Eternity of Hell
“And his Lord, being angry, delivered him to the torturers until he paid all the debt.”—Matthew 18:34
In today’s gospel we read of a certain servant who, having badly managed his master’s affairs, was found at the reckoning to owe him a debt of ten thousand talents. The master demanded payment; but the servant fell down and said: “Have patience and I will pay thee all.” The master took pity on him and forgave the whole debt. Now this same servant was himself owed a hundred pence by one of his fellow-servants, who, unable to pay just then, begged him to wait; but the wicked servant, without pity, had him thrown into prison. When the master heard of this, he sent for him and said: “Wicked servant, I forgave thee ten thousand talents, and for a debt of a hundred pence thou hast shown no compassion to thy fellow-servant?” And he handed him over to be tortured until he should pay the whole debt.
See, dearly beloved, how these last words describe the sentence of eternal death that awaits sinners. By dying in sin, they die in debt to God for all their iniquities; and since in the other life they can no longer make satisfaction to God for the sins they have committed, they remain forever debtors to the divine justice, and must suffer for eternity in hell. It is of this unhappy eternity that I wish to speak to you today: listen to me with attention.
1. The thought of eternity is a great thought: so St. Augustine called it: Magna cogitatio—“A great thought.” The saint says that God has made us Christians and instructed us in the maxims of faith for this very end, that we may think of eternity: Ideo christiani sumus, ut semper de futuro saeculo cogitemus—“We are Christians that we may always think of the world to come.” This thought has made so many of the great ones of the earth forsake the world, strip themselves of their riches, and shut themselves up in a cloister, to live there in poverty and penance. This thought has sent so many young men to bury themselves in caves and deserts, and has led so many martyrs to embrace torments and death, in order to save their souls for eternity.
“For we have not here a lasting city,” exclaims St. Paul, “but we seek one that is to come” (Heb. 13:14). This earth, dear Christians, is not our country; for us it is a place of passage, through which we must soon pass to the house of eternity. “Man shall go into the house of his eternity” (Eccles. 12:5). But in this eternity the house of the just, which is a palace of delights, is very different from the house of sinners, which is a dungeon of torments. Into one of these two houses each of us must certainly go. In hanc vel in illam aeternitatem cadam, necesse est—“Into this or that eternity I must fall” (St. Ambrose on Psalm 118).
2. And wherever the soul shall first go, there she shall remain forever. “If the tree fall to the south or to the north, in what place soever it shall fall there shall it lie” (Eccles. 11:3). When a tree is cut down, on what side does it fall? It falls on the side to which it leans. On what side, my brother, will you fall when death cuts down the tree of your life? You will fall on the side to which you lean. If you are found leaning to the south—that is, in the grace of God—you shall be forever happy; but if you fall to the north, you shall be forever miserable. And there is no middle way: forever blessed in heaven, or forever in despair in hell.
We must all die, then, says St. Bernard, or some other author (On the Four Last Things), but after death we do not know which of the two eternities shall be our lot. Necesse mori; post haec autem dubia aeternitas—“Death is certain; but what follows—eternity—is uncertain.”
3. This uncertainty about the two eternities was the constant thought of David: it took the sleep from his eyes and kept him always in terror. “My eyes prevented the watches: I was troubled, and I spoke not: I thought upon the days of old, and I had in my mind the eternal years” (Ps. 76:5, 6). What was it, asks St. Cyprian, that inspired so many saints to lead a life which, on account of the continual austerities they practiced upon themselves, was an unbroken martyrdom? It was, he answers, the thought of eternity. A certain monk shut himself in a cave and did nothing else but cry out: “Oh, eternity! Oh, eternity!” That famous sinner converted by the Abbot Paphnutius kept eternity always before her eyes, and used to say: “Who can assure me of a happy eternity, and that the unhappy one shall not be my lot?” This same fear kept St. Andrew Avellino in continual terror and tears till his death; for he used to ask everyone he met: “What do you say? Shall I be saved or damned for eternity?”
4. Oh, that we too kept eternity always before our eyes! Surely we should not then be so attached to this world. St. Gregory writes: Quisquis in aeternitatis desiderio figitur, nec prosperitate attollitur, nec adversitate quassatur; et dum nihil habet in mundo quod appetat, nihil est quod de mundo pertimescat—“Whoever is fixed in the desire of eternity is neither lifted up by prosperity nor shaken by adversity; and since he has nothing in the world to desire, there is nothing in the world he need fear.” He who fixes his thoughts on eternity is not puffed up by prosperity nor cast down by adversity; for, having nothing in this world to desire, he has nothing to fear: he desires only a happy eternity, and fears only an unhappy one.
