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The dogma of hell shows us the immense depths of the
human soul, absolute distinction between evil and
good, against all the lies invented to suppress this
distinction. It shows us also, by contrast, the joys
of conversion and eternal beatitude.
The Latin word, damnum, which we translate by "loss,"
signifies damage. The pain of loss means the
essential and principal suffering due to unrepented
sin. This pain of loss is the privation of the
possession of God, whereas that of sense is the
effect of the afflictive action of God. The first
corresponds to guilt as turning away from God,
whereas the second corresponds to guilt as turning
toward something created. [253]
We note, in passing, that infants who die without
baptism do not feel the absence of the beatific
vision as a loss, because they do not know that they
were supernaturally destined to the immediate
possession of God. We speak here only of that pain of
loss which is conscious, which is inflicted on adults
condemned for personal sin, for mortal sin unrepented.
Let us see in what it consists, and what is its
rigor.
The Nature of Loss
It consists essentially, as we have said, in the
privation of the beatific vision and of all good that
flows therefrom. Man supernaturally destined to see
God face to face, to possess Him eternally, loses
that
right when he turns from God by mortal sin unrepented.
He remains eternally separated from God, not only as
his last supernatural end, but also as his natural
end, because each mortal sin is indirectly against
the natural law, which obliges us to obey every
command which God lays on us.
The pain of loss brings with it the privation of all
good which arises from the beatific vision: that is,
the privation of charity, of the love of God, of the
immeasurable joys of heaven, of the company of our
Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Virgin Mary, of the
angels and the saints, of souls that live in God, of
all virtues, and of the seven gifts of the Holy
Spirit which remain in heaven.
The Council of Florence [254] teaches clearly that,
whereas the blessed enjoy the immediate vision of the
divine essence, the damned are deprived of this
vision. Scripture [255] too affirms the same truth
explicitly: "Depart from Me, you cursed, into
everlasting fire, which was prepared for the devil
and his angels." [256] "Amen, I say to you, I know
you not." These words [257] express eternal
separation from God and the privation of all the good
that accompanies God's presence. We may listen
likewise to the reproaches addressed to the scribes
and Pharisees. Jesus [258] calls them a generation of
vipers, and threatens them with hell where the
obstinate sinner is separated eternally from God.
Theological reasoning, as we have seen, explains
these assertions of Scripture by the very nature of
mortal sin followed by final impenitence. A man who
dies in this state is turned away from God. After
death, such a sin cannot be remitted. The soul of the
sinner who freely and definitively has turned away
from God stays eternally in that state. Refusal fixed
by obstinacy, refusal of sovereign good which
contains eminently all other goods, is punished by
the loss of all good.
The Severity of This Pain
The pain of loss, the consequence of final
impenitence, consists in an immense void which will
never be filled, in an eternal contradiction which is
the fruit of the hatred of God, in despair, in
perpetual remorse without repentance, in hate of
one's neighbor, in envy, in a grudge against God
which is expressed by blasphemy.
First, an immense void which will never be filled.
Eternal privation of God is hard for us to conceive
here on earth. Why? Because the soul here on earth
has not a sufficient consciousness of its own
immeasurable depth, a depth which only God can fill.
Sense goods, on the contrary, captivate us
successively, one after the other. Gluttony and pride
hinder us from understanding, practically and really,
that God is our last end, that He is sovereign good.
Our inclination to truth, goodness, and beauty
supreme is often offset by inferior attractions. We
do not as yet have a burning hunger for the only
bread that can sate the soul.
But when the soul is separated from the body. it
loses all these inferior goods which hindered it from
understanding its own spirituality and destiny. It
sees itself now as the angel does, as a spiritual
substance, incorruptible and immortal. It sees that
its intelligence was made for truth, above all for
the supreme truth, that its will was made to love and
will the good, especially the sovereign good which is
God, source of all beatitude, foundation of all duty.
The obstinate soul now attains full consciousness of
its own immeasurable depth, realizes that God alone,
seen face to face, can fill it, sees also that this
void will never be filled. Father Monsabre vividly
expresses this awful truth: "The damned soul, arrived
at the term of its road, should repose in the
harmonious plenitude of its being, but it is turned
away from God, is fixed upon creatures. It refused
the supreme good, even in the last moment of its
state of trial. Hence supreme good says to it: 'Begone'
at the very moment when, having no other good, its
nature springs up to seize this supreme good. Hence
it departs from its light, from infinite love, from
the Father, from the divine Spouse of souls. The
sinner, having denied all this on earth, is now in
the night, in the void. He is in exile, repudiated,
condemned. And justice can but approve." [259]
Interior Contradiction
The obstinate soul is still, by its very nature,
inclined to love God more than itself, just as the
hand loves the body more than itself, and hence
exposes itself naturally to preserve that body. [260]
This natural inclination has indeed been weakened by
sin, but it continues to exist in the condemned soul.
