November 17, 2024 - Pastor Message
November 21, 2024THE LAST THINGS HELL
THE LAST THINGS
HELL
“You know that Christ was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who remains in him sins; no one who sins has seen him or known him. Children, let no one deceive you. The person who acts in righteousness is righteous, just as he is righteous. Whoever sins belongs to the devil, because the devil has sinned from the beginning. Indeed, the Son of God was revealed to destroy the works of the devil. No one who is begotten by God commits sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot sin because he is begotten by God. In this way, the children of God and the children of the devil are made plain; no one who fails to act in righteousness belongs to God, nor anyone who does not love his brother” (1 John 3:4-10).
We conclude our November reflection on the Last Things by reflecting on hell. Hell is the necessary consequence of free will. If God invites us to freely choose to live in a loving relationship with him for all eternity (i.e. heaven), then we must also be free to reject God and his offer of love for all eternity. This state of eternal self-exclusion from communion with God is what we call “hell”. In this sense, we can say that God does not send people to hell. He gives us all a fundamental choice, which we are free to make either way, and he accepts our choice, even if our choice is to reject him and be separated from him.
It is hard to imagine that anyone would choose hell, but that is exactly what we do when we choose serious sin over God and his grace. In his limitless mercy, God is always ready to forgive us our sins and give us the grace we need to make a new choice, a choice for him. But if we freely remain in our sin and fail to avail ourselves of God’s mercy in this life, when we die, our choice becomes permanent and definitive. We did not want to live with God in this life, so he will honor that choice, and we will not live with him in the next.
What is it like to be eternally separated from God, who is the source of all goodness and goal of our life? Scripture uses many different images to describe hell, such as fire (Matthew 13:41-42), darkness (Matthew 8:12), and torment (Luke 16:19-31). These are poetic ways of describing the suffering that comes from rejecting God’s goodness, which we can already see and experience in partial ways in this life when we see the devastation that human evil causes, as in the Nazi Holocaust, for example. Those moments peel back the mask that evil wears to deceive us into choosing sin and reveal its true nature.
It can be a good spiritual exercise to spend some time in prayer imaging what that kind of suffering would be like, because that is what hell is like, and we most certainly would not choose that. That being so, we should not choose sin, because that same evil and suffering lies behind every serious sin, even if we don’t see it clearly at the time. It is also a good spiritual exercise to imagine the bliss of heaven, enjoying all goodness and love for all eternity with God, and so cultivate a holy desire for it. And finally, it is a good spiritual exercise to pray for those in purgatory, who suffer in their own way as they are purified of any remaining desire for evil and effects of sin. We live this brief life for the life that is to come; may we choose the fullness of life with God, now and forever.
Fr. Marc Stockton
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