That’s the news of Jesus. After death there’s another existence and if we prepare, it’s a splendid existence, an incredible existence, an infinite situation that will engage us for all eternity.

Death is a transition. It’s a shedding of the physical shell. It’s the transcendence of a body which had been used as a sort of instrument in the physical realm. There is nothing to fear if we have Jesus. There is nothing to fear if He awaits us. In fact, when scientists have studied the attitudes of dying patients, they’ve been amazed at the large number of people who, in the hour of death, are happy and even elated. There was evidence, said one study in New York, “that considerable numbers of patients meet death not with fear and despair but rather with elation and exultation.”

The fact that death is less intimidating than many think was shown clearly by the way Jesus endured the worst possible death, only to quickly rise above it. If there was one lesson from His Resurrection, it was that the supernatural exists and the spirit moves beyond the body. We also see descriptions from Paul, who in 2 Corinthians 12:4 said, “I know this man—whether in or outside his body I do not know, God knows—was snatched up to Paradise to hear words, which cannot be uttered, words which no man may speak.” Elsewhere in the Bible we’re told that “eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it so much as dawned on man what God has prepared for those who love Him” (1 Corinthians 2:9).

Since the time of the caveman there has been belief that the human soul is transcendental, and it’s a belief that is common to every people and culture, in every age, no matter how modern or primitive. From the beginning of recorded history people have had experiences that indicate the eternal nature of the soul and in our own time, with reports of apparitions and other religious phenomena, we have only seen an affirmation of those ancient beliefs.

The soul lives after death. It cannot be destroyed. It is not made of a physical substance. It exceeds anything physical. In fact, it controls the physical. It controls your body. And upon death it moves on to eternity. It heads for its true home. Those who are dying in the grace of God sense this—sense their homecoming—and know they are at the end of a difficult and dangerous journey.

Physical pain and the reliance on money—the bondages of flesh that make life one constant struggle—end with death.

There’s no more limitation.  

There’s no more doubt.

And contrary to the greatest of fears, there is no “nothingness.” We do not go blank. Our Blessed Mother reminds us of this at her famous apparition site in Medjugorje. “You go to Heaven in full conscience, that which you have now,” she said on July 24, 1982. “At the moment of death you are conscious of the separation of the body and soul. It is false to teach people that you are reborn many times and that you pass to different bodies. One is born only once. The body, drawn from the earth, decomposes after death. It never comes back to life again. Man receives a transfigured body.”

Such is also borne out by those who claim to have had what they call “near-death” or simply death experiences. Today we are privy to many such cases because of modern techniques of resuscitation, especially in cardiac arrest, as well as improved rescue services, that allow us to “bring back” those who would otherwise have met their deaths. And in case after case—in thousands of reported instances—those whose hearts and lungs have stopped, whose brain waves stop, who show every sign of departure, describe leaving the earthly body and what they encountered afterward. According to George Gallup, Jr., the famous pollster, a survey in the 1980s showed that as many as eight million Americans had some kind of otherworldly experience during a brush with death, and at each moment they were fully aware -- in fact, more aware than they'd ever been.