The Moment of Truth

St.Hesychius of Jerusalem: "The hour of death will find us, it will come, and it will be impossible to escape it. Oh, if only the devil and prince of this world and the air, who is then to meet us, might find our sins as nothing and insignificant, and might not be able to accuse us justly."

St.Gregory the Great: "One must reflect deeply on how frightful the hour of death will be for us, what terror the soul will then experience, what remembrance of all the evils, what forgetfulness of past happiness, what fear, and what apprehension of the Judge. Then, the evil spirits will seek out the departing soul and its deeds. Then they will present before its view the sins towards which they had disposed it, so as to draw their accomplice to torment."

People today are given every means to distract them from ultimate reality, which is eternity, the eternity which awaits each one of us at the end of this life.

Young people are being taught that truth is hard if not impossible to find, that everything is relative and a matter of opinion and argument, that truth is whatever you choose it to be, that you can think and believe whatever you like.

People today are thus led into preparing poorly for the most certain thing in life, which is death. They neglect their most important possession, which is the immortal soul.

Their only hope is the miserable one that death will be the end of everything. The atheist is a loser hoping we are all losers.

"What is truth?" scoffed Pontius Pilate, only minutes later to have a Man Whom he knew to be innocent flogged and given up to those unjustly clamouring for His death.

Dear soul, don't be a coward like Pilate. The scripture says, "No coward will enter the kingdom of Heaven."

Seek the truth while you still have time and pay no heed to hard-hearted cynics and scoffers, for they do not want God.

The soul is immortal. Thanks to modern medical science, and so-called after-death experiences, we have confirmation of the existence of the soul and we know the soul can exist outside the body. For example, a blind person separated at death from the body saw with the eyes of the soul and later when revived and blind again astonished doctors and nurses by describing everything that had happened in the operating room after being declared clinically dead.

What is truth? God is truth. He can neither lie nor contradict Himself. He does not deceive us and He has founded and shown us the one and only religion that can save us from our sins. He did not deceive His Church.

Jesus Christ said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father except through Me." And "he who hears you hears Me, and he who despises you despises Me," referring to the unity and orderliness of the group of chosen ones who are His delegates and proxies on earth maintaining the only religion that can give you eternal happiness.

God has revealed the truth to us in the beauty of His creation, also in the moral law He has written on the heart of every man, but above all in His revelation of Himself as Jesus, and in the knowledge He has given the Church, which is the custodian of the means of salvation, and, in the words of St Paul, "the pillar and foundation of the Truth." With its sole possession of the revealed truths and what they mean, the Church was saving souls for a long time before it put together the books which came to be called the Bible.

Have you chosen a false religion? All religions are rubbish except one. God does not approve of any religion but the true one nor should we.

Are you following the false gods of this world, the pleasures that fade and the riches that fail?

When you find yourself before the judgment seat of Jesus Christ, and He finds you not wearing the "wedding garment," meaning the faith and sacraments of the Church, what will be your excuse?

St Augustine: "You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee." Both in this life and in the next, only God can make and keep us happy. For He alone is the source of infinite love and joy and beauty.

There is only a glimmer of happiness here, a foretaste. The heavenly bliss of being with God and in God is worth more than all possible earthly pleasures put together. To lose God forever is the worst thing that can happen to you.

As Claire's Story shows, the eternal loss of God is the greatest misery of the damned in Hell. St Augustine believed that the fires of Hell to be a mercy sent from God to distract souls from their worst misery, which is the loss of God.

Jesus said, "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments." Heaven is for those who love, honour and obey God. To attain Heaven, we must prove our love for Jesus by obeying and adoring Him.

Jesus means God Saviour. The religion of the Lord Jesus is the only one that promises to and can save you. "Neither is there salvation in any other," stated St Peter. "For there is no other name under Heaven given to men whereby we must be saved."

"But my sins are too great!" you cry. "I am full of lusts, hatreds, sloth, envies, drunkenness, drugs, dependencies, vices, slaveries to sin, and so on. How can I repent if I cannot stop doing them?"

Jesus worked miracles to show He wants to help you not to be lost--if you want Him to. Jesus wants to save us from our sins. Look at the terrible death He suffered on the Cross to prove how much He loves us. He alone has the power to save us from our sins. Bit by bit, as we pray, He supplies us with the grace to overcome the passions and temptations. He supplies this grace through His most pure Mother Mary.

But how can I believe, you ask? How can I suspend disbelief? To pray is the easiest thing a man can do. Pray that you may believe. Pray and you will believe. This is illustrated by the story of Alphonse Ratisbon. The worldly, wealthy and cynical French Jew was visiting Rome in 1841. To humour a Catholic business associate, he agreed to wear on a string around his neck a medallion known as the Miraculous Medal that had been blessed by a priest and to recite every day for nine days on his knees the prayer known as the Memorare of St Bernard.

Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known in any age that anyone who fled to your protection, implored your help or sought your intercession, was left unaided. Inspired with this confidence, I fly unto you, O Virgin of virgins, my Mother. To you do I come, before you I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word incarnate, despise not my petitions but in your clemency hear and answer me. Amen.

On the 20th of January, while waiting at the Church of St Andrea Delle Frate for his friend who had some business with the Bishop, Alphonse wandered inside. When his friend came looking for him, he found him prostrated and weeping before a statue of our Lady. Our Lady had appeared to him and he had been immediately converted, his hard heart healed. He gave up his wealth and lived such a good life that was declared a saint.

Dear soul, Jesus and His Mother will help you in the same way if you wear a Miraculous Medal and say the Memorare every day. Faith is a gift from God and it comes to those who seek the truth with a sincere heart.

Heaven is worth the struggle. But a battle it will be. A lifetime of bad habits is not easily overcome. The impure spirits and our worldly friends jeer at us and tell us we are wasting our time.

Moreover, these days, when churchmen in most places are sunk in corruption and neglect and unbelief, there are not a few priests and bishops, wolves in sheep's vestments, who will try to tell you not to be so particular. These false shepherds teach the lie that everyone goes to Heaven.

Find a prayer group that prays the Rosary of our Lady and the Passion of the Christ Meditation, sometimes known as the Magnificent Prayers.

He who prays can be saved, but he who does not pray or prays badly cannot be.

Read the New Testament. Read a book called The Poem of the Man-God. See below the Introduction plus an excerpt describing Mary Magdalene's first encounter with Jesus.

See also The Soul After Death for an account of the experience of one who came back from Hell. "I have truly risen from the dead, my dearest one," he told his wife who had been sitting beside the death bed grieving. "But from now on I must live a completely different kind of life."

Find a good priest. They do still exist, you may be astonished to learn. Find a good priest who truly believes that there is only one religion that can save your soul and that is the religion Jesus Christ established, exactly as its durability and long history shows.

Jesus said: "Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you."