Pain of loss which the damned suffer in Hell
“Cast him into the exterior darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”—Matthew 22:13
By every law, divine and human, the punishment of a crime should be proportioned to its gravity. “According to the measure of the sin shall the measure also of the stripes be” (Deut. 25:2). Now the chief injury that sinners do to God by mortal sin lies in turning their backs upon their Creator and their sovereign good. St. Thomas defines mortal sin as “a turning away from the immutable good” (Summa I, q. 24, a. 4). It is of this injury that the Lord complains when he says: “Thou hast forsaken me, saith the Lord; thou hast gone backward” (Jer. 15:6).
Since, then, the sinner’s greatest guilt lies in his deliberately consenting to lose God, the loss of God shall be his greatest punishment in hell. “There shall be weeping.” In hell there is weeping without end; but what is it that draws the bitterest tears from the unhappy damned? It is the thought that through their own fault they have lost God. This shall be the whole subject of the present discourse. Be attentive, brethren.
1. No, dearly beloved Christians, the goods of this earth are not the end for which God has placed you in the world; the end for which he created you is to gain eternal life. “And the end life everlasting” (Rom. 6:22). Eternal life consists in loving God and possessing him forever. Whoever attains this end shall be happy forever; but he who, through his own fault, does not attain it loses God, and shall be miserable for eternity, weeping and saying: “My end is perished” (Lam. 3:18).
2. The pain caused by a loss is proportioned to the value of what is lost. If a man loses a jewel—a diamond worth a hundred crowns—he feels great pain; if the diamond was worth two hundred crowns, the pain is double; if four hundred, the pain is greater still. Now I ask: what good has the damned soul lost? She has lost God; she has lost an infinite good. The pain, then, that arises from the loss of God is an infinite pain. “The pain of the damned,” says St. Thomas, “is infinite, because it is the loss of an infinite good” (Summa I-II, q. 87, a. 4).
Such, too, is the teaching of St. Bernard, who says that the value of this loss is measured by the infinitude of God, the supreme good. Hell, then, does not consist in its devouring fire, nor in its sickening stench, nor in the ceaseless cries and howls of the damned, nor in the terrifying sight of the devils, nor in the narrowness of that pit of torments where the damned lie one upon another: the pain that makes hell is the loss of God. Compared with this pain, all the other torments of hell are but a small sip. The reward of God’s faithful servants in heaven is, as he said to Abraham, God himself. “I am thy reward, exceeding great” (Gen. 15:1). Hence, as God is the reward of the blessed in heaven, so the loss of God is the punishment of the damned in hell.
3. St. Bruno, then, said truly that however great the torments inflicted on the damned, they can never equal the great pain of being deprived of God. Let torments be added to torments, but let them not be deprived of God. Addantur tormenta tormentis, et Deo non priventur—“Let torments be added to torments, and let them not be deprived of God” (Sermon on the Final Judgment). According to St. Chrysostom, a thousand hells are not equal to this pain. Speaking of the loss of God, he said: Si mille dixeris gehennas, nihil par dices illius doloris—“If you should speak of a thousand hells, you would say nothing equal to that sorrow” (Hom. 49, to the People).
God has so many beauties that he deserves an infinite love. He is so worthy of love that he keeps the blessed in heaven so filled with joy and so absorbed in his divine love that they desire nothing, and think of nothing, but to love him with all their strength. At present sinners, rather than give up their unworthy pleasures, shut their eyes so as not to know God and the love he deserves; but in hell the Lord, for their punishment, shall make himself known as the great and lovable good that he is. “The Lord shall be known when he executeth judgment” (Ps. 9:16). The sinner, weighed down by sensual pleasures, scarcely knows God; he knows him only in the dark, and therefore he thinks little of losing him. But in hell he shall know him well, to his own punishment, and this shall be his one tormenting thought for eternity: that he voluntarily lost his sovereign good.
A certain doctor of Paris appeared to his bishop after death and told him that he was damned. The bishop asked him whether in hell he remembered the sciences in which he had been so skilled during life. He answered that in hell the damned think of nothing but the pain of having lost God.
4. “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire” (Matt. 25:41). “Depart from me.” It is this word that makes the hell of the damned. Be gone from me; you shall be no longer mine, and I shall be no longer yours. “You are not my people, and I will not be yours” (Hos. 1:9). At present, says St. Augustine, this punishment is dreaded only by the saints. Haec amantibus, non contemnentibus poena est—“This is a punishment to those who love, not to those who despise.” It is a punishment that frightens those who love God more than all the torments of hell; but it does not terrify sinners, who choose to live immersed in the darkness of sin. Yet at death, for their greater punishment, they shall understand the great good of which they have been deprived through their own fault.
5. We must understand that man is created for God, and is by nature drawn to love him. In this life the darkness of sin, and the earthly affections that reign in his heart, lull to sleep this tendency and inclination he has to be united with God, his sovereign good; and so the thought of being separated from him does not greatly trouble him. But when the soul leaves the body and is freed from the senses that keep her in darkness, she then clearly understands that she is created for God, and that God alone is the good that can content her. As St. Antoninus says: “The soul, separated from the body, understands that God is her sovereign good, and that she was created for him.”
