth without measure...Therefore God alone can fill the will of man." (p. 9)
"But if God Himself, who is the infinite good, were immediately and clearly presented to us face to face, we could not but love Him. He would fill perfectly our affective capacity, which would be drawn irresistibly toward Him. It would not keep any energy to withdraw itself from his attraction. It could not find any motive to turn away from Him, or even to suspend its act of love. This is the reason why one who sees God face to face cannot sin. As St. Thomas says: 'The will of him who sees the essence of God without medium, necessarily also loves that essence and cannot love anything else except in its relation to God, just as here below we wish everything in virtue of our desire for happiness.' God alone seen face to face can make our will invincibly captive." (p. 14)
"We see from this point of view that it is never by chance that two immortal souls meet, be it that they are each in the state of grace or that one only has the divine life and can by its prayers, its attitude, its example, bring back the other to the right road which leads to eternity. It was not by chance that Joseph was sold by his brethren to the Ismaelite merchants. God has determined from all eternity that these merchants would pass at such and such an hour, not earlier, not later. It was not by chance that Jesus met Magdalen or Zacheus, or that the centurion found himself on Calvary." (p. 18)
"Judas had remorse and anguish, but he did not have repentance which gives peace. He fell into despair instead of confiding in infinite mercy and asking pardon." (p. 45)
"[T]hose who have received Communion in honor of the Sacred Heart on the first Friday of nine successive months can have the confidence of obtaining from God the grace of a good death." (p. 53)
"A very good practice is to have Mass celebrated for obtaining the grace of graces, which is that of a good death." (p. 56-57)
(quoting St. John of the Cross) "'In the evening of our life, we shall be judged by love, namely, by the sincerity of our love for God, for our own soul, for our neighbor.'" (p. 59)
"There are no merits after death." (p. 61)
"[T]he soul begins to determine itself by the last free act of the present life, and it attains this fixation immutably, in regard to its knowledge and its will, in the first instant after death. Thus it immobilizes itself in its own choice. Hence it is not a lack of God's mercy which fixes the soul in obstinacy." (p. 66)
"[B]etween penance and remorse there is an abyss." (p. 68)
(regarding the particular judgement) "[T]he execution of the sentence is also immediate. There is nothing to retard it. On the part of God, omnipotence accomplishes at once the order of divine justice, and on the part of the soul merit and demerit are, as St. Thomas says, like lightness and heaviness in bodies. Where there are no obstacles, heavy bodies fall, light bodies rise. Thus separated souls go without delay, either to the recompense due to their merit (unless perhaps they have to undergo a temporary punishment in purgatory), or to the eternal punishment due to their demerits. Charity, like a living flame, ascends on high, whereas hate always descends." (p. 74)
"Judgment Day will show how much value is to be assigned to certain histories of philosophies, to many studies on the origins of Christianity, written in a spirit absolutely rationalistic. It will show how their perpetual variations and contradictions come from their fundamental error, the negation of the supernatural. It will manifest all lying propaganda. It will unmask hypocrites who enslaved religion instead of serving religion. Universal history will no longer be seen as a mere horizontal line of time, passing from the past to the future, but as a vertical line which attaches each event to the unique moment of an immovable eternity." (p. 82)
(words said to St. Bernadette) "'I promise you happiness, not in this life, but in the next.'" (p. 84)
(quoting St. Thomas) "Crosses well borne are a sign of predestination." (p. 85)
"One great act of self-sacrifice may decide not only our whole spiritual life on earth but also our eternity. We judge a chain of mountains by its highest peak." (p. 93)
(quoting the Summa) "If mercy were not mingled with justice, the damned would suffer even more." (p. 114)
(quoting Lacordaire) "It is not justice that is without mercy; it is love. Love is life or death. and if that love is God's love, then love is either eternal life or eternal death." (p. 116)
(regarding the soul in hell) "But the soul is incapable of changing its remorse into penance, its tortures into expiation." (p. 122)
"[I]t is certainly better to go to God by the way of love than that of fear." (p. 134)
"In the just man, servile fear can continue throughout life, but it grows less with the progress of charity. The more we love God, the more does selfishness diminish. The more we love God, the more do we hope to be recompensed by God. But servile fear, fear of divine punishment, can certainly not exist in heaven." (p. 140)
"Whereas servile fear diminishes with progress in charity, filial fear grows continually, because the more we love God, the more we fear sin and separation from Him." (p. 140-141)
(on the souls in purgatory) "They pay this debt progressively, not by merit and satisfaction, for the time of merit is gone by, but by satispassion, that is, by enduring voluntarily the satisfactory suffering inflicted on them." (p. 147)
