The Miracle of Immortality : What Follows This Earthly Life?

In The Miracle of Immortality, Gerhard Cardinal Müller tackles some of the great mysteries of human life and hope. The former prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith is not content merely to present Catholic doctrine on the afterlife and the last things, although his reflections are always rooted in the teachings and traditions of the Church. Rather, he invites readers to walk with him by the restless sea of human learning, a sea formed by man’s unquenchable thirst for something or someone greater than man himself, by his desire to know the beginning and the end.

One who accepts the invitation finds himself in conversation with a mentor whose mind is suffused with scripture and very much sharpened by it. Cherished assumptions are queried or quietly corrected. Slowly but surely he is confronted with the miracle of immortality, without which true happiness is impossible. Cardinal Müller demonstrates in this book that it is entirely possible, and eminently rational, to believe in the miracle of immortality; indeed, that it is ultimately not rational not to believe.

The Miracle of Immortality is a work of penetrating theological insight set, chiaroscuro-like, against the darkness of modern and postmodern skepticism. It is at once poetical in spirit and profoundly catechetical in substance, for Müller understands that Christian eschatology cannot be elucidated properly without proclaiming the whole counsel of God. The miracle in question is a miracle for the whole person, accomplished by way of what Paul calls adoption; that is, filiation to the eternal Father through the incarnate Son, effected by the limitless power of the Holy Spirit. It is a miracle that perfects the divine work of creation.