Archbishop Fulton Sheen - The Hell There Is . The Hell There Is By Bishop Fulton J. Sheen All the passages below are taken from Fulton L. Sheen’s book “You,” republished in 1998 by the Society of St …More
Archbishop Fulton Sheen - The Hell There Is .
The Hell There Is
By Bishop Fulton J. Sheen
All the passages below are taken from Fulton L. Sheen’s book “You,” republished in 1998 by the Society of St Paul.
This is going to be a very unpopular broadcast. It is about a subject the modern mind does not want to hear, namely, hell. Why do our modern minds deny hell? Very simply because they deny sin. If you deny human guilt, then you must deny the right of a state to judge a criminal, or to sentence him to prison. Once you deny the sovereignty of God, you must deny hell. The existence of hell is God’s eternal guarantee of the inviolability of human freedom. You can disbelieve in hell, but you must also disbelieve in freedom; you can disbelieve in Sin Sin, but you must also disbelieve in responsibility. You can no more make a free nation without judges and prisons than you can make a free world without judgement and Hell. No State constitution could exist for six months on the basis of a Liberal Christianity which denies that Christ meant what He said: “Depart from me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41).
What is the nature of the punishment of hell? It is twofold because it corresponds to the double character of sin. Every mortal sin consists in (a) a turning away from God and (b) a turning to creatures. Because we turn away from God, we feel the absence of His Love, His Beauty, His Truth---and this is called the Pain of Loss. Because we turned to creatures and perverted them to our sinful purpose, we are punished in some way by the very creatures which we abused. This is called the Pain of Sense, one of its aspects being the fire of hell.
The Pain of Sense is based on the principle that the punishment should fit the crime. If you disobey one of nature’s laws, you suffer a corresponding retribution. If you become intoxicated some night and put yourself in a state of amiable incandescence, you do not necessarily wake up the next morning with an overdrawn bank account. But you do feel the effects of abusing your God-given thirst by something vaguely described as a “hangover”. In almost so many words, the alcohol says to you: “I was made by God to be used by you as a reasonable creature. You perverted me from the purpose God intended. Now since I am on God’s side, not yours, I shall abuse you, because you abused me.” In hell, in like manner, we shall suffer from the very creatures we perverted. Hence there will be different kinds of punishment in hell. The fiercer the grip sinful pleasures have on a soul in this life, the more fiercely will the fires torment it in eternity. As the Scriptures tell us: “Punishment for sin takes the same form as the sin itself” (Wisdom 11:16). And do not try to escape this logic or blind yourself to Divine Authority by arguing that hell could not be as you have heard some preachers picture it. I am only saying, do not reject the truth of the book because the pictures are bad.
Now, what is the Pain of Loss? That is best understood as the loss of Divine Love, and from three distinct points of view, we shall describe it.
1) Hell is the hatred of the things you love. A sailor lost on a raft at sea loves water. He was made for it, and water was made for him. He knows that he ought not drink the water from the sea, but he violates the dictates of his reason. The result is, he is now more thirsty than before, even thirsty when he is the most filled. He hates water as poison; at the same time he is mad with the thirst for it. In like manner, the soul was made to live on the love of God, but if it perverts that love by salting it with sin, then as the sailor hates the very water he drinks, so the soul hates the very thing it desires, namely, the love of God. As the insane hate most the very persons whom in their saner moments they really love the most, so the damned in hell hate God whom they were really meant to love above all things.
The wicked do not want hell because they enjoy its torments; they want hell because they do not want God. They need God, but they do not want Him. Hell is eternal suicide for hating love. Hell is the hatred of the God you love.
2) Hell is the mind eternally mad at itself for wounding Love. How often during life you have said: “I hate myself.” No one who ever condemned you could add to the consciousness of your guilt. You knew it a thousand times better than they. When did you hate yourself most? Certainly not when you failed to act on a tip on the stock market. You hated yourself most when you hurt someone you loved. You even said: “I can never forgive myself for doing that.” The souls in hell hate themselves most for wounding Perfect Love. They can never forgive themselves. Hence their hell is eternal: eternal self-imposed unforgiveness. It is not that God would not forgive them. It is rather that they will not forgive themselves. How often in this world the sight of moral goodness …
The Hell There Is
By Bishop Fulton J. Sheen
All the passages below are taken from Fulton L. Sheen’s book “You,” republished in 1998 by the Society of St Paul.
