The Creed ends with this confident
hope on the part of the Christian: “I look for...the life of the world to
come.” By “the life of the world to come” the Holy Church means
the life that shall be after the resurrection of the dead and Christ's last
judgment.
A man is responsible to God for the
life that he has been given. It is here on earth that, of his own free will, a
man lays the beginning of that life which shall begin when his body dies. His
fate after death depends on how he has lived his life on earth. If he has
always been with Christ, joined closely to Him through the Holy Sacraments in
His God-Man organism of the Church, then after his death he shall also be with
God, ceaselessly experiencing the blessed and eternal joy of living communion
with God which we who live on earth call in the words of Holy Scripture
Paradise (Luke 23:43), the Kingdom of Heaven or the Kingdom of God (Matt.
5:3-10,8,11; Luke 13:28-29; 1 Cor. 15:50), the house or the mansions of our
Heavenly Father (John 14:2).
This ineffable joy of life in Paradise cannot be expressed in
human language (2 Cor. 12:2,4); it derives from the fullness of knowing God and
from the nearness of God. That is why Christ our Savior says: And this is
eternal life, that they know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ Whom Thou
hast sent (John 17,:3).
This joy is immutable, but it
affects the human soul in different ways. The depth of perception of this joy
by man's soul also differs. In My Father's house are many mansions (John 14:2),
says Christ the Savior. There are many mansions, and all of these mansions,
prepared for the souls of those saved and redeemed by the Son of God's death, are
illumined by a light coming from God, the Source of Light, Life and
Blessedness; and in each of these mansions the presence of our Savior the Lord
can be felt, giving life and joy to those who dwell in it.
Only those who consciously and
stubbornly disdain the call to repentance, the call to a life worthy of
repentance, shall remain outside communion with God at death, deprived of Light
and Grace (Luke 16:23; Matt. 5:22,29; 8:12; 22:13; Phil. 2:10).
We should not suppose that the
attaining of eternal blessedness and the Kingdom of Heaven are
goals in themselves for the Christian, the purpose for which he lives and
towards which he strives. The blessed state in the life to come is a result of
moral perfection, the deification of man, which he attains here on earth. The
Savior says: Seek first [the kingdom of God] and His righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well
(Matt. 6:33).