A certain lady was greatly attached to the vanities of the world. One day she went to confession to Father Master d’Ávila, who told her to go home and consider these two words—always and never. She did so, and withdrew her affections from the world and consecrated them to God. St. Augustine writes that whoever thinks on eternity and is not converted to God either has no faith or has lost his reason. O aeternitas! qui te cogitat, nec poenitet, aut certo fidem non habet, aut si habet, cor non habet—“O eternity! He who thinks on you and does not repent certainly has no faith, or, if he has it, he has no heart” (In Soliloquies). And in confirmation of this, St. Chrysostom relates that the pagans reproached the Christians with being either liars or fools: liars, if they claimed to believe what they did not believe; and fools, if they did believe in eternity and yet committed sin. Exprobrabant gentiles aut mendaces, aut stultos esse Christianos; mendaces si non crederent quod credere dicebant; stultos si credebant et peccabant—“The pagans reproached the Christians as either liars or fools; liars if they did not believe what they said they believed; fools if they believed and sinned.”
5. Woe to sinners, says St. Caesarius of Arles—they enter into eternity without ever having known it; but their woe shall be doubled when, having entered, they can never again leave it. Vae peccatoribus, incognitam ingrediuntur aeternitatem; sed vae duplex, ingrediuntur et non egrediuntur—“Woe to sinners; they enter eternity unawares; but a double woe, for they enter and never depart.” To those who enter hell, the door opens to admit them, but never opens again to let them out. “I have the keys of death and of hell” (Rev. 1:18). God himself keeps the keys of hell, to make us understand that for whoever enters there is no more hope of ever escaping.
St. John Chrysostom writes that the condemnation of the damned is engraved on the pillar of eternity, so that it shall never be revoked. In hell no calendar is ever issued; there the years are no longer counted. St. Antoninus says that if a damned soul were told she was to be released from hell—but when? When as many millions of years had passed as there are drops of water in the sea and grains of sand in the earth—she would rejoice more than a man condemned to the gallows would at the news that he was set free and made monarch of the whole world. But no! All those millions of years shall pass away, as many as there are drops of water in the sea and grains of sand in the earth, and the hell of the damned shall be only at its beginning. All these millions of years shall be multiplied an infinite number of times, and hell shall begin again.
But what use is it, asks St. Hilary, to count years in eternity? Ubi putas finem invenire, ibi incipit—“Where you think to find the end, there it begins.” And St. Augustine writes that “things which have an end cannot be compared with eternity” (On Psalm 36). Each of the damned would gladly make this bargain with God: Lord, increase my torments as much as you please, set the end as far off as you will; only fix some end to them, and I am content. But no, that end shall never come. “My end,” says the damned soul, “is perished” (Lam. 3:18). Then is there to be no end to his torment? No! The trumpet of divine justice sounds in the caverns of hell and continually reminds the damned that their hell must last forever and ever, and shall never have an end.
6. If hell were not eternal, it would not be the terrible punishment it is. Thomas à Kempis says that “everything that passes with time is trifling and short.” Any pain that has an end is no great matter. A sick man must submit to a cut in an abscess, or the cautery applied to a gangrene: the pain is severe, but it is bearable, because it is soon over. But when pain drags on—a toothache that lasts three months without ceasing—it becomes unbearable. Even if a man had to lie on a soft bed but always on the same side for six months, or to hear the same music or the same comedy night and day for a whole year, he would be driven to despair.
Poor blind sinners! When they are threatened with hell, they say: “If I go there, I must have patience.” But they will not talk so once they have reached hell, where one suffers not by hearing the same music or the same comedy always, nor by lying always on the same side, nor from a toothache, but where one endures all torments and all evils together. “I will heap evils upon them” (Deut. 32:23). And all these torments shall never end.
7. They shall never end, nor shall they ever be lessened in the smallest degree. The damned must forever suffer the same fire, the same privation of God, the same sadness, the same despair. Yes, says St. Cyprian, in eternity there is no change, for the decree is never altered. And this thought shall immensely double their pain, making them feel beforehand, and at every moment, all that they shall have to suffer forever. Daniel, describing the lot of the blessed and the misery of the reprobate, says: “They shall wake some unto life everlasting, and some unto reproach to see it always” (Dan. 12:2). They shall forever see their unhappy eternity. Ut videant semper—“That they may see always.” Thus eternity torments each of the damned not only with the weight of his present pain, but with the whole weight of the pain to come, which is eternal.
8. These are not opinions disputed among theologians; they are truths of faith, clearly set down in the sacred Scriptures. But, objects a heretic, Scripture says: “Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire” (Matt. 25:41); so the fire is eternal, but not the punishment of the damned. So speaks this unbeliever, but he speaks most foolishly. For to what end would God have created this eternal fire, if not to chastise the damned, who are immortal?
But to remove every shadow of doubt, many other passages of Scripture say that not only the fire, but the punishment of the damned, is eternal. One says: “These shall go into everlasting punishment” (Matt. 25:46). Another: “Where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not extinguished” (Mark 9:43). Another: “And the smoke of their torments shall ascend up forever and ever” (Rev. 14:11). And another: “Who shall suffer eternal punishment in destruction” (2 Thess. 1:9).
9. Another unbeliever will ask: But how can God justly punish with an eternal pain a sin that lasts only a moment? I answer that the gravity of a crime is measured not by how long it lasts, but by the weight of its malice; and the malice of mortal sin is infinite, as St. Thomas says (Summa I-II, q. 87, a. 4). Hence the damned would deserve an infinite punishment; but since a creature is not capable of a punishment infinite in intensity, God, as the same doctor says, makes it infinite in extension, and so makes it eternal.
