When we die, there will be a review or "judgment" of our lives, and we will be astounded at the effect we had on others, and on God's Creation. As one woman from Long Island put it, she saw how every nice word or action created light that circled the world while each negativity did the opposite.

More than one such near-death witness has seen this "ripple" effect -- how what we do not only affects those with whom we interact, but often others, indirectly, down the line, like a stone thrown into a pond.

We are what we radiate.

Even in the physical, a kind word can set a chain-reaction of goodness while a rude remark could pass on from one person to the next until in the course of a day it reaches a person who is mentally unbalanced and may even commit a violent act, all rooted in that first unkind interaction.

When we die we may be responsible for more than we commonly think, and Lent is the time for self-examination (and Confession). In a book by Dr. Jeffrey Long, a radiation oncologist who has studied more than a thousand near-death cases, a woman named Linda related that: "I saw everything from birth till then in fast motion.

"Also while this was happening I could feel the feelings of these events.

"I could feel any pain I gave out to others. I also felt the goodness I'd given out. God asked if I was happy with how things went, and I said yes. He asked me how I felt, and I said I was a little nervous. He explained that this was because all my life I felt this way and it is sort of why I didn't handle life properly. I was told that if the bad outweighed the good, you are left with the bad.

"So if you were a truly awful person, you'd be feeling quite awful for your time there. Alternately, if you have given out love and goodness and been kind and caring, you'd be up there feeling sheer bliss and good."

A great Catholic theologian named  Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange once wrote that "at the moment of separation the soul knows itself without medium, on all its merits and demerits. It sees its state without possibility of error, sees all that it has thought, desired, said, and done, both in good and evil." The entire past, he said, is seen "in a glance."

That is precisely what those who have been declared dead but revive have reported.

Said another: "Everything I ever thought, did, said, hated, helped, did not help, should have helped, how mean I was (unintentionally also) to animals! Yes! Even the animals had had feelings. It was horrible. I fell on my face in shame. I saw how my acting, or not acting, rippled in effect towards other people and their lives. It wasn't until then that I understood how each little decision or choice affects the world. The sense of letting my Savior down was too real."

However: "Strangely, even during this," she said, "I felt a compassion, an acceptance of my limitations, by Jesus and the crowd of others."

[resources: Evidence of the Afterlife and After Ljfe]