Snip from a sermon on hell from Fr. Wathen:
...Intrinsic in the idea of hell is it's everlastingness. One cannot conceive of a punishment sufficient for those who have defied God all their lives, till their deaths, and who have simply refused to accept God in His sovereignty and refused to do His will. It is altogether contrary, repugnant to reason that there would not be a punishment. This punishment has to last forever simply because these individuals, if hell did not last forever, would have beaten God. They would have defied Him and gotten away with it.
So of course, those who go to hell, don't go for temporary chastisement, they go there because they hate God and they will never do other. That is why hell lasts always, just as the devils do not hate God less because they have been there who knows how many eons. If anything, we would say that the devils hate God more after all that they have suffered because their suffering does not determine whether they will serve Him or despise Him, their own wills determine this.
Our Lord spoke of hell 15 times in the Scriptures and the things that He said make it clear to us that hell is a state and a place of everlasting burning. He mentioned hell more often, more times then He mentioned the doctrine of the Blessed Eucharist. Among the things He said - "Depart from me ye cursed ones, into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels."...
"...where the worm dieth not, neither is the fire quenched". And therein does Christ tell us of the two terrible torments of hell. "The worm that dieth not" refers to the pain of loss and the "fire that is not quenched" refers to the pain of sense. Because people are inclined to give too much intention to the pain of sense, we want you to consider the pain of loss, which is the essential punishment of hell.
The pain of loss is simply the everlasting recognition that one is in hell because one chose to be there. On earth he made his alibis and he pointed fingers at others and he imagined that he is going to blame his parents or blame society or blame hard luck, but in hell, no one blames anyone but himself because in hell, everyone knows why he is there, because he knows that he has rejected God - and in turn, God has, despite His love, rejected him. And the pain of loss is that terrible torment of the recognition of what one might have done but did not. That one might be enjoying the beatitude of heaven, but will never.....