Moreover, it is just that, so long as the sinner persists in his sin, the punishment he deserves should not cease. And therefore, just as in heaven the virtue of the blessed, because it lasts forever, is forever rewarded, so in hell the guilt of the damned, because it lasts forever, is forever chastised. Eusebius of Emesa writes: Quia non recipit causae remedium, carebit fine supplicium—“Because the cause receives no remedy, the punishment shall have no end.” The cause—their perverse will—endures: therefore their punishment shall never end.
The damned are so obstinate in their sin that, even if God offered them pardon, they would refuse it, out of the hatred they keep against him. The reprobate speaks in Jeremiah and says: “Why is my sorrow become perpetual, and my wound desperate so as to refuse to be healed?” (Jer. 15:18). My wound, he says, is incurable, because I do not wish to be healed. Now how can God heal the wound of their perverse will, when they refuse the remedy even were it offered to them? And so the punishment of the reprobate is called a sword, a vengeance that is irrevocable. “I, the Lord, have drawn my sword out of its sheath, not to be turned back” (Ezek. 21:5).
10. And so, while in this world death is so dreaded, in hell it is longed for by the damned, yet they never find it. “And in those days men shall seek death, and shall not find it: and they shall desire to die, and death shall fly from them” (Rev. 9:6). As a remedy for their eternal ruin, they would long to be blotted out and destroyed; but “there is no poison of destruction in them” (Wis. 1:14). When a man condemned to the gallows has already been cast from the ladder, and the executioner is slow to finish him, he moves the people to pity.
Poor damned souls! They live in continual death amid those torments: death gives them all the agony of dying, yet never the relief of taking away their life. Prima mors animam nolentem pellit de corpore; secunda mors nolentem tenet in corpore—“The first death drives the unwilling soul from the body; the second death holds the unwilling soul in the body.” The first death drives from the body the soul of the sinner, who does not wish to die; but the second death—that is, eternal death—keeps within the body a soul that longs to die. David says: “They are laid in hell like sheep; death shall feed upon them” (Ps. 48:15). As it feeds, the sheep tears off the blades of grass but leaves the root, so that the grass does not die, but grows up again. So does death deal with the damned: it torments them with pain, but does not take away their life, which may be called the root of their suffering.
11. But since for these wretched souls there is no more hope of leaving hell, might they at least deceive themselves and take comfort by saying: Who knows? Perhaps one day God will be moved to take pity on us and free us from these pains? No: in hell there is no flattering hope, no “who knows”; the damned soul is as certain, as it is certain that God exists, that its hell shall never end. “Thou thoughtest unjustly that I shall be like to thee; but I will reprove thee, and set before thy face” (Ps. 49:21). Forever he shall see before his eyes his sins and the sentence of his eternal damnation. Et statuam contra faciem tuam—“And I will set it before thy face.”
12. Let us conclude. And so, beloved brethren, the business of our eternal salvation should be the one thing that concerns us. “The business for which we struggle,” says St. Eucherius, “is eternity.” Eternity is at stake: it is at stake whether, if we are saved, we shall be forever happy in a city of delights, or, if we are damned, forever miserable in a pit of fire. This is no business of small weight; it is a business that for us is everything, and for all eternity. When Thomas More was condemned to death by Henry the Eighth, his wife Louisa came to tempt him to comply with the king. “Tell me, Louisa,” he said to her, “I am old; how many years could I expect to live?” “You might,” she answered, “live another twenty years.” “O foolish woman!” he exclaimed; “for twenty more years of life, would you have me condemn myself to an eternity of torments?”
13. O God! Men believe in hell, and yet they sin! Dearly beloved, let us not be fools, like so many who are now weeping in hell. Wretched souls! What do they now find of all the pleasures they took in this world? Speaking of the rich and the poor, St. Chrysostom says: “O unhappy happiness, that drew the rich man into eternal unhappiness! O happy unhappiness, that brought the poor man to the happiness of eternity!” The saints buried themselves alive in this present life, so as not to find themselves buried among the dead in hell for all eternity.
If this matter of eternity were doubtful, we ought even then to make every effort to escape an eternity of torments; but no, it is not doubtful; it is a truth of faith that after this life each of us must enter into eternity, to be there forever happy or forever in despair. St. Teresa says that for want of faith so many Christians are lost. Let us then revive our faith whenever we say those words of the Creed, life everlasting, and let us remember that after this life there is another life that never ends; and let us take every means, do everything, give up everything; and if we must leave the world to make our eternal salvation sure, let us leave it. Where eternity is at stake, no security can be too great. Nulla nimia securitas, says St. Bernard, ubi periclitatur aeternitas—“No security is too great, where eternity is at stake.”
Points for Reflection
1. “In this eternity the house of the just, which is a palace of delights, is very different from the house of sinners, which is a dungeon of torments. Into one of these two houses each of us must certainly go” (§1)
2. “And wherever the soul shall first go, there she shall remain forever” (§2)
3. “Where eternity is at stake, no security can be too great” (§13)