(quoting St. Thomas on the remains of sin) "These dispositions grow weaker in a soul that lives in a state of grace. They do not have the upper hand. But they do solicit the soul to fall back into sin." (p. 163)
(quoting St. Catherine of Genoa) "No peace is comparable to that of the souls in purgatory, except that of the saints in heaven. On the other hand, the souls in purgatory endure torments which no tongue can describe and no intelligence comprehend, without special revelation." (p. 167)
(quoting St. Thomas) "Pain corresponds less to the gravity of the sin than to the disposition of the suffering soul." (p. 171)
(quoting St. Thomas on the pains of purgatory) "The soul, though it had not courage during life to impose upon itself this deep interior suffering, now accepts that suffering voluntarily." (p. 175)
"Life everlasting is the standard whereby to judge of life here below." (p. 188)
"Among the good religious whom St. Theresa knew, only three had completed their purgatory on earth." (p. 194)
"The effect of a universal cause is limited only by the capacity of its subjects to receive the influence of that cause." (p. 199)
(regarding the beatific vision) "It is a gift, not due to our nature, not even to that of the angels." (p. 211)
"We may understand this argument better if we note that philosophy, reason alone, can prove with certitude the existence of God and of His chief attributes. But there remains for reason a great obscurity in the intimate harmonizing of these attributes, in particular in the harmonizing of absolute immutability and sovereign liberty, of infinite justice and infinite mercy, especially of omnipotent goodness and the divine permission of the greatest evils, physical and moral. Hence arises the natural desire, conditional and inefficacious, to see the very existence of the first cause, because this vision, without medium, would show the intimate reconciliation between these attributes, which flow from the essence of God." (p. 213)
(paraphrasing Plato) "He says that we must rise from the love of sensible beauty to the love of intellectual and moral beauty, to the love of the supreme beauty existing eternally in itself." (p. 213)
(quoting St. Thomas) "Only the uncreated and infinite good can satisfy fully the desire of a creature which conceives universal good...Perfect good is that which quiets and satiates the appetite." (p. 216)
"The natural or connatural desire of the will reaches forward, then, not to the abstract idea of good, but to a real and objective good. Hence it cannot find beatitude in any finite and limited good, but only in the sovereign and universal good." (p. 216)
"Our will, illumined by our intelligence, has a depth without measure, a depth which only God can fill." (p. 217)
(quoting St. Augustine) "'God is the goal of all our desires, He is the one whom we shall see without end, whom we shall love without weariness, whom we shall glorify forever without fatigue.'" (p. 218)
"Knowledge takes possession of beauty, and joy follows knowledge...Love, a characteristic of vision, follows that vision as liberty, morality, sociability follow man's rational nature." (p. 219)
"Beatific love will flow necessarily from the vision. This beatific love is not free. It is something higher than liberty." (p. 220)
"The will is subordinated to the intelligence which directs it. The will is carried on to a true real good, but only on condition that it follows the right judgment of the intellect, a judgment conformable to reality." (p. 221)
"In this intellectual vision, never interrupted, they see also how the infinite fecundity of the divine nature blossoms into three persons. They see the eternal generation of the Word, who is the splendor of the Father, figure of His substance. They see the ineffable spiration of the Holy Spirit, who is the terminus of the mutual love of the Father and the Son, who united the Father and Son in the most intimate and mutual self-communication. Such is the primary object of the beatific vision." (p. 228)
"In heaven, seeing the uncreated Light, we shall see how the divine perfections, even the most widely different, are harmonized in Him and become one. The blessed see in God, in the Word, also teh holy humanity which the Son assumed for our salvation." (p. 228)
"In this same vision, the saints contemplate the eminent dignity of the Mother of God, her plenitude of grace, her virtues, her gifts, her universal mediation as co-redemptrix. Further, since beatitude is a perfect state which satisfies all legitimate desires, each saint knows all others who are blessed, particularly those whom eh has known and loved on earth. He knows their state, be they on earth or in purgatory. Thus the founder of an order knows all that concerns his religious family, knows the prayers which his sons address to him. Parents know the spiritual needs of their children who are still in this world. A friend, reaching the end of his course, knows how to facilitate the voyage of friends who address themselves to him. St. Cyprian speaks thus: 'All our friends who have arrived wait for us. They desire vividly that we participate in their own beatitude, and are full of solicitude in our regard.'" (p. 229)
(in heaven) "There is no longer danger of being too intent on secondary goods or of losing the chief good...The line of view is no longer horizontal, stretched out between past and future. It is the vertical view, which judges of everything from on high, in the light of supreme Truth." (p. 230)
(quoting St. Thomas) "God alone, it is true, can love Himself infinitely, love Himself as far as He is lovable, but each blessed soul will love Him with all its power, with a love that no longer knows obstacles." (p. 232)
