We study NDE’s for profit, not entertainment. We will one day be asked a profound question, “What did you do with your life?”. We may prepare our good answer at any stage of our life, and in any circumstances.
Our best answer of course is to speak of our unconditional love in every circumstance. This love is for every person (including ourselves), and every virtue. This love requires practical and even heroic commitment. It may cost our life, our job, our friends, but so much more the profit.
But why unconditional love? Because that’s what God is, and we are to be rejoined to God. We cannot observe God or love in its entirety, it would be a case of the part attempting to understand the whole. We may however attempt to define love, or God. This imperfect definition of God or love is ‘commitment’.
We may love our spouse, our auto collection, our cable channel. But what does God love? God’s perfect love, loves God…what else. God’s commitment to God sounds a bit selfish at first, but consider that God seeks to include all that is not God into himself. God goes so far as to make our sin into his own virtue, that’s what remediation is. This is how we rejoin Christ, he takes on our sin, and by moral mediation, makes our sin into his virtue, the result is our union with God. Everybody wins. In doing this, God increases dimensions of his love, and all creation benefits.
As the ongoing Christ on earth, we are called to this same unconditional love. How many times do we, who are the body of Christ — the current Christ — fail to remediate the evil we encounter. So often we propagate it, or even expand it. One incident in a thousand requires police action, the others may be 76
remediated with “excuse me”, “you first”, or simply to ignore it and add a silent prayer. If everybody did this, poverty would be eliminated and nuclear weapons would rust away unused and unwanted.
What would happen if everyone loved unconditionally?
Salvation for everybody, Purgatory for no one, and end to war, poverty and disease, and Christ would move up the date of his second coming to earth, (Rev 21: 1-4).
Let us recall how sin and moral remediation works. In a properly formed action we give due regard to God, self and others. A corrupted action is one that is lacking or misproportioned in one or more of these requirements. Sin is usually misproportioned toward self, and under proportioned or completely lacking in its regard to God.
Once this corrupted virtue exists in our world, it is usually propagated or even increased in its deformity. When we are criticized we all too often pass it along. A child growing up in a criticizing, yelling, swearing, selfish environment would be expected to learn and pass on these disorders.
Jesus takes on these disorders and by moral effort, remediates them into virtue; he blesses when cursed, pardons when struck, prays when cheated. That’s how Jesus (and the entire body of Christ) saves us. Jesus accepts our sin, rather than deflecting or propagating it. By moral effort he makes our sin into his virtue. In this process our failings are made into Christ’s own virtue and person.
The original plan was one step simpler. With no sin to remediate, Jesus Christ would take our virtue into his own virtue.
We would retain all our human traits, but we would gain inclusion into the divine nature of Christ, (2Pet 1:4, CCC 398).
Jesus needs the “Ongoing Christ on Earth” (that’s us) to continue his work. All those in Heaven have no contact with sin, 77
and may no longer take on sin for remediation. Proactive faith, hope and love are their action, and it helps us on earth. The Eucharist has an ongoing remediation value, but we observe that disorder is still widespread. We are the ongoing Christ on earth, and we have daily contact with sin, if we were to remediate it into virtue, all the disorder in our world would soon be loved out of existence.
Part of total love is commitment to the teachings and commandments of Christ, (If you love me, keep my commandments, Jn 14:15). Recall that Christ is not only a human face, but eternal elements of virtue. This and the sacraments make the Catholic Church the most effective tool in our efforts to deepen our life as the body of Christ. NDE’s expand current teaching on Christ and give great inspiration to us in our efforts.
Mohammad Z. took unconditional love to a heroic level, and it cost him virtually no effort.55 As a boy he dumped some water, and made the effort to do it on a nearby tree. At his NDE
life review this small event was greatly applauded.HHH That’s unconditional love — easy, hard; big, small; thought, action.
In Mohammad’s efforts, the vital part of love is the subject making the love (himself), and not the object receiving the love. The vital element was that Mohammad gave love to the least of creation. During his life review, the court of Heaven applauded this small act as one of his greatest acts of love…and why not, all of creation benefited, starting with Mohammad.