In Memoriam: Life After Death By Monsignor Anthony La Femina

In Memoriam: Life After Death By Monsignor Anthony La Femina
Introduction by Matthew J Bellisario O.P. 2020

Dear Brothers and Sisters, never fall into mortal sin, or if you should fall, go immediately to confession. (Monsignor La Femina)

This is the fourth installment celebrating the life and work of Monsignor Anthony La Femina. This is the first in a series of two talks given at a local parish in the Diocese of Venice Florida where although retired, he was still giving talks and working exorcism cases. Monsignor was a true Thomistic theologian and also a Third Order Dominican. He went to seminary and was ordained before the Second Vatican Council. His seminary training and subsequent studies were of the scholastic nature and it shows here in this talk.

He truly believed in the obligation to always be in continuous learning of the faith and to pass on what he learned to others for the salvation of souls. In this first talk, Saint Thomas Aquinas shines brightly throughout. For example, Monsignor begins by giving an explanation of the two faculties unique to man as a rational being, created by God in the imago dei. He then develops an explanation of the soul and what awaits us after death.

Memento mori, the often once heard Latin phrase that calls us to “remember death” seems to be ignored or forgotten by Catholics today and it concerned Monsignor. He referred to death as the Supreme Moment, and you will see why in this talk. In my many conversations with him, he often brought up the inevitable earthly end we all must face, death. He once asked me, "Matthew, do you think about death?" I replied, "Yes, sometimes." He replied, "You should, I often think about death. We must always be cramming for final exams, right?" He asked me. As you read this talk think seriously about your earthly end and the reality that you will stand before God, either in a state of grace or in a state of mortal sin. Once you are at this point, which you know not when it will take place, your choice will be a permanent one.

If you have not read the earlier paper of his that I published on Mortal Sin, I would recommend reading that one first. Like the others that I have published, I have left the text as it was when Monsignor sent it to me including the bold text, which he put in for theological emphasis. Take the time to read each line and digest it as he would have wanted. He would have quizzed you on it!

First Talk         LIFE AFTER DEATH

 By Monsignor Anthony La Femina

Everything living, both animals and plants, have a soul.  The soul is the principle of life, growth and movement in all living bodies. However, the human soul is very different from all other souls because it is spiritual, and because it is spiritual, it is immortal. As such, the human soul raises the person to whom it belongs above all other living beings on earth. Because the human soul, being spiritual, is elevated above matter, it gives man the possibility to perform actions that no other animal or plant can do. The human soul is endowed with two faculties by which it performs acts special to man:  the human soul has the faculty of intelligence whereby it is able to know truth from error, and the faculty of free will whereby man can love goodness and hate evil. In common with God we have both a mind and a will. It is because of these two natural faculties of the human soul that we have been created by God in his own image and likeness.

Moreover, when God created us, he did not intend that we should die. While it is natural for all matter to corrupt, God gave our first parents the preternatural gift of no suffering or death – the gift of bodily immortality. They were to pass this gift on to their children by way of natural generation. It is only because of the curse due to their original sin that death entered into human life.

At the moment of death we human beings enter into a state or dimension that is completely foreign to us. We become a disembodied spirit: a spirit without a body, a bodiless human soul.  What does this mean?

As humans we are made up of two elements joined together to make us a whole person.  We are made up of a material body and a spiritual soul. Our soul is a spirit that has no material parts and can never die.  Because our soul is a spirit we are like God and the angels. However, our soul is not a pure spirit as they are. Rather the human soul is an “embodied spirit”, which means it is made to be joined to a material body with all its proper faculties. Our bodies are good because God made them to be a part of our human nature. In order to function as humans we need our bodies.  

How do we know that our soul is different from those of animals and plants? All other souls are not spirits and therefore end with the death of that which they enliven. Instead, our souls are different from all others because they are spiritual, allowing us to live above matter by giving us a particular kind of life: a human life. This human life puts us above all the other species living on this earth. Everything acts according to its nature, and because of our human soul, we are able to perform intelligent actions. We are able to know God, understand universal ideas, be able to laugh, do mathematics, write music, etc. We are able to do this because our human intelligence makes us rational animals. We are animals because we have a body and rational because we have a spiritual soul. No other living creature on this earth is able to reason because it does not have a spiritual soul.

