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Dear Father Angelo,

I am writing because I would like your clarification about a doubt of mine: we know that, after our death, we enter eternity. And so, a soul cannot become corrupted in Paradise, and vice versa, because without time. But if there is no time, how does a soul enter eternity? There would be a before, with no soul, and mutability thereafter, and so, isn’t that a contradiction?

I would also like to understand how Purgatory fits in.

Another question is: if we meet our loved ones in Heaven, will we be able to talk to each other, etc.: each of these actions requires space and time: any action requires it, does it not? How does it happen in eternity?


The Priest’s answer

Dear,

1. St. Thomas says that the concept of eternal may be determined in two ways: a proper one and an improper one.

By the proper way “those things are truly and properly called eternal that are unbegotten, that is, that do not have a cause” (Commentary on the Book On the Divine Names of Blessed Denys, C.10, L.3).
In this sense only God is eternal.

2. Here is a definition of eternity: “Thus eternity is known from two sources: first, because what is eternal is interminable—that is, has no beginning nor end (that is, no term either way); 

secondly, because eternity has no succession, ‘being simultaneously whole’” (Summa Theologiae, I, 10,1).

Still: “The idea of eternity follows immutability, as the idea of time follows movement […]. 

Hence, as God is supremely immutable, it supremely belongs to Him to be eternal. 

Nor is He eternal only; but He is His own eternity; whereas, no other being is its own duration, as no other is its own being” (Ib., I,10, 2). 

3. Those things, which share in His immutability, are called eternal in the improper sense.

St. Thomas metaphorically says that some realities “standeth for ever”, and thereafter in Sacred Scripture we read of “eternal hills” and he affirms that ‘Some again, share more fully than others in the nature of eternity, inasmuch as they possess unchangeableness either in being or further still in operation; like the angels, and the blessed, who enjoy the Word, because “as regards that vision of the Word, no changing thoughts exist in the Saints,” as Augustine says (De Trin. xv). 

Hence those who see God are said to have eternal life; according to that text, “This is eternal life, that they may know Thee the only true God,” etc. (Jn. 17:3)’ (Ib., I,10, 3).

4. St. Thomas better precises this concept when he says: “For it calls eternal not the altogether and absolutely unbegotten and truly eternal everywhere, but also the incorruptible and immortal and invariable and existing in the same way” (Commentary on the Book On the Divine Names of Blessed Denys, C.10, L.3).

The so-called shared eternity corresponds to what medieval authors, especially St. Thomas, called evo or eviternity.

5. Purgatory is not in the time of the present life.

Certainly, it is not eternal as it has one beginning and one end.

It is outside or beyond the time of the present life.

We can call that as a condition of eviternity, like that of the blessed and the damned until the end of the world, where souls can grow in accidental bliss or in pains of senses.

6. About the second question, we should recall that there will be no separation from each other as happens in the present life, but we will meet in God, by seeing into the mind of God.

It is in the mind of God that we meet each other.

Being in eternity, there will be no need to speak. Among other things, before the resurrection of the dead we will be deprived of our body and therefore of our senses too.

In a word: in God we will communicate with each other perfectly, with no need to verbalize thoughts and feelings.

I wish you a peaceful and Holy Christmas and I bless you.

Father Angelo