“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?"
John 14:1-3

God, it is said, created everything ex nihilo -- that is, "out of nothing" -- including Man.  But while humankind has striven to understand what (if anything) happens when the heart stops beating, God has revealed to His Church that the end of this life is the act of being born into something eternal -- Eternal Life or Eternal Death.  The whole point of Christ dying for our sins was to give us the opportunity to choose Eternal Life.  The alternative of Life is Death.  And in Eternity, life and death are eternal. 
 

I call heaven and earth today to witness against you: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the LORD, your God, obeying his voice, and holding fast to him. For that will mean life for you, a long life for you to live on the land which the LORD swore to your ancestors, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give to them. 

(Deuteronomy 30:19-20)
 

Many of our neighbors in the year 2021 have become more and more convinced that the Devil doesn't exist, and neither does Hell.  This is a monumental miscalculation.  If the Temptor is not real, then neither is sin.  If sin does not exist, then the only "virtue" is power.  Instead, Christ came to "cast down the mighty from their thrones, and lift up the lowly" (Luke 1:52).  The purpose of Free Will is for God to present us with life or death, a blessing or a curse, and leave it in our court to decide whether we will return His love or cast it aside.

The Good News is that Christ also gave us a Church through which He dispenses all the graces necessary to join Him in Eternal Life.  No one who seeks His Mercy will be denied His Mercy!  

1021 Death puts an end to human life as the time open to either accepting or rejecting the divine grace manifested in Christ. The New Testament speaks of judgment primarily in its aspect of the final encounter with Christ in his second coming, but also repeatedly affirms that each will be rewarded immediately after death in accordance with his works and faith. The parable of the poor man Lazarus and the words of Christ on the cross to the good thief, as well as other New Testament texts speak of a final destiny of the soul -- a destiny which can be different for some and for others.

1022 Each man receives his eternal retribution in his immortal soul at the very moment of his death, in a particular judgment that refers his life to Christ: either entrance into the blessedness of heaven-through a purification or immediately, -- or immediate and everlasting damnation.