Death and Transcendence

Abstract

To transcend death is to overcome it. The best way I know of overcoming death is to live through it. Failing that, the next best way is at some time after death to be reconstituted as the person you were while you were alive. According to the traditional teachings of the Catholic Church each of us transcends death in both of these ways. At the very moment of bodily death our immortal souls are transported to heaven or hell, or to purgatory if our final destination is heaven but we require some fine-tuning before we can move there. And at the end of the world we will all, the damned as well as the saved, be rejoined or reconstituted with our resurrected bodies and then continue in our state of heavenly bliss or eternal torment.