Father Monsabre says: "The condemned soul loves God,
has hunger for God. It loves Him in order to satisfy
itself."
On the other hand, the soul has a horror of God, an
aversion which comes from unrepented sin which still
holds it captive. Continuing to judge according to
its unregulated inclination, it has not only lost
charity, but it has acquired a hatred of God. Thus it
is lacerated by an interior contradiction. It is
carried toward the source of its natural life, but it
detests the just judge, and expresses its rage by
blasphemy. Often the Gospel repeats: "There shall be
weeping and gnashing of teeth." [261]
The damned, knowing by a continual experience the
effects of divine justice, as a consequence have
hatred of God. St. Theresa defines the demon "he who
does not love." We can say the same of those
obstinate Pharisees, to whom Jesus says: "You shall
die in your sin." This hatred of God manifests the
total depravity of the will. [262] The damned are
continually in the act of sin, though these acts are
no longer demeritorious, because the end of merit and
demerit has come.
Utter despair is the terrible consequence of the
eternal loss of all good. And the damned fully
understand they have lost all these goods, and that
by their own fault. In the Book of Wisdom we read:
"Then shall the just stand with great constancy
against those that have afflicted them.... (The
wicked) seeing it shall be troubled with terrible
fear and shall be amazed . . . saying within
themselves . . .: 'These are they whom we had some
time in derision and for a parable of reproach....
Behold how they are numbered among the children of
God and their lot is among the saints. Therefore we
have erred from the way of truth, and the light of
justice hath not shined unto us.... We wearied
ourselves in the way of destruction.... What hath
pride profited us?" [263]
The extent of despair in the damned souls arises from
their full knowledge of a good which can never be
realized. If they could but hope to see the end of
their evils! But this end will never come. If a
mountain lost daily one tiny stone, a day would come
when the mountain would no longer exist, since its
size is limited. But the succession of centuries has
no limit.
Perpetual remorse comes from the voice of conscience,
which repeats that they refused to listen while there
was yet time. They cannot indeed erase from their
mind the first principles of the moral order, a
distinction between good and evil. [264] But
conscience recalls sin after sin: "I was hungry, and
you gave Me not to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave
Me not to drink." [265]
But the soul is incapable of changing its remorse
into penance, its tortures into expiation. St. Thomas
explains: [266] It regrets its sin, not as guilt, but
only as the cause of its suffering. It remains
captive to its sin and judges practically according
to an inclination which is forever distorted.
Hence the condemned soul is incapable of contrition,
even attrition, because even attrition supposes hope,
and enters upon the road of obedience and humility.
The blood of Christ no longer descends into the
condemned soul to make his heart contrite and humble.
As the liturgy of the office of the dead says: "In
hell there is no redemption." Repentance rises above
remorse, as the repentant thief rises above Judas.
Remorse tortures, penance delivers. "The obstinate
soul," says Father Lacordaire, [267] "no longer turns
toward God. It scorns forgiveness even in the abyss
into which it has fallen. It throws itself against
God, with all that it sees, all that it knows, all
that it feels. Can God come to it in spite of its
will? Can hate and blasphemy embrace divine love?
Would this be justice? Shall heaven open for Nero as
it did for St. Louis? Impenitence before death,
crowned by impenitence after death -- this should be
the passport to eternal bliss!
[268]
Hatred of God involves hatred of neighbor. As the
blessed love one another, the damned hate one
another. In hell there is no love, only envy and
isolation. Condemned souls wish their own
condemnation to be universal. [269]
Eternally rebellious against everything, they long
for annihilation, not in itself, but as cessation of
suffering. In this sense Jesus says of Judas: "It
were better for him if that man had not been born."
[270]
Buried in boundless misery, the condemned soul has no
desire of relief. Inexpressible anger finds vent in
blasphemy. "He shall gnash with his teeth and pine
away, the desire of the wicked shall perish." [271]
Tradition applies to him these words of the psalm:
"The pride of them that hate Thee ascendeth
continually." [272] Such a soul has refused supreme
good and has found extreme sorrow. It has found
despair without hope. Each and every condemned soul
repeats, each on his own level: "It is a fearful
thing to fall into the hands of the living God."