This is going to be a very unpopular broadcast. It is about a subject the modern mind does not want to hear, namely, hell. Why do our modern minds deny hell? Very simply because they deny sin. If you deny human guilt, then you must deny the right of a state to judge a criminal, or to sentence him to prison. Once you deny the sovereignty of God, you must deny hell. The existence of hell is God’s eternal guarantee of the inviolability of human freedom. You can disbelieve in hell, but you must also disbelieve in freedom; you can disbelieve in Sin Sin, but you must also disbelieve in responsibility. You can no more make a free nation without judges and prisons than you can make a free world without judgement and Hell. No State constitution could exist for six months on the basis of a Liberal Christianity which denies that Christ meant what He said: “Depart from me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41).
What is the nature of the punishment of hell? It is twofold because it corresponds to the double character of sin. Every mortal sin consists in (a) a turning away from God and (b) a turning to creatures. Because we turn away from God, we feel the absence of His Love, His Beauty, His Truth---and this is called the Pain of Loss. Because we turned to creatures and perverted them to our sinful purpose, we are punished in some way by the very creatures which we abused. This is called the Pain of Sense, one of its aspects being the fire of hell.
The Pain of Sense is based on the principle that the punishment should fit the crime. If you disobey one of nature’s laws, you suffer a corresponding retribution. If you become intoxicated some night and put yourself in a state of amiable incandescence, you do not necessarily wake up the next morning with an overdrawn bank account. But you do feel the effects of abusing your God-given thirst by something vaguely described as a “hangover”. In almost so many words, the alcohol says to you: “I was made by God to be used by you as a reasonable creature. You perverted me from the purpose God intended. Now since I am on God’s side, not yours, I shall abuse you, because you abused me.” In hell, in like manner, we shall suffer from the very creatures we perverted. Hence there will be different kinds of punishment in hell. The fiercer the grip sinful pleasures have on a soul in this life, the more fiercely will the fires torment it in eternity. As the Scriptures tell us: “Punishment for sin takes the same form as the sin itself” (Wisdom 11:16). And do not try to escape this logic or blind yourself to Divine Authority by arguing that hell could not be as you have heard some preachers picture it. I am only saying, do not reject the truth of the book because the pictures are bad.
Now, what is the Pain of Loss? That is best understood as the loss of Divine Love, and from three distinct points of view, we shall describe it.
1) Hell is the hatred of the things you love. A sailor lost on a raft at sea loves water. He was made for it, and water was made for him. He knows that he ought not drink the water from the sea, but he violates the dictates of his reason. The result is, he is now more thirsty than before, even thirsty when he is the most filled. He hates water as poison; at the same time he is mad with the thirst for it. In like manner, the soul was made to live on the love of God, but if it perverts that love by salting it with sin, then as the sailor hates the very water he drinks, so the soul hates the very thing it desires, namely, the love of God. As the insane hate most the very persons whom in their saner moments they really love the most, so the damned in hell hate God whom they were really meant to love above all things.
The wicked do not want hell because they enjoy its torments; they want hell because they do not want God. They need God, but they do not want Him. Hell is eternal suicide for hating love. Hell is the hatred of the God you love.
2) Hell is the mind eternally mad at itself for wounding Love. How often during life you have said: “I hate myself.” No one who ever condemned you could add to the consciousness of your guilt. You knew it a thousand times better than they. When did you hate yourself most? Certainly not when you failed to act on a tip on the stock market. You hated yourself most when you hurt someone you loved. You even said: “I can never forgive myself for doing that.” The souls in hell hate themselves most for wounding Perfect Love. They can never forgive themselves. Hence their hell is eternal: eternal self-imposed unforgiveness. It is not that God would not forgive them. It is rather that they will not forgive themselves. How often in this world the sight of moral goodness …
