Images of the life to come must be carefully presented. Older images - of death, purgatory, hell, limbo – depicted God as a merciless judge who demands full payment for our wrongdoings. How can we portray more accurately the truth about God’s limitless love for us? read more...

Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman reminds us that the human mind can do no better than to work with shadows and images until it finally emerges into the full light of truth. ’We see now only dimly as in a mirror’ (1 Cor 13:12). So let’s concede the basic inadequacy of human thought and language to express the mind of God. St Thomas Aquinas, who wrote a million words on things divine, said that we merely stammer in speaking of God, and that what he had written was straw. All images of God must fall short, but they are all we have, so we must use them well. We need not despair of trying to say something helpful about God and the world to come.
Let us take heart from Vatican Two’s image of the pilgrim Church. Pilgrims edge along difficult paths, using all available helps to arrive at their destination. At crossroads they discuss the path that seems most promising, and they turn back if it fails them. A French theologian uses the image of swimming: with each stroke you push a volume of water behind you as you move toward your objective. You move beyond it, but without that water you would never get there. Good images hint at the real thing: they orient us in the right direction. There is a Zen saying about a farmer pointing to the moon with a carrot. It was the best he could do to get others to see this wondrous reality! As we approach the world of divine mystery an amber light glows: it does not forbid entry but warns us: ‘Proceed with caution!