Hence, the moment she is loosed from the bonds of the body, she springs forward to embrace her sovereign good; but because she is in sin, she shall be driven back by God as his enemy. Yet though driven back and cast off, she does not lose the supreme inclination she has to be united with God; and this shall be her hell: to see herself forever drawn to God and forever cast away from him.
6. If a dog sees a hare, what effort does he not make to break the chain that binds him and seize his prey! So too the soul, in parting from the body, is on the one hand drawn to God, while on the other hand sin separates her from God and drags her down with it into hell. Sin, says the prophet, is like a wall of immense vastness, set between the soul and God to divide her from him. “But your iniquities have divided between you and your God” (Isa. 59:2). And so the unhappy soul, confined in that prison, far from God, shall weep forever—“there shall be weeping”—saying: So then, my God, I shall be no longer yours, and you shall be no longer mine! I shall love you no more, and you will love me no more!
This separation from God terrified David, when he said: “Will God, then, cast off forever? or will he never be more favorable again?” (Ps. 77:7). How great, he says, would my misery be, if God were to cast me off from himself forever and never again be appeased toward me! But this very misery every damned soul in hell suffers, and shall suffer for eternity. As long as he remained in sin, David heard his conscience reproaching him and saying: “Where is thy God?” David, where is your God, who once loved you so much? You have lost him; he is no longer yours. And David, afflicted by this sorrow, wrote that night and day he did nothing but weep. “My tears have been my bread day and night, whilst it is said to me daily: Where is thy God?” (Ps. 42:3). So too the devils shall say to the damned soul: Wretch, where now is your God? Yet David by his tears appeased God and recovered him; but the damned shall shed an immense sea of tears, and shall never appease nor recover their God.
7. St. Augustine says that if the damned saw the beauty of God, “they would feel no pain, and hell itself would be turned into a paradise” (On the Triple Dwelling). But no—the damned shall never again see God. When David condemned his son Absalom never to appear before him, Absalom’s grief was so great that he begged Joab to tell his father that, if he were forbidden to see his face again, he would rather be put to death. “I beseech thee, therefore, that I may see the face of the king; and if he be mindful of my iniquity, let him kill me” (2 Kings 14:32). Philip the Second, in like manner, said with a stern face to a certain grandee who had behaved irreverently in church: “Do not appear before me again.” So intense was that nobleman’s grief that, when he reached home, he died of sorrow.
What, then, shall it be when God says to the reprobate at death: Be gone; I will not see you again, nor shall you ever see my face again—according to the threat he made: “I will hide my face from them, and all evils and afflictions shall find them” (Deut. 31:17)? What pity it stirs to hear of a son who was always at his father’s side—who ate with him and slept with him—and who then, when his father dies, weeps and can find no peace, saying: My father, I have lost you; I shall never see you again! Ah, if we now heard a damned soul weeping bitterly, and asked her, Soul, why do you weep so? the wretched one would answer: I weep because I have lost God, and I shall never see him again.
8. The pain of the reprobate shall be increased by the knowledge he shall have of the glory of paradise that the blessed enjoy, and from which he sees, and shall forever see, himself excluded. How great would the pain be for a man who, having been invited by his prince to come to his theater and enjoy there the sight of the scenes, the singing, and the dancing, were then shut out for some fault he had committed—and who, standing outside, should hear the shouts of festivity and the applause of those within!
At present sinners despise paradise and lose it for mere trifles, after Jesus Christ has spent all his blood to make us worthy to enter there. But once they are confined in hell, the knowledge of the glory of heaven shall be for them a pain greater than all the rest. St. John Chrysostom writes that to see themselves cast out from that homeland of joy shall be for the damned a sorrow ten thousand times greater than the hell they suffer. Decem mille quis ponat gehennas, nihil tale dicet, quale est a beata gloria excidere—“Though one should punish with ten thousand hells, he would say nothing equal to what it is to fall from blessed glory” (St. John Chrysostom, quoted by St. Thomas, Summa Supplement, q. 98, a. 9).
If only I had at least the hope, the damned soul will say, that after a thousand, or even a million ages in these torments I might recover the divine grace and make myself worthy to go and see God in heaven! But no, he shall hear in answer: “When the wicked man is dead, there shall be no hope any more” (Prov. 11:7). While he was in this life he could have saved himself; but because he has died in sin, his loss is beyond repair. And so the wretch shall weep in despair: “I shall not see the Lord God in the land of the living” (Isa. 38:11).
9. The thought that they have lost God and paradise solely through their own fault shall increase the pain of the reprobate. Each of those wretched souls shall say: I could have led a happy life on earth by loving God, and I would have gained for myself an immense happiness for eternity; but because I loved my vices, I must remain in this place of torments as long as God shall be God! He will then say with the words of Job: “Who will grant me that I might be according to the months past, according to the days in which God kept me?” (Job 29:2). Oh, if only I were allowed to return to the time of my life, when God watched over me, that I might not fall into this fire!