[273] "The lost soul does not live. It is not dead.
It dies without cessation, [274] because it is
forever far away from God, the author of life.
The condemned, says St. Thomas, [275] suffer
unchangeably the highest possible evil. They cannot
in hell even demerit, much less merit. They are no
longer voyagers. They sin indeed, but they do not
demerit, just as the blessed perform acts of virtue,
but no longer merit. Their state, if we consider only
the pain of loss, is an abyss of misery, just as
inexpressible as the glory of which it is the
privation, as great as the possession of God which
they have lost forever.
This condition, by its abysmal contrast, illumines
the measureless value of the beatific vision and of
all benefits that follow therefrom. But on earth we
do not understand perfectly what the damned have
lost. This perfect understanding is reserved to those
who have unmediated vision of the divine essence, and
the measureless joy which follows that vision. Yet
faith too furnishes a parallel. Those who have a firm
faith, and are continually faithful to it -- they,
and they
alone, realize what measureless good is lost when
faith is lost.
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| 254. |
Cf. Ia IIae, q. 87, a.4; Supplementum, q. 97,
a.2;
q.99, a. 1. Cf. Dict. theol. cath., "Enfer et Dam". |
| 254. |
Denz., no. 693. |
| 255. |
Matt. 24:41. |
| 256. |
Cf. Ps. 6:9; Matt. 7:23; Luke 13:27. |
| 257. |
Matt. 25:12. |
| 258. |
Matt. 23:14, 15, 25, 29. |
| 259. |
Conferences in Notre Dame, 1889, 99th Conference. |
| 260. |
Ia, a. 60, a. 5; IIa IIae, q. 26, a. 3. |
| 261. |
Matt. 8:12; 13:42, 50; Luke 13:18. |
| 262. |
Dict. theol. cath., "L'Enfer." |
| 263. |
Wisd. 5:1-16. |
| 264. |
Ia IIae, q. 85, a. 2 ad 3. "Even in the reprobate
there remains the natural inclination to virtue.
Otherwise they would not have remorse of conscience." |
| 265. |
St. Thomas thus explains the gnawing worm of
Scripture (Mark 9:42) and tradition. Cf. Contra
Gentes,
Bk. IV, chap. 89; De veritate, q. 16, a. 3. "Synderesis
is not extinguished. It is impossible that the
judgment
of synderesis be entirely extinguished, but in one or
the other particular deed it is extinguished,
whenever
man chooses what is sinful." |
| 266. |
Supplementum, q. 98, a. 2. |
| 267. |
Conferences in Notre Dame, 72nd Conference. |
| 268. |
In the works of Father Cormier, who was general
of
the Dominicans and died in the odor of sanctity, we
read the following reflections on the religious who
has
missed the goal of his life. He calls it "the hell of
the religious." "This unfortunate man had acquired
and
kept a capacity, an inclination, greater than
ordinary
Christians have, of possessing God. God had put into
his nature certain aptitudes, in view of his foreseen
religious vocation. Now these aptitudes in the
condemned religious turn necessarily and implacably
against God. His heart feels an emptiness deeper than
others, an emptiness that torments him inexorably.
What
a devouring hunger, which nothing can satisfy!
"He recalls the days and years of fervor, which were
a
foretaste of heaven. What contrasts! What regrets! He
must say: 'Beautiful heaven, of which I was sure,
thou
art now lost to me.'
"He will feel more shame than other reprobates, but
he
will not be able to hide his degradation by lies and
sacrileges. His duplicity will appear in a most
striking fashion.
"In regard to God he will have more terrible hate
than
others. For the heart that is most carried on to love
is also the most capable of hate, since hate is only
love turned to its contrary, to aversion. This hate
will be expressed by blasphemy against everything
which
he formerly loved."
This terrible contrast shows the price of salvation. |
| 269. |
Supplementum, q. 98, a. 4. |
| 270. |
Matt. 26:24. |
| 271. |
Ps. 111:10. |
| 272. |
Ibid., 73:23. |
| 273. |
Heb. 10:31. |
| 274. |
De civ. Dei. Bk. XIII, chap. 4. |
| 275. |
Supplementum, q. 98, a.6 ad 3. |
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