The Mystery of Death: Awakening to Eternal Life

Description

What precisely happens at the time of death is a question that theologians have struggled over for centuries but have never answered satisfactorily. The response to this question that Ladislaus Boros gives in his monumental synthesis, The Mystery of Death, is that in death we meet Christ fully for the first time and in doing so attain to full consciousness and freedom. It is therefore only in the moment of death than humans are able to elect for or against their eternal salvation. In other words, death is a kind of judgment day, but it is we ourselves who pass judgment on ourselves. In her introduction and commentary, Cynthia Bourgeault argues passionately that Ladislaus Boros represents a necessary link to understanding the radical theology of Teilhard de Chardin. She presents Boros as a "powerful potential bridgebuilder. Standing firmly on the shoulders of his celebrated Jesuit mentor Karl Rahner, and highly skilled in the scholastic discourse that Teilhard himself eschewed, he is able to mediate an illuminating dialogue between Teilhard and the greater Christian theological tradition - not, as is so often the case in so much of contemporary Teilhardian scholarship, by secularising Teilhard's thought or draping it in current evolutionary jargon, but by piercing to the very marrow of Teilhard's Christic mysticism and carrying it to an even more brilliant degree of spiritual luminosity."

Ladislaus Boros was widely acclaimed as one of the brightest rising stars in the postwar Jesuit theological firmament. He published over 15 books. His life gradually trended in a different direction. In 1973, he renounced his orders, married, and was laicized. He died in Switzerland in 1981, barely 54 years old. Modern day mystic, Episcopal priest, writer, and internationally known retreat leader, Cynthia Bourgeault, is the author of several books: The Holy Trinity and the Law of Three, The Meaning of Mary Magdalene, and Love is Stronger than Death.