With this week, our nine-month-long study of the Baltimore Catechism comes to an end. That doesn't mean, however, that you're out of luck if you have missed any of it. Between now and the end of the year, I'll be repackaging these lessons into easy-to-use study guides, setting up e-courses for both the First Communion and Confirmation Catechisms, and using the framework that the Baltimore Catechism provides to tie together content, both old and new, in ways that I hope will help make the About.com Catholicism GuideSite even more useful.
Lesson Thirty-Seventh, the final lesson of the Baltimore Catechism No. 2, discusses the Final Things: the last judgment, the resurrection of the body, Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven.
Many Christians don't fully understand the concept of the last judgment. After all, aren't we judged at the time of our death? Yes, in fact, we are. The final disposition of our soul is determined at our death; we will either go to Heaven or to Hell. Those who will go to Heaven yet die without having fully atoned for their sins finish their atonement in Purgatory. This judgment is called the Particular Judgment, while the judgment at the end of time is called the General Judgment.
The General Judgment is for the benefit of all who have died. When we undergo the Particular Judgment at our death, no one but God knows the disposition of our souls. At the last judgment, God's plan, and His justice, will be revealed to all.
Between now and the end of time, our eternal reward or punishment is experienced in our souls. Yet at the last judgment, our souls will be reunited with our bodies, and those bodies will share in either eternal happiness or eternal punishment. Heaven is being in the presence of God for all eternity; Hell is being deprived of the same. Purgatory is a temporary state which will end at the end of time, when all of those who remain in Purgatory will receive the reward of everlasting life.
The final question of the Baltimore Catechism asks, "What words should we bear always in mind?" The answer—Christ's own words, "What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul"—reminds us that we should keep our salvation and the Final Things always in mind. In the pressures and strains and even joys of everyday life, it is easy to forget that our life on earth is only the beginning—but it is this life that determines how we will spend eternity.
Lesson Thirty-Seventh from the Confirmation Catechism has 14 questions. Note that the lesson begins with Question 408, continuing with the numbering from Lesson Thirty-Sixth.
The parallel lesson this week in the First Communion Catechism is Lesson Thirty-Third. It includes 8 questions drawn from Lesson Thirty-Seventh of the Confirmation Catechism.
Check out this week's lesson, and if you have any questions, please leave them in the comments or ask them in the Catholicism Forum!
Previous Lessons in Sunday School:- Welcome to Sunday School!
- On God and His Perfections
- On the Unity and Trinity of God
- On Creation
- On Our First Parents and the Fall
- On Sin and Its Kinds
- On the Incarnation and Redemption
- On Our Lord's Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension
- On the Holy Ghost and His Descent Upon the Apostles
- On the Effects of the Redemption
- On the Church
- On the Attributes and Marks of the Church
- On the Sacraments in General
- On Baptism
- On Confirmation
- On the Gifts and Fruits of the Holy Ghost
- On the Sacrament of Penance
- On Contrition
- On Confession
- On the Manner of Making a Good Confession
- On Indulgences
- On the Holy Eucharist
- On the Ends for Which the Holy Eucharist Was Instituted
- On the Sacrifice of the Mass
- On Extreme Unction and Holy Orders
- On Matrimony
- On the Sacramentals
- On Prayer
- On the Commandments of God
- On the First Commandment
- On the Honor and Invocation of Saints
- From the Second to the Fourth Commandment
- From the Fourth to the Seventh Commandment
- From the Seventh to the End of the Tenth Commandment
- On the First and Second Commandments of the Church
- On the Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Commandments of the Church