When the body is no longer in condition to sustain human life, then the soul must depart from the body. This departure is what we know as death. At that time our soul, the principal part of our being, becomes a disembodied spirit. Without its companion element of the body, the soul is unable to function in its normal human fashion. We no longer have the possibility of acquiring new knowledge other than what we have already acquired during our earthly life. The normal human way of acquiring knowledge is through sense experience. St. Thomas teaches that there is nothing in our mind that does not first pass through our senses. Without our body we cannot touch, see, hear, smell or taste: without the five senses we are unable to gain any knowledge. The soul acts through its body; and with death, the human soul has lost its normal companion … the mortal body. Thus, after death, while the departed soul is still the same person as in this life, that soul is in a completely passive state, no longer capable of acquiring further knowledge in the human way. Any further knowledge must be supplied by God.

At the moment of death our soul becomes immutable. This means that our soul is unable to existentially change the last moral position it held during life on earth. It becomes immovably fixed in the last state in which it is found to be at the moment of its death. To change one’s moral state, - one’s existential preference - belongs only to a living person, not to a disembodied soul. Death eternalizes our soul in the moral state we have desired with our own free will. Upon death, the human person, like a tree when cut down, falls in the direction it is slanted: for good or for bad.

If the soul at death is in the state of grace, then that soul is fixed in that state forever because it is incapable of changing, nor would it want to. But what about the soul that is in mortal sin? It cannot change because it has become eternalized in its evil state. It remains so for all eternity. But, you might wonder why that soul would not repent of its mortal sins that are responsible for all its misery. The answer is that such a soul, eternally fixed in its evil state, does not will to change. That soul does not regret its sins as guilt, but only as the cause of its sufferings. Such a soul is unwilling to repent because repentance would be sorrow for sin and such sorrow is impossible and completely repugnant for a soul fixed in evil. Such a soul is only capable of remorseful self-reproach for its sins just like Judas Iscariot who hung himself instead of asking the Lord for forgiveness just a Peter did after denying Jesus three times. Between repentance (true sorrow for sin) and remorse (self-reproach for causing one’s own misery) there is an abyss. Only repentance can bring life. But one who dies unrepentant can only have eternal unrelenting self-reproach. The departed soul that is fixed in evil hates God, hates itself and hates all the rest of creation. (All its closest relatives are included in this hate.) In heaven love reigns, but in hell there is only perpetual hate and jealousy. Dear Brothers and Sisters, never fall into mortal sin, or if you should fall, go immediately to confession.

Theology names death the Supreme Moment. Why? Because at that time one has reached the end of its earthly journey, the end of the time for choice and meriting by loving and serving God. This is the reason that God gave us life. Repentance for sin is only possible during life. The moral condition of the dead person is eternalized by the state in which the dead person died: the state of sanctifying grace or the state of mortal sin. The soul immobilizes itself in and by its own choice. Scripture warns us: “Call no man happy before his death, for by how he ends, a man is known” (Sirach 11:28).

Immediately upon death the particular judgment takes place. This judgment is called the “particular” judgment to distinguish it from the general judgment that takes place at the end of the world.

At the particular judgment there are three possibilities open for God’s sentence: heaven, purgatory or hell.  In an instant God Himself enlightens our soul completely and decisively on all we have done, even to the minutest details.  God’s pronouncement of sentence and its execution are also instantaneous. We have no part to speak for ourselves since God knows all and has already judged us.

This ends, my dear Brothers and Sisters, our discussion about life after death.  But what are we to take from this?

We must be convinced that our Triune Lord has made us to be with him forever in heaven.  And the success of our life depends upon how we live the gift he has given us to love and serve him in this world to be happy with him forever in heaven. The success of God’s work for us depends upon us to use his graces and follow the demands of our respective vocations. It is easy to think that we love God, but he himself gave us the way of verifying our love for him: Jesus tells us: ”If you love me keep my commandments”.

We must remember that no one is damned except the person who dies in the state of mortal sin. During our life the Lord, besides the particular graces we need in each moment has given us the seven Sacraments which are a sure means of his grace. Our life must be a love affair with God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Jesus has given us his own Mother to be ours and all the angels, our personal guardian angel and the saints to help us in the needs of our journey to God. We must be assiduous in prayer and especially in using the Sacrament of Penance and pray for that great gift of Final Perseverance. Use the Sacrament of Penance often. The other thing we must remember is that while God has promised us the grace of true repentance, he has never promised us the time to repent. Now is the acceptable time for us sinners to repent because he warned us saying that he comes for us like a thief in the night. Let us also remember to pray always for the dying because that all important moment has arrived for them to be judged, and it is the last time for Satan to take that soul into his grasp.

We must beg God, especially through the intercession of our all holy Mother Mary, for the grace of a happy death.  In fact, we do this every time we recite the Hail Mary. The rosaries we say during our life will be our consolation at the moment of our death. Let us pray for the help of our loving Mother Mary at our Supreme Moment.

Brothers and Sisters, let us now pray, all together, the last part of the Hail Mary:

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen