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The Four Last Things end with a period, not a question mark.
Building a wall around a playground located next to a cliff won’t hold children prisoner but rather will enable them to play freely without risking injury, G.K. Chesterton wrote. As walls make a cliffside playground safer, a period protects a sentence from being lost in the chaos of unpunctuated text.
In recent years, this standard punctuation mark is no longer seen as necessary. Periods in texts and emails are considered superfluous because these messages are meant to express only a single thought, according to an online etiquette writer. They are viewed as insincere, overly emphatic, abrupt, unfriendly and even aggressive.
It’s not surprising that a culture which deems that all concepts, teachings and ideas are fluid, would view punctuation — and especially the period — as unnecessarily constricting.
But there are realities in all of our lives that are unavoidable and not open to interpretation. The Church refers to them as the Four Last Things: death, judgment, heaven and hell.
The following statements about the Four Last Things, taken from a book entitled The Four Last Things — Death, Judgment, Hell and Heaven by a 17th-century German Capuchin friar, Martin von Cochem, may be considered abrupt and unfriendly, but they are not superfluous.
1. After death we will no longer be able to accept or reject God’s grace.
Death ends all opportunities to grow in holiness or improve our relationship with God, according to the Catechism (CCC 1021).
Continued below.
7 Things Everyone Needs to Know About Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell
Building a wall around a playground located next to a cliff won’t hold children prisoner but rather will enable them to play freely without risking injury, G.K. Chesterton wrote. As walls make a cliffside playground safer, a period protects a sentence from being lost in the chaos of unpunctuated text.
In recent years, this standard punctuation mark is no longer seen as necessary. Periods in texts and emails are considered superfluous because these messages are meant to express only a single thought, according to an online etiquette writer. They are viewed as insincere, overly emphatic, abrupt, unfriendly and even aggressive.
It’s not surprising that a culture which deems that all concepts, teachings and ideas are fluid, would view punctuation — and especially the period — as unnecessarily constricting.
But there are realities in all of our lives that are unavoidable and not open to interpretation. The Church refers to them as the Four Last Things: death, judgment, heaven and hell.
The following statements about the Four Last Things, taken from a book entitled The Four Last Things — Death, Judgment, Hell and Heaven by a 17th-century German Capuchin friar, Martin von Cochem, may be considered abrupt and unfriendly, but they are not superfluous.
1. After death we will no longer be able to accept or reject God’s grace.
Death ends all opportunities to grow in holiness or improve our relationship with God, according to the Catechism (CCC 1021).
Continued below.
7 Things Everyone Needs to Know About Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell
