Pains of Hell
“Gather up first the cockle, and bind into bundles to burn.”—Matthew 13:30
I shall speak first of the fire, which is the chief pain that torments the senses of the damned, and afterward of the other pains of hell.
1. Behold the final end of those sinners who abuse the divine mercy too far: they go to burn forever in the fire of hell. God does not threaten us with hell in order to send us there to suffer, but in order to deliver us from it. Minatur Deus gehennam—“God threatens hell,” says St. Chrysostom, ut a gehenna liberet, et ut firmi ac stabiles evitemus minas—“that He may deliver us from hell, and that we may firmly and steadfastly avoid these threats” (Hom. 5 de Poenit.). Understand, then, my brethren, that God gives you today the chance to hear this sermon on hell so that you may be delivered from hell; He lets you hear it so that you may give up the sin which alone can lead you there.
2. My brethren, it is certain and of faith that there is a hell. After the judgment the just shall go to enjoy the eternal glory of Paradise, and sinners to suffer the everlasting chastisement reserved for them in hell. “And these shall go into everlasting punishment, but the just into life everlasting” (Matt. 25:46). Let us examine what hell is. Hell is the place of torments, as the wretched glutton called it: In hunc locum tormentorum—“Into this place of torments” (Luke 16:28). It is a place of suffering, where every sense and every power of the damned has its own proper torment, and where each man’s torment will be the greater in proportion to the forbidden pleasures in which he indulged. “As much as she hath glorified herself and lived in delicacies, so much torment and sorrow give ye to her” (Rev. 18:7).
3. When the sinner offends God he does two great evils: he forsakes God, the sovereign good, who can make him happy, and he turns to creatures, who can give him no true contentment. The Lord, by his prophet Jeremiah, complains of this injury that men do him: “For my people have done two evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and have digged to themselves cisterns—broken cisterns—that can hold no water” (Jer. 2:13). Since, then, the sinner turns his back on God, he shall be tormented in hell by the pain of loss, which is the pain of having lost God—of which I shall speak on another occasion [see the Sermon for the nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost]. And since, in offending God, he turns to creatures, he shall be justly tormented in hell by those same creatures, and chiefly by fire.
4. “The vengeance on the flesh of the ungodly is fire and worms” (Ecclus. 7:19). Fire and the remorse of conscience are the chief means by which God takes vengeance on the flesh of the wicked. Hence, in condemning the reprobate to hell, Jesus Christ tells them expressly that He sends them to burn in eternal fire: “Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire” (Matt. 25:41). This fire, then, shall be one of the fiercest executioners of the damned.
5. Even on this earth the pain of fire is the most terrible of all torments. But St. Augustine says that, compared with the fire of hell, the fire of this earth is as though it were merely painted: In cuius comparatione noster hic ignis depictus est—“In comparison with which our fire here is but a picture.” St. Anselm writes the same, teaching that as far as our material fire surpasses in heat a fire merely painted, so far does the fire of hell surpass ours. The fire of hell therefore has a power to torment far beyond that of our fire; and the reason is plain, for God created our fire for our use, but He created the fire of hell expressly to torment sinners, and so has made it the minister of his justice, as Tertullian says: Longe alius est ignis, qui usui humano, alius qui Dei justitiae deservit—“Far different is the fire which serves human use from that which serves God’s justice.” It is the wrath of God that keeps this avenging fire forever kindled: “A fire is kindled in my rage” (Jer. 15:14).
6. “And the rich man also died, and he was buried in hell” (Luke 16:22). The damned are buried in the fire of hell, so that they have an abyss of fire below them, an abyss above, and an abyss on every side. If they touch, they touch fire; if they see, they see fire; if they breathe, they breathe fire. As a fish in the sea is surrounded by water, so the wretched damned shall be surrounded by fire on every side. How great the pain of this fire is may be gathered from the fact that the glutton complained of no other torment but this: “I am tormented in this flame” (Luke 16:23).
7. Moreover, the prophet Isaiah says that the Lord will punish the filthiness of sinners with the spirit of fire: “If the Lord shall wash away the filth of the daughters of Sion by the spirit of burning” (Isa. 4:4). “The spirit of burning” is the same as to say the pure essence of fire. All such essences, even when drawn from simple herbs or flowers, are so penetrating that they reach the very bones; such is the fire of hell. So active is this fire that a single spark of it would be enough to melt a mountain of bronze. The Disciple relates that a damned soul, appearing to a religious, put his hand into a vessel of water; and when the religious then placed a bronze candlestick into the same vessel, it was instantly melted.
8. Moreover, this fire shall torment the damned not only outwardly but inwardly, so that the bowels within the belly, the heart within the breast, the brains within the head, and the blood within the veins shall burn, and even the marrow shall burn within the bones. The skin of the damned shall become like a caldron set over the fire, in which their bowels, their flesh, and their bones shall be burned. David says that the bodies of the damned shall become like so many furnaces of fire: “Thou shalt make them as an oven of fire in the time of thy anger” (Ps. 21:9).
9. O God, certain sinners cannot bear to walk along a road beaten by the sun, or to sit with a brazier burning in a closed room; they cannot endure a single spark leaping from a candle—and yet they do not fear the fire of hell, which, as Isaiah says, not only burns but devours the poor damned! “Which of you can dwell with devouring fire?” (Isa. 33:14). As a lion devours a kid, so the fire of hell devours the damned; but it devours without ever putting them to death, and so torments them with a continual death.
Go on, you fool, says St. Peter Damian to the unchaste sinner—go on satisfying your flesh; a day will come, or rather an eternal night, when your filthiness shall be turned into pitch, by which the fire within your bowels shall be fed forever. Veniet dies, imo nox, quando libido tua vertetur in picem, qua se nutriat perpetuus ignis in tuis visceribus—“A day will come, or rather a night, when your lust shall be turned into pitch, by which a perpetual fire shall be fed within your bowels” (Epist. 6). And St. Cyprian adds that the impurities of the unchaste shall boil in the very fat that shall ooze from their accursed bodies.
10. St. Jerome writes that in this fire sinners shall suffer not only the pain of fire, but all the pains that men suffer on this earth: In uno igne omnia supplicia sentient in inferno peccatores—“In one fire sinners shall feel all punishments in hell” (Ep. ad Pam.). How many pains there are on this earth! Pains in the side, pains in the head, pains in the loins, pains of sciatica, pains in the bowels—by all these together, at one and the same time, the damned shall be tortured in hell.
11. This same fire shall bring with it the pain of darkness, for by its smoke it shall form that storm of darkness of which St. Jude speaks, which shall blind the eyes of the damned: “To whom the storm of darkness is reserved forever” (Jude 1:13). Hence hell is called a land of darkness, covered with the mist of death: “A land that is dark and covered with the mist of death, a land of misery and darkness, where the shadow of death, and no order but everlasting horror dwelleth” (Job 10:21–22). It moves us to compassion to hear that a criminal has been shut up in a dungeon for ten or twenty years. Hell is a dungeon closed on every side, into which a ray of the sun or the light of a candle never enters; so that the wretched damned “shall never see light” (Ps. 49:19).
The fire of this world gives light, but in hell all shall be darkness. St. Basil, explaining the words of the psalm, “the voice of the Lord divideth the flame of fire” (Ps. 29:7), says that in hell the Lord separates the fire that burns from the flame that gives light, so that this fire performs only the office of burning, and not that of giving light. Blessed Albertus Magnus explains this more briefly, saying that God “divides the heat from the light.” St. Thomas adds that there the Lord leaves only so much light as suffices to torment the reprobate by the sight of the devils and of the other damned: Quantum sufficit ad videndum illa quae torquere possunt—“As much as suffices to see those things which can torture” (Summa III, q. 97, a. 5). And St. Augustine writes that the bare sight of these infernal monsters and specters, by the terror they inspire, would be enough to cause the death of all the damned, if they were able to die: Videbunt monstra, quorum visio posset illos occidere—“They will see monsters, the sight of which could kill them.”
12. Moreover, on this earth it is an unbearable pain to suffer a great thirst and to have not a drop of water to quench it. Travellers in open country, after some long journey and finding no spring to refresh themselves, have sometimes fainted from the pain of the thirst they endured. So great shall be the thirst in hell that if all the water of the rivers and the sea were offered to one of the damned, he would cry out: And what is all this water to the great thirst I feel? But what rivers, what sea! The wretched damned soul shall not have even a single drop of water to cool his tongue. This is what the glutton begged, as we read in St. Luke: he begged Abraham to send Lazarus, that with the very tip of a finger dipped in water he might cool his tongue, while he burned in that flame. “He cried out and said: Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, to cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame” (Luke 16:24). But this drop of water the poor glutton has not obtained, and shall never obtain, as long as God shall be God.
13. Moreover, the damned shall be tormented by the great stench that fills hell. This stench shall arise from the very bodies of the damned: “Out of their carcasses shall arise a stink” (Isa. 34:3). The damned are therefore called carcasses, not because they are dead—for they are alive and shall be forever alive to pain—but because of the stench they give off. What a torment it would be to find oneself shut up in a room with a rotting, stinking corpse! St. Bonaventure says that if the body of one of the damned were placed on this earth, its stench alone would be enough to cause the death of all men. What, then, will it be to find oneself in that closed dungeon of hell, in the midst of that immense multitude of the damned!
