In a Mass years ago, I heard a Kapampangan priest declare in his sermon that Heaven and Hell are what you make of your life on earth. I paused in anticipation of his explaining an analogy or adding with a smile: “Joke lang.” Neither came.
I wished Dr. Howard Storm was instead delivering the homily for that Mass. Storm who? An atheist.
Rather, a former atheist, who now goes about the entire world declaring theism, because in 1985, he died and was shown, nay, brought to Hell. This horrible experience he wrote in his best-selling My Descent Into Death.
Why do we have to realize that Hell exists? Because it also paves the way for the belief in Heaven, even Purgatory. It also affirms God’s existence and His justice.
Over the centuries, many others had been allowed to experience Hell during their earthly lifetimes.
The following are some of them, with their quotes of what they had experienced. This, in my effort to convince people to take Hell more seriously.
St. Faustina Kowalska of Poland: “Today, I was led by an angel to the chasms of hell. It is a place of great torture; how awesomely large and extensive it is!
“The kinds of tortures I saw: the first torture that constitutes hell is the loss of God; the second is perpetual remorse of conscience; the third is that one’s condition will never change; the fourth is the fire that will penetrate the soul without destroying it-a terrible suffering, since it is a purely spiritual fire, lit by God’s anger; the fifth torture is continual darkness and a terrible suffocating smell, and, despite the darkness, the devils and the souls of the damned see each other and all the evil, both of others and their own; the sixth torture is the constant company of Satan; the seventh torture is the horrible despair, hatred of God, vile words, curses and blasphemies.
These are the tortures suffered by all the damned together, but that is not the end of the sufferings. There are special tortures destined for particular souls. These are the torments of the senses.
Each soul undergoes terrible and indescribable sufferings, related to the manner in which it has sinned.
There are caverns and pits of torture where one form of agony differs from another. I would have died at the very sight of these tortures if the omnipotence of God had not supported me.
Let the sinner know that he will be tortured throughout all eternity, in those senses which he made use of to sin.”
Sr. Josefa Mendendez of Madrid, Spain, died 1923: “I saw several souls fall into Hell, and among them was a child of fifteen, cursing her parents for not having taught her to fear God nor that there was a Hell.
Her life had been a short one, she said, but full of sin, for she had given in to all that her body and passions demanded in the way of satisfaction….
“My soul fell into abysmal depths, the bottom of which cannot be seen, for it is immense…; Then I was pushed into one of those fiery cavities and pressed, as it were, between burning planks, and sharp nails and red-hot irons seemed to be piercing my flesh. I felt as if they were endeavoring to pull out my tongue, but could not.
This torture reduced me to such agony that my very eyes seemed to be starting out of their sockets.
I think this was because of the fire which burns, burns..not a finger nail escapes terrifying torments, and all the time one cannot move even a finger to gain some relief, not change posture, for the body seems flattened out and [yet] doubled in two.
Sounds of confusion and blasphemy cease not for an instant.
A sickening stench asphyxiates and corrupts everything, it is like the burning of putrefied flesh, mingled with tar and sulphur…a mixture to which nothing on earth can be compared… although these tortures were terrific, they would be bearable if the soul were at peace. But it suffers indescribably…
All I have written,” she concluded, “is but a shadow of what the soul suffers, for no words can express such dire torment.
“Today, I saw a vast number of people fall into the fiery pit . . . they seemed to be worldlings and a demon cried vociferously: ‘The world is ripe for me . . . I know that the best way to get hold of souls is to rouse their desire for enjoyment . . .
Put me first . . . me before the rest . . . no humility for me! but let me enjoy myself . . . This sort of thing assures victory to me . . . and they tumble headlong into hell.’ “
Of course, the most well-known vision of Hell was of the three children of Fatima on July 13,1917. Sister Lucia, one of the then children, wrote:
“The Blessed Virgin Mary opened her hands, and rays of light seemed to penetrate the earth, and we saw as it were a sea of fire.
Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form, like transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze, floating about in the conflagration, now raised into the air by the flames that issued from within themselves together with great clouds of smoke, now falling back on every side like sparks in huge fires, without weight or equilibrium, amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fear. (It must have been this sight which caused me to cry out, as people say they heard me.)
“The demons could be distinguished by their terrifying and repellent likeness to frightful and unknown animals, black and transparent like burning coals.
Terrified and as if to plead for help, we looked up at Our Lady, who said to us so sadly: “You have seen Hell where the souls of poor sinners go.
Thus, when you say the rosary, say after each mystery: O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of Hell and lead all souls to Heaven, especially those most in need of Thy Mercy.”
Then, there’s the account of St. Teresa of Avila: “The entrance seemed to be by a long narrow pass, like a furnace, very low, dark, and close.
The ground seemed to be saturated with water, mere mud, exceedingly foul, sending forth pestilential odors, and covered with loathsome vermin.
At the end was a hollow place in the wall like a closet, and in that I saw myself confined. All this was ever pleasant to behold in comparison with what I felt there. There is no exaggeration in what I am saying.
“But as to what I then felt, I do not know where to begin if I were to describe it; it is utterly inexplicable. I felt a fire in my soul but such that I am still unable to describe it.
My bodily sufferings were unendurable. I have undergone most painful sufferings in this life, and, as the physicians say, the greatest that can be borne, such as the contraction of my sinews when I was paralyzed, without speaking of other ills of different types – yet, even those of which I have spoken, inflicted on me by Satan; yet all these were as nothing in comparison with what I then felt, especially when I saw that there would be no intermission nor any end to them.”
Next, let’s find out the devil’s thoughts on how they lure humans towards Hell, according to the devil himself.
