Thats pretty frightening stuff. Ive always heard it said that the worst part of hell is knowing that you are eternally separated from God's love.
I'm glad you brought that up, Theo.
I've heard this on several occasions, and I've read that it's based in the Summa,
as well. But I've never heard it put into context very well. After reading this story,
which was sent to me from a friend, now I think I understand a bit better how it
fits into God's reality.
Before, I had thought, well, the sense of loss must be really bad if it's the worst
part about hell. But what to compare it to, was not very clear to me. "The worst
part" infers there is another part, but what is that?
There is a dream of St. John Bosco where he saw some of his students falling into
hell, by sliding down a road that got steeper and steeper, until they slid without
any ability to slow down or stop. When they fell through the barrier that separates
hell from what is outside of hell, the physical posture that they had at that
moment was fixed, such that they were unable to move any part of their body.
Don Bosco asked why that is, and he received the answer that hell is eternal, and
there can be no change in one's being for eternity. There is no way out, and there
is no way to reduce the sufferings that one endures, nor is there any way to move
one's body into a position less miserable, for the body cannot move at all. The
devils will attack it and it will have no recourse to aid. Don Bosco was able to put
his hand on the wall that is the outermost part of hell, and it burned his hand,
because the wall was so hot. He was given to understand that this wall is the one
that is the least hot, and that there are more walls inside, each one of which is
hotter than the one outside of it. Those who fall into the deepest places in hell are
stuck forever in the most intense fire.
So, if the sense of loss is worse than the fire itself, this helps us to know how
much that loss is. We have a sense of loss when we lose a game, or when we
make a bet and see our money disappear, or when we work really hard for
some material prize and end up losing it for whatever reason, or when someone
steals something of value from us, when a loved one dies, or for a captain, who
is forced to watch his ship founder and he would prefer to be on board himself, but
he cannot. Or when our nation loses a war: that's a big sense of loss. But to have
a sense of loss that is worse than the fire of hell -- a fire that does not consume, a
fire that does not diminish, but can only get worse, a fire from which we would
be unable to protect ourselves by moving our body to a shielded place because
we cannot move our body -- such a sense of loss is rather beyond our
comprehension. We have no such similar thing in this world.
When it comes to spiritual matters, we only have temporal reality to give us some
inkling of the unseen spiritual reality. In this state, it helps us to open our eyes of
faith and see that which is otherwise invisible, by reading this kind of story, and by
then going back to Scripture and reading it again with the
added faculty of a
new sense of vision that we have acquired; as Our Lord says, "Let those with
eyes to see, see."
***
Question: How do Modernists fight against this "faculty" of spiritual vision?
...
Answer: To fight against this faculty of spiritual vision, the Modernists deny its
effect by denying its very existence; for
they sneer and scoff at the word,
"faculty," and claim that there is no such thing, and they do this at the very
foundation of thought itself, in their pompous and erroneous philosophy.
***
Note: Any Sede who wants to chime in and accuse me of being remiss for not
including a reference so they can check to see if I got words wrong, can know that
you don't need any authority or source for this. What you need to do is to study
philosophy under the guidance of a reliable teacher, one that does not begin with
modern philosophers, but begins rather with love of the perennial wisdom of the
Traditional Catholic Faith of our Fathers.