There isn’t a more important issue than the afterlife. This is the question that underlies the last literary work of Monsignor Vittorio Peri, former Dean of the Theological Institute of Assisi and Ecclesial Consultant of the National Italian Sports Center and currently President of the Apostolic Association for the Clergy and Episcopal Vicar for the culture of The Diocese of Assisi-Nocera Umbra-Gualdo Tadino (Italy). ‘In the end, there will be the love ....’,  this is the title of the book published by Tau Publishing. The Bishop Peri in just sixty pages offers a reflection on the eternal question of the mystery of the life and of the death.  The subject is current, more than ever in times of values’ crisis, in which Bishop Peri guides us with a sure hand and a rare sensibility. And we have asked some questions to him taking a suggestion from the pages of his latest work.

How is born this book about the afterlife?

"It comes primarily from the fact that I have several times heard, recently too, during the funeral celebrations, not targeted reflections on the Christian meaning of life, from the biblical readings, but trivial eulogies, embellished with the usual lies of circumstance. Untrue sermons, briefly, but sterile commemorations filled with of 'platitudes'.

Hence the idea to write some basic pages about the afterlife."

According to your personal experience, do make sense today to speak of last things and of Christian hope?

 "The reflection on the ‘last things’ not only makes sense, but reveals the meaning, ie the value and the direction of human existence. For this reason, it can never be surpassed or considered out of time. Today, indeed, in the cultural and moral, over socio-political, decay in which we find ourselves is to sow hope to talk about ‘new heavens’ and ‘new earth’ viewed by our faith.

For direct and indirect experience I know that no one remains indifferent to a series of proposals to investigate the final common fate. And indeed, when the mystery of the afterlife is presented in the light of Christ's resurrection, I have always seen calm, attentive faces, and frequently moved."

How should I approach this subject in a frank and open dialogue with children and adults?

"I have no special claims to give ‘recipes’  ready to any use or apodictic information.

However, I believe that the screen of a possible indifference or psychological defensive in front of a reflection in itself challenging and unusual can be ‘pricked’ especially with clear and direct questions about the meaning of life, questions to touch the heart and stimulate the dialogue.

More than speaking, we need to let talking who listens and asks questions, rather than jump at once to the answers. ‘All the people is capable of giving the answers - Oscar Wilde said. For the real questions it take a genius.’ The questions about our arché (beginning) and on our telos (end), as an ancient Christian author wrote.

I would say that the secret is to raise questions, increase questions. This is the method that I would suggest especially in dealing reflections of theological order. The moral and spiritual sinking of many people also derives from not ask who you are, where you are being and especially where you're going."

In the foreword to your book you write that ‘it is necessary to talk about eschatology’. Why?

"Because  the eschatological horizon has almost disappeared from our time: the idea that human history has a direction, a fullness that goes beyond itself, the awareness that the way the world is out of the world. And  this, I think, the issue on which now there are more confusion, darkness, doubts, misgivings and even removal.

The eclipse of this horizon seems to overshadow even the ecclesial world where with difficulty, as I said at the beginning, you hear talking of ‘last things’ of life eternal. But without this perspective, would the Christian life have any meaning?

It is therefore an urgent need to talk about it, even if our contemporaries seem only interested in the problems of everyday life and indifferent to the prospects of faith. ‘There will come a day - the Curé d'Ars though - where the men are so tired of themselves that simply we will talk to them about God, to make them happy, crying with joy.’

It will speak about it ‘opportune et importune’ as the Apostle Paul wrote. Who gives what you ask, is as the merchant. Instead , the teacher gives what is true and right. And if he is a Christian, he does it in the light of the risen Christ”.

Are the religious men and women prepared to deal with this issue? And, in particular, have the diocese developed projects and concrete proposals on this subject?

"For the first question, I don’t know any investigation on this subject, and I could not give a definite answer. However, for the given cultural climate, just indicated, I have serious doubts about adjusted theological preparation of many members of consecrated life’s Institutes in dealing in these problems.

Certainly, there are beautiful documents - speeches, pastoral letters and so on-  written by Italian bishops who have developed the essential and short steps of the eschatological nature, contained in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. And there are serious studies of excellent theologians - such as Eschatology, death and eternal life by Joseph Ratzinger / Benedict XVI or The converted life, essay of eschatology by Erio Castellucci - in which the various aspects of future life are presented in a scientific approach.

Instead, I have no news of the diocesan pastoral plan or guidance on these issues. But I am convinced that a correct and systematic presentation of all the people of God would constitute an extraordinary way to know the ‘good news’ brought by Jesus”.

What purposes is your text intended?

"The little book has not other purpose than to contribute, from a specific group of theological themes, to the first duty of evangelization. There is perhaps a more important duty than this, for the Church? For two thousand years the words of Jesus ask and shake the conscience of man. Ideally I extrapolated a verse from the Gospel – ‘What profit has a man who gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?’-  and I’ve woven around it several  questions, reflections and responses.

The summary response that every reader will find is given by the faith: after the death there will be not an abyss that swallows up the human person, but the glory of God; not nothing, but life; not the darkness, but the light. For those who believe and live the faith, the final destiny is not a wreck in the whirlpool of nothingness, but a dock in the port of God.

In short, on the other side of the life – because the  life is one, though lived in two different times - we will find not something but Someone with open arms. And if we do not know everything about what the future holds for us in store, but we know who is that holds our future in store. And this is enough to sustain our hope."

To whom is your little book, in particular, addressed?

"None of the recipients, in particular, because it was written for everyone, believers and nonbelievers, adults and children, learned and primary culture men. In fact I tried to write in a clear and simple way, and using beautiful images and many - perhaps too many! - quotes from brilliant authors also drawn from the so-called secular literature”."

Why is it important to pray for those who have left the earthly condition?

"In the few pages dedicated to purgatory, which is certainly not a place where you go, but certainly a painful situation of waiting to meet God ‘face to face’, I put this short text of the encyclical Spe Salvi by  Benedict XVI: ‘No one lives alone. No one sins alone. No one is saved alone. Continuously the others’ life enters into my life: in what we think, say, do and achieve. And conversely, my life into that of others: as bad as good. So my prayer for another is not something alien to him, even after the death’ (n. 48).

So there is continuity between this and the future life. ‘You never lose those you love, because we can always love them in the One not losing’, wrote St. Augustine. There is solidarity between us and the dead alive: the remembrance of them edifies us, our prayer elevates them. That is why the Church always asks to pray for the dead. "

For a man accustomed to the reality of today is not easy to understand the connection and the continuity between earthly and future life. How must one do?

"The difficulty is perhaps less than we think, because we know that even on this earth we experience the continuity of the self, in the discontinuity of the cells that make up our bodies. We are always ourselves, and yet, physically, every seven years we are totally different for the natural renewal of our body, which is not all of us, nor anything else from us.

In terms of faith, the resurrection of Jesus reveals that human beings will be reinstated in the state where they were before their death, in a connection of personal continuity and material discontinuity , which details slipped  us. The resurrection will open a new existence, where not only the soul will enter, but the whole human being: spirit, soul and body, as the biblical anthropology teaches.

The gap consists in being  otherness between the present and the future: the present disappears when the future arrives, so that the night fades to the arrival of light. The continuity, however, consists in an anticipation of the future: the historical life turns into everlasting life. Not in other life but in a life that becomes another, totally different; not opposite, but in continuity with this one.

In short, we will be ourselves, though not the same one. Ourselves and at the same time different, because re-created by God that the Bible reveals to us as ‘lover of the life”.