Audiobook: The End of the Present World and the Mysteries of the Future Life

[Stone]

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In the late nineteenth century, Father Charles Arminjon, a priest from the mountains of southeastern France, assembled his flock in the town cathedral to preach a series of conferences to help them turn their thoughts away from this life's mean material affairs-and toward the next life's glorious spiritual reward. His wise and uncompromising words deepened in them the spirit of recollection that all Christians must have: the abiding conviction that heavenly aims, not temporal enthusiasms, must guide everything we think, say, and do. When Father Arminjon's conferences were later published in a book, many others were able to reap the same benefit-including fourteen-year-old Therese Martin, then on the cusp of entering the Carmelite convent in Lisieux. Reading it, she says, "plunged my soul into a happiness not of this earth." Young Therese, filled with a sense of "what God reserves for those who love him, and seeing that the eternal rewards had no proportion to the light sacrifices of life," copied out numerous passages and memorized them, "repeating unceasingly the words of love burning in my heart." Let The End of the Present World and the Mysteries of the Future Life fill you with the same burning words of love, with the same ardent desire to know God above all created things, that St. Therese gained from them.

This book starts with the deepest, darkest, most hopeless places of faith and ends with the most joyful and hopeless jewels that are offered by God. It makes you traverse all of the harrowing details about the final judgement, purgatory, pain and suffering, and sin, before finally leading you to the hopeful place devoted to the rewards of the elect.

In this book you discover more information on judging the decay of present day, the meaning and construction of hell, purgatory, and heaven, the attributes of the anti-Christ and the Christ. It evaluates the requirements Heaven and Hell in accordance with justice.

It forewarned against the relativism of today, apathy, selfishness, and cruelty, and then expresses the love and commitment of God. While first I felt hopeless it then reminded me that God desires everyone to make it to heaven, but if they don't want to follow the rules he accepts that. There is hope, but it has to be a goal that is striven to accomplish.

Father Charles’ detailed analyses of the future life and the glories of heaven and the alternatives of purgatory and hell in the first 7 conferences only lead us to be able to understand the last 2 greatest conferences in their fullness: about the Sacrifice of the mass, and finally about the meaning of suffering in this life. These last two chapters are completely applicable to your life whether or not you are living through the apocalypse or not, but you need to have read through Fr’s beautiful reflections on the Book of Revelation and all its components in order to understand these great mysteries he leads to in the end.

The last chapter in particular, is very evidently a core inspiration for much of St Therese’s own writings and works and I believe this 9th conference in particular is the main reason she claimed that ”Reading this book was one of the greatest graces of my life”.

Father Charles Arminjon (1824-1885) was a priest from the town of Chambéry in the French Alps. After years as a seminary professor, Father Arminjon took up the mission of full-time preacher, and he went on to gain great renown for his ability to inspire in his listeners a deeper and more ardent love for Christ. Throughout France and abroad he delivered sermons, ran retreats, and preached at conferences – the most famous of which form the basis for The End of the Present World.