Why is it so seemingly difficult to save one's soul ? Why - as we are told
- are few souls saved in comparison with the number of souls damned ? Since
God wishes for all souls to be saved (I Tim.II, 4), why did he not make it
somewhat easier, as he surely could have done ?

The swift and simple answer is that it is not that difficult to save one's
soul. Part of the agony of souls in Hell is their clear knowledge of how
easily they could have avoided damnation. Damned non-Catholics might say, "I
knew there was something to Catholicism, but I chose never to go into the
question because I could see ahead that I would have to change my way of
life." (Winston Churchill once said that every man runs into the truth at
some time in his life, but most men turn the other way.) Damned Catholics
might say, "God gave me the Faith, and I knew that all I needed was to make
a good confession, but I reckoned it was more convenient to put it off, and
so I died in my sins..." Every soul in Hell knows that it is there by its
own fault, by its own choice. God is not to be blamed. In fact looking back
on their lives on earth, they see clearly how much he did to try to stop
them from throwing themselves into Hell, but they freely chose their own
fate, and God respected that choice... However, let us delve a little
deeper.

Being infinitely good, infinitely generous and infinitely happy, God chose
-- he was in no way obliged - to create beings that would be capable of
sharing in his happiness. Since he is pure spirit (Jn. IV, 24), such beings
would have to be spiritual and not just material, such as animal, vegetable
or mineral. Hence the creation of angels with no matter in them at all, and
men, with a spiritual soul in a material body. But that very spirit by which
angels and men are capable of sharing in divine happiness necessarily
includes reason and free-will, indeed it is by the free-will freely choosing
God that it deserves to share in his happiness. But how could that choice of
God be truly free if there was no alternative to choose that would turn away
from God ? What merit does a boy have in choosing to buy a volume of
Shakespeare if there is only Shakespeare for sale in the bookstore ? And if
the bad alternative exists, and if the free-will is real and not just a
pretence, how are there not going to be angels or men who will choose what
is not good ?

The question may still be asked, how can God have foreseen to allow the
majority of souls (Mt.VII, 13-14; XX, 16) to incur the terrible punishment
of refusing his love ? Answer, the more terrible Hell is, the more certain
it is that to every man alive God offers grace and light and strength enough
to avoid it, but, as St Thomas Aquinas explains, the majority of men prefer
the present and known joys of the senses to the future and unknown joys of
Paradise. Then why did God attach such strong pleasures to the senses ?
Partly no doubt to ensure that parents would have children to populate his
Heaven, but also surely to make all the more meritorious any human being's
putting the pursuit of pleasure in this life beneath the true delights of
the next life, which are ours for the wanting ! We need only want them
violently enough (Mt.XI, 12) !

God is no mediocre God, and to souls loving him he wishes to offer no
mediocre Paradise.

Kyrie eleison.