Anthony Thomas Vento

In Caritate Perpetua Anthony Thomas Vento

There is something sad in death, without any doubt: it is sad that our near and dear leave this world. But contemporary culture, the culture of radical secularization has reduced this issue to a marginal problem, i.e. a problem which should be ignored, for one reason or another. Our attitude toward death is wrong: yes, we should be sad in such situations, we should respect the deceased ones, it is true. Notwithstanding, what is much sadder is a wasted life, a life deprived of love, faith and care of others. Not that death is terrible in itself, as we already stated; terrible is a life which has not fulfilled itself. It is a disaster to live one's whole life in darkness, thinking that life is deprived of any meaning; or, giving oneself to material pleasures and fornication, to condemn oneself to eternal torment in Hell. We need to reflect on our life, on the meaning of life, on our acts and moral conduct. Atheism has disastrous ramifications not only because it rejects God, but also because it deceives the human beings whose way of thinking is influenced by its principles. Atheism makes us look at the phenomenon of death as a natural process, as an event which proves that man is part of nature. And the truth is the opposite: death shows that man is different; only man has an idea of what is death, and only man can really be afraid of death.

Finally, there is a singularity in death. Singularity means a phenomenon which is unique, which is not common nor general. One cannot describe what happens when there is singularity. This notion comes from Physics where special types of events are signified. Singular are such events and processes whose properties, or course, or direction, cannot be predicted nor defined. Singularity is present in the so-called black holes, hypothetical material entities where the density of matter is negative, and gravitation- inimaginable. It is claimed that singularity cannot be even reflected upon- if a given person found him/herself in a black hole, he/she will never understand it, will never be able to think about it. Death is a singular event in such a sense- there is no way to communicate any information about it, information which will pass beyond the borderline between life and death. And in this singularity our conviction that there is another reality beyond death is rooted- we know that death is not exactly a natural process, we know that there is something more in it, and we intuitively know that there is another reality beyond it. It is evident that death is a transition, and there must be another reality where the process of transition takes us; but no one could return from there and tell us how it is like in Hereafter. Science will never be able to describe this transiiton completely, for it lacks again this information which exists only in a state of singularity. Death remains a mystery and its experience is the only certain source of real knowledge. The rest is a matter of faith!