Borders of the End

Regular readers of the blog might know that, during my time in the Archdiocese of Sydney, I had a hand in assisting Bishop Richard Umbers, auxiliary bishop of Sydney, in setting up The Episcopal Podcast.

The podcast aimed to provide short but pithy podcasts on topics pertaining to intellectual formation. I then became its co-host for the remainder of my time working for the Archdiocese and, now that I am in my current role in the seminary, the role of co-host fell to my ridiculously capable colleague and former student, Silvana Scarfe.

I had the pleasure of being on an episode on eschatology, or the study of the last things. It was a bit fitting as this was to be the last episode that Silvana would co-host before she moved onto her new role in the Archdiocese of Melbourne.

The podcast looked at the topic of eschatology from a number of angles to try and map out the borders of the subject. This included coverage on the traditional formulation of the “four last things”, what the end of the world entails, the criterion of God’s judgement, and differing perceptions of heaven and hell by the early Christian writers. I managed to also work in segments of Joseph Ratzinger’s book Eschatology, which I thought was a good counter to a tendency to treat the end of the world as something in which one waits alone and fearfully, to one that is received joyfully as a member of a larger corporate reality. That brought us down a bit of a humorous tangent on bureaucracy, which I thought at least summarised the posture in which Christians should anticipate the end of all things.

Speaking of which, I also thought this was a good follow up to a previous post about the end of all things in the poetic imagination of Czeslaw Milosz, which was covered in a brilliant episode of Sacred and Profane Love.

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