Remorse of the damned
“But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into the exterior darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”—Matthew 8:12
In the Gospel of this day we read that, when Jesus Christ entered into Capharnaum, a centurion came to him and begged him to cure his servant, who lay sick of the palsy. Jesus answered: “I will come and heal him.” “No,” replied the centurion, “I am not worthy that thou shouldst enter under my roof; but only say the word, and my servant shall be healed” (v. 8). Seeing the centurion’s faith, the Redeemer consoled him at once by restoring his servant to health; and turning to his disciples, he said: “Many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of Heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into the exterior darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
By these words our Lord wished to signify that many who are born among infidels shall be saved and enjoy the company of the saints, while many who are born in the bosom of the Church shall be cast into Hell, where the worm of conscience, by its gnawing, shall make them weep bitterly forever. Let us examine the remorse of conscience that a damned Christian shall suffer in Hell. The first remorse arises from the thought of how little he needed to do in order to save his soul. The second arises from the remembrance of the trifles for which he lost it. The third arises from the knowledge of the great good he has lost through his own fault.
First remorse of the damned Christian, arising from the thought of how little he needed to do in order to save his soul.
1. A damned soul once appeared to St. Hubert and said that two remorses were her most cruel executioners in Hell: the thought of how little she had needed to do in this life to secure her salvation, and the thought of the trifles for which she had brought herself to eternal misery. St. Thomas says the same. Speaking of the damned, he writes: “They shall be in sorrow principally because they are damned for nothing, and because they could most easily have obtained eternal life.” Let us pause to consider this first source of remorse, that is, how few and fleeting are the pleasures for which all the damned are lost.
Each of the damned will say for eternity: If I had abstained from such a gratification; if in certain circumstances I had overcome human respect; if I had avoided such an occasion of sin, such a companion, I should not now be damned. If I had frequented some pious confraternity; if I had gone to