I was not, after all, among the savages, the Indians, or the Chinese, deprived of sacraments, of sermons, and of masters to instruct me. I was born in the bosom of the true Church, and I was well taught and often admonished by preachers and confessors. To this prison the devils did not drag me; I came here of my own accord, on my own two feet. These chains that bind me and keep me far from God, I myself forged with my own will. How many times did God speak to my heart and make me hear: Amend, and return to me; take heed, lest the time come when you can no longer remedy your ruin! Alas, that time has already come, and the sentence is already passed; I am damned, and for my damnation there is not, nor ever shall be, any remedy for all eternity.
But if the damned soul has already lost God and can no longer see him, perhaps she might at least be able to love him? No; for grace has abandoned her, and thus, made the slave of her sin, she is compelled to hate him. This is the despair of the reprobate: to see herself made the adversary of God for having despised him in life. “Why hast thou set me opposite to thee, and I am become burthensome to myself?” (Job 7:20). And so the damned, seeing themselves made adversaries and enemies of God, while at the same time they know him to be worthy of infinite love, shall have before their eyes no object of greater horror than themselves; and this shall be the punishment God gives them, the greatest of all punishments: to see God so lovable, and themselves so deformed, and the enemies of this God. “I will set thee before thy face” (Ps. 50:21).
10. The sight of all that God has done to save them shall, above all, increase the pain of the damned. “The wicked shall see and shall be angry” (Ps. 112:10). They shall see all the benefits the Lord bestowed on them, all the lights he gave them, all the calls he made to them, the patience with which he bore with them. Above all, they shall see how much Jesus Christ loved them and how much he suffered for love of them; and then they shall see that, through their own fault, they are now no longer loved, but hated, by Jesus Christ. Si mille quis ponat gehennas, writes St. Chrysostom, nihil tale dicturus est, quale est exosum esse Christo—“If one should place a thousand hells, he would say nothing equal to what it is to be hated by Christ” (Hom. 24, on Matthew). Then the damned soul shall say: So then, my Redeemer, who out of compassion for me sweated blood, suffered an agony, and chose to die bereft of all comfort, now has no pity left for me! I weep, I cry out, but he no longer hears me nor looks on me, and he has wholly forgotten me! Once he loved me, and now he hates me—and hates me justly, because I in my ingratitude refused to love him!
David says that the reprobate are cast into the pit of death. “Thou shalt bring them down into the pit of destruction” (Ps. 55:23). On which St. Augustine wrote: Puteus claudetur sursum, aperietur deorsum, dilatabitur in profundum; et ultra nescientur a Deo, qui Deum scire noluerunt—“The pit shall be closed above, it shall be opened below, it shall be widened in the depths; and those who refused to know God shall no longer be known by God” (Hom. 16, chapter 50).
11. Thus the damned see that God deserves an infinite love, and that they cannot love him. St. Catherine of Genoa, one day troubled by a devil, asked him who he was. He answered, weeping: Ego sum ille nequam privatus amore Dei—“I am that wretch who is deprived of the love of God.” I am that miserable being who can never more love God. The damned not only cannot love God, but, abandoned in their sin, they are compelled to hate him; and this is their hell: to hate their God at the very moment when they know him to be infinitely lovable. They love him intensely as their sovereign good, and hate him as the avenger of their sin. Res miserrima, says a learned author, amare vehementer, et amatum simul odisse—“A most miserable thing, to love intensely, and at the same time to hate the one loved” (Magnotius, Meditations).
Their natural love draws them continually to God, but their hatred tears them away from him by force. These two contrary passions are like two wild beasts that at every moment rend the heart of the poor damned soul, making him live, and forcing him to live for all eternity, in a continual death. The reprobate, then, shall hate and curse God forever; and hating God, he shall hate and curse all the benefits God bestowed on him: creation, redemption, the sacraments. Among these he shall hate in a particular way the sacrament of baptism, by which his sins have made him more guilty in the sight of God; the sacrament of penance, by which he could so easily have saved himself, had he wished; and, above all, the most holy sacrament of the altar, in which God had given him his whole self.
He shall consequently hate all the other means that were helps to his salvation; and so he shall hate and curse all the angels and saints. But he shall curse in a particular way his guardian angel, his special advocates the saints, and, more than all, the divine Mother Mary. Above all, he shall curse the three divine persons—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost—and among them especially Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word, who once suffered so much and died for his salvation; cursing the wounds of Jesus Christ, the blood of Jesus Christ, and the death of Jesus Christ. Behold the end to which accursed sin leads the souls that Jesus Christ purchased at so great a cost to himself.
Points for Reflection
1. “The pain that makes hell is the loss of God” (§2)
2. “I could have led a happy life on earth by loving God, and I would have gained for myself an immense happiness for eternity” (§9)
3. “To this prison the devils did not drag me; I came here of my own accord, on my own two feet” (§9)