The common teaching of the saints and doctors is that the slightest pains endured in the terrible fire of Purgatory will be more painful than all the pains of the present life. The Catholic Encyclopedia notes, “[St.] Augustine (Enarration on Psalm 37, no. 3) speaks of the pain which purgatorial fire causes as more severe…
St. Anthony Mary Claret is often depicted in paintings as having a glowing substance within his breast. This is because on May 16, 1862, Our Lord gave St. Anthony the extraordinary privilege of retaining the Sacramental Species perpetually within him. St. Anthony writes in his autobiography that he considered omitting this remarkable detail about himself…
I recall arguing once with a Catholic friend of mine during our teenage years. He was from a big city far away and attended a publicly funded Catholic high school. I was a homeschooled boy from the country. The debate was on whether there were souls in Hell. I held the ideologically rigid belief that…
On July 13, 1917, Our Lady vouchsafed to the three children at Fatima a vision of Hell (this is the content of the “First Secret”): Our Lady showed us a great sea of fire which seemed to be under the earth. Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form, like transparent burning…
Again and again as of late, we see Catholic bishops and the pope making statements that seem to call into question the basic attributes of Hell, particularly the insistence of the Church that Hell is a place of eternal punishment and separation from God, and that it is not empty of human souls. Most of…
Tradition tells us that as Saint Thomas Aquinas was approaching the end of his life, Jesus Christ appeared to him in a vision and spoke to him from the cross, inquiring as to how he may reward the great Doctor for his contributions to the Church’s body of thought. “You have written well of me,…
The time from Michaelmas until the Hallowtide, for me, has always been a time to reflect upon Hell itself. After all, as fall settles on the Northern Hemisphere, people tend to reflect upon the afterlife as the days grow shorter and darker. And didn’t Christ talk about perdition quite a bit? It used to be…
“My Lord and my God, from this moment I accept at Thy hands, with resignation and cheerfulness, the kind of death it may please Thee to send me, with all its pains and anguish.” Despite the countless daydreams I’ve indulged in throughout my sanguine life, it struck me a few days ago that I have…
Whereas the Son’s own surrender to the love of the Father, on the level of fallen creation, is consummated in his sharing of our death, our reunion in him, in this very death, consummates our ecstasy, our ravishment with the Risen One, our Ascension in his own, in which is celebrated the Marriage of the…
While teaching a theology class to men in formation for the diaconate, I asked, “When was the last time you heard a homily on Hell?” None of the sixteen could recall. “And Heaven?” Only two. The exchange reminded me of an observation made by Christoph Cardinal Schönborn in his book Loving the Church (Ignatius Press,…
It is the simple truth: God created us for happiness. Not jealous of the good He has (or rather is), God fashioned finite intellectual beings—angels and men—capable of sharing His good through knowledge and love, and thus capable of entering into His eternal joy. We honor and love Him by seeking and welcoming this gift…