Certain fools of this world say: If I go to hell, I shall not be there to be damned alone. Wretched fools! Do you not see that the more companions you have, the more you will have to suffer? “There,” says St. Thomas, “the company of the wretched will not lessen, but increase, their misery” (Summa Supplement, q. 86, a. 1). It will increase it, because each of the damned is a torment to all the others; so that the more there are, the more they torment one another. Isaiah says: “And the people shall be ashes after a fire, as a bundle of thorns they shall be burnt with fire” (Isa. 33:12). Placed in the midst of the furnace of hell, the damned shall be like so many grains reduced to ashes by that abyss of fire, and like so many thorns bound together, wounding one another.
14. They wound one another, as we have said, by their stench. They wound one another also by their groans and their cries. What a torment it is to a man who longs to sleep to hear a sick man moaning, a dog barking, or a child crying the whole night through! Poor damned souls, who must hear without ceasing the weeping and the howling of those desperate companions—not for one night, not for a thousand nights, but for all eternity, without ever a moment’s pause!
15. Moreover, they wound one another by the narrowness of the place; for although the dungeon of hell is very large, it will yet prove too cramped for so many millions of the damned, who, like sheep, shall be heaped one upon another: “They are laid in hell like sheep” (Ps. 49:14). Scripture says further that the wretched shall be pressed together as closely as grapes crushed beneath the winepress, and this winepress shall be for them the vengeance of an angry God: “The winepress of the fierceness of the wrath of God the Almighty” (Rev. 19:15). From this shall arise the pain of immobility: “Let them become unmovable as a stone” (Exod. 15:16). For as the damned fall into hell on the last day—whether on the side, or face down, or on the back, or with the head downward—so must they remain forever, never able to change their place, never able to move so much as a foot, a hand, or a finger, as long as God shall be God.
In a word, St. Chrysostom says that all the pains of this life, however great they may be, are mere play compared with the pains of hell—indeed, they are not even a shadow of them: Haec omnia ludicra sunt et risus ad illa supplicia: pone ignem, ferrum, et bestias, attamen vix umbra sunt ad illa tormenta—“All these things are trifles and laughter compared with those punishments: bring fire, iron, and beasts, yet they are scarcely a shadow compared with those torments” (Hom. 39 ad pop. Ant.).
16. The damned, then, shall be tormented in all the senses of the body. They shall be tormented also in all the powers of the soul. They shall be tormented in the memory, by the remembrance of the years they received from God in this life for their salvation, and which they spent in working their own damnation; and by the remembrance of so many graces and divine lights of which they knew not how to make use. They shall be tormented in the understanding, by the thought of the great goods they have lost—their soul, Paradise, and God—and by the knowledge that for this loss there is now no remedy. They shall be tormented in the will, by seeing that whatever they ask or desire shall be denied them forever: “The desire of the wicked shall perish” (Ps. 112:10). The wretched shall never have anything they would wish, and shall always have to suffer all that they would not: they would wish to escape from those torments and to find peace, but they must remain in those torments forever, and shall never have peace.
17. Might they at least have some refreshment, or at least some rest now and then? No, says St. Cyprian: Nullum ibi refrigerium, nullum remedium, atque ita omni tormento atrocius desperatio—“There is no refreshment there, no remedy, and thus despair is more atrocious than all torment” (Sermon on the Ascension). In this life, whatever evil we suffer, there is always some relief or respite. But the poor damned must remain in that pit of fire, always suffering, always weeping, without ever a moment’s rest!
If at least, in the torments they suffer, they had someone to pity them! No: at the very time that they are so afflicted, the devils do not cease to throw in their faces the sins for which they suffer, saying: Suffer, burn, despair; you yourselves have caused your own ruin—this is what you deserve. And do not the saints, and the divine Mother, and God, who is called the Father of mercies, take pity on them? No: “the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven” (Matt. 24:29). The stars, by which the saints are signified, not only do not pity the damned, but rejoice to see avenged the injuries done to their God. Neither can the divine Mother pity them, because they hate her Son. And Jesus Christ, who died for love of them, can no longer pity them either, since they have despised his love and have willfully chosen to destroy themselves.
Points for Reflection
1. “God does not threaten us with hell in order to send us there to suffer, but in order to deliver us from it” (§1)
2. “When the sinner offends God he does two great evils: he forsakes God, the sovereign good, who can make him happy, and he turns to creatures, who can give him no true contentment” (§3)
3. “Understand, then, my brethren, that God gives you today the chance to hear this sermon on hell so that you may be delivered from hell; He lets you hear it so that you may give up the sin which alone can lead you there” (§1)