CATHOLIC SURVIVAL GUIDE, Third Part - Devotions that prepare us for the Four Last Things (Death, Judgement, Heaven, Hell)

(Part One: Contrition and Spiritual Communion)

(Part Two: Dying Prepared -- a Happy Death)

CATHOLIC SURVIVAL GUIDE IN THE CURRENT TIME, Part Three: 
PREPARING FOR THE FOUR LAST THINGS

Death - Judgement - Heaven - Hell

by the Rev. Deacon Nick Donnelly

Christ in Judgement (Last Judgement detail)
Baptistery of Saint John
Florence

Traditionally, Lent is the penitential season when the faithful are encouraged by the Church to contemplate the Four Last Things — Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell — as a spur to contrition and repentance. This past Lent, in the midst of the worst pandemic in a hundred years, the eschatological orientation within which all mankind lives, but mostly ignores, was brought into sharper focus by the ever-present threat of serious illness and death. Previous generations of Catholics took the warnings contained in sacred Scripture and Holy Tradition seriously — that plagues could express God’s wrath at the depravity of human sin to which we should respond with contrition and repentance. One of the blessings of COVID-19 is that it’s focusing faithful minds on the Four Last Things, spurring us to penitential self-examination at the prospect of divine judgement that has suddenly become more real.

Guides for Spiritual Communion and Confession in An Age of Closed Churches (downloadable PDF format)

Deacon Nick Donnelly's Catholic Survival Guide has been very successful since it was first posted here presciently, weeks before the Italian lockdown became a worldwide movement in which dioceses decided to deny regular Sacramental life to Catholics everywhere.

We have it now below in PDF format, in two files (one for the Spiritual Communion and Contrition guide, the other for the preparation for death guide), that can be downloaded and printed for easier guidance during this period.

To download, just click on pop-out (upper right corner) -- it will open in a new window or tab, and you can print or download the PDF file.

1: Perfect Contrition and Spiritual Communion: