The passing of Fr. James V. Schall S.J. on April 17 – our esteemed colleague and dear friend – is, in everyday human terms, a very sad event. But it would be profoundly un-Schallian to think of it only in terms of sorrow because, as the great man knew better than any of us, when we die we go to live under God's love, mercy, and justice – which was why we were created in the first place. That end is and ever shall be the proper remedy for all our earthly sorrows and injustices, especially death.
That was a central lesson from Plato that Schall often repeated: if the evils we have suffered are not righted in eternity, then the world would be founded in injustice. But it isn't, and our whole Catholic tradition, which he studied and taught and labored (to an almost superhuman degree) to develop further to meet the challenges of our time, should lead us to think about this life and the next one in ways almost diametrically opposed to the usual secular view. As he repeatedly argued, many modern woes stem from our lost of the truth of “what is,” and our failure to live according to that truth.
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