(quoting St. Augustine) "[O]n earth, we could become weary by repeating the words: Amen, Alleluia. This heavenly Amen, this Alleluia, will not be expressed by sound which passes away, but by the emotions of love, the emotions of the soul embraced by love...(in heaven) Insatiably satiated by this truth, we shall repeat forever: Amen. Rest and gaze: that is our eternal Sabbath." (p. 233)
"Heavenly joy has a newness which cannot pass away. The first instant of the beatific vision lasts forever, like eternal morning, eternal spring, eternal youth." (p. 234)
"God penetrates the depths of our will. God seizes and wounds the soul, that it may possess him fully." (p. 235)
"Heaven's joy is an everlasting morning." (p. 237)
"The saints in heaven, too, cannot cease to love God, seen face to face, but they cannot be tempted to turn elsewhere. They are indeed free to love this or that finite good, this or that soul, to prefer one soul to another, to pray for it, to follow the commands of God to assist us. But this liberty never deviates toward evil. It resembles the liberty of God Himself, which is at the same time free and impeccable...The soul confirmed in grace has no longer need to merit." (p. 238)
"Eternal life is measured by the unique instant of immovable eternity, an instant which cannot pass, which is like an eternal sunrise." (p. 239)
"If we cling so closely to the present life, in spite of all its sadness, how much more will we cling to the life of heaven? Hence nothing can bring the beatific vision to an end, neither God who has promised it as recompense, nor the soul which has reached it." (p. 239)
"Not in heaven do we learn to love God, but here on earth. The degree of our life in eternity depends on the degree of our merits at the moment of death. There are many mansions in the Father's house, corresponding to varied merits. 'He who soweth sparingly shall also reap sparingly; and he who soweth in blessings shall also reap blessings.'" (p. 240)
"Here we find the true meaning of the term, 'spiritual gospel.' This is written by the Spirit, not with ink on parchment but with grace on our minds and wills. This spiritual gospel is the complement of the one we read in daily Mass. It is being printed day by day, century by century, and will be finished on the last day. It is the spiritual history of the mystical body. God knows it from all eternity. The blessed read it in God." (p. 244)
"Be supernaturally yourself. That means, eliminate your faults, that the image of the Father and the Son may be formed in you. Let each reproduce that image in his own fashion. Unity in diversity is the definition of beauty. And spiritual beauty is deathless beauty." (p. 245)
(out of room - remaining quotes in the comments)
May 7, 2025
An excellent read! If you’re looking for some philosophy and theology and the last four things, well, this book is for you. Definitely needed to work through it slowly to digest it all, but it was so refreshing to wrestle with/chew on some philosophical thought again - it’s been too long. The topic of the last Four Things has been weighing on me recently (call it early onset of my midlife crisis or whatever), but I decided to handle that through prayer and research. This book was recommended to me by our parish priest (s/o Fr. Tony). Also, I truly believe our culture doesn’t put enough emphasis nor the correct emphasis on death - the truth of it, being prepared, and the right to experience it. So this book was a great treatise on the reality of the end of our earthly life and what can be reasonably expected in our eternal life.
April 4, 2025
A treatise on the immensity of the soul and the four last things by one of the great theologians of the 20th century Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange. With great fidelity to the faith and tradition but with a certain kind of innovation in the way he explains the topics he manages to bring forth the truths in a clear manner for the average layman also.
“God never commands the impossible. To him who does what is in his power God does not refuse grace…
The important thing is to observe the commandments of God. St. Augustine said, and the Council of Trent repeats: ‘God never commands the impossible. But He warns us to do what we can, and to ask of Him the grace to accomplish what we of ourselves cannot do, and He aids us to fulfill what He commands.’
Let us put our confidence in Jesus Christ, ‘the victim of propitiation for our sins’, ‘the Lamb of God, . . . who
taketh away the sin of the world.’ Let us go with confidence to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace in seasonable aid.”
“God never commands the impossible. To him who does what is in his power God does not refuse grace…
The important thing is to observe the commandments of God. St. Augustine said, and the Council of Trent repeats: ‘God never commands the impossible. But He warns us to do what we can, and to ask of Him the grace to accomplish what we of ourselves cannot do, and He aids us to fulfill what He commands.’
Let us put our confidence in Jesus Christ, ‘the victim of propitiation for our sins’, ‘the Lamb of God, . . . who
taketh away the sin of the world.’ Let us go with confidence to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace in seasonable aid.”
June 15, 2024
I have finally finished this book after starting during Lent. There are some heady moments in here that I find a little confusing, and I might mess them up if trying to explain them to someone else.
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