Hell: No Way Out

The Scream (1893) by Edvard Munch

The Scream (1895) by Edvard Munch

The Scream (1910) by Edvard Munch

 

HELL: NO WAY OUT

Vision of hell according to Saint Faustina Kowalska:

Today, I was led by an angel to the chasms of hell. It is a place of great torture; how awesomely large and extensive it is! The kinds of tortures I saw:

The first torture that constitutes hell is: the loss of God.

The second is: perpetual remorse of conscience.

The third is that one’s condition will never change.

The fourth is the fire that will penetrate the soul without destroying it. A terrible suffering since it is a purely spiritual fire, lit by God’s anger.

The fifth torture is continual darkness and a terrible suffocating smell, and despite the darkness, the devils and the souls of the damned see each other and all the evil, both of others and their own.

The sixth torture is the constant company of Satan.

The seventh torture is horrible despair, hatred of God, vile words, curses, and blasphemies.

These are the tortures suffered by all the damned together, but that is not the end of the sufferings.

There are special tortures destined for particular souls. These are the torments of the senses. Each soul undergoes terrible and indescribable sufferings related to the manner in which it has sinned.

There are caverns and pits of torture where one form of agony differs from another. I would have died at the very sight of these tortures if the omnipotence of God had not supported me.

Let the sinner know that he will be tortured throughout all eternity, in those senses which he made use of to sin. I am writing this at the command of God, so that no soul may find an excuse by saying there is no hell, or that nobody has ever been there, and so no one can say what it is like. How terribly souls suffer there! Consequently, I pray even more fervently for the conversion of sinners. I incessantly plead God's mercy upon them.

—Diary, 741

Of the seven tortures, which one is the worst?

The pain of loss is the same for the souls in hell and in purgatory.

Moreover, in a manner similar to that of the chastisements of the damned, the souls in purgatory suffer the pain of the senses particular to the sins they had committed on earth but have not yet fully expiated.

However, the dividing difference between the sufferings of the damned and those of the imprisoned in purgatory is that the latter are temporary. The punishment of the damned is permanent, unending, and without mitigation, and because their wills are fixed in moral evil, they cannot repent of any of their sins.

Although both the damned and the temporarily imprisoned suffer the pain of loss and accessory punishments, the sojourners in purgatory know that their sufferings will end at some point in the future. So the essential difference between the two is that in purgatory there is hope. Souls in purgatory are absolutely certain that they are saved, and this knowledge mitigates their suffering.

We submit that however unspeakable are the punishments of hell, its worst torment is the perfect knowledge of the damned that their punishment never ends, so that despair is the worst torture of hell.

Abandon all hope, those who enter.—Dante Alighieri, Inferno, III, 9

No “GET OUT OF JAIL FREE” card is ever dealt in hell.

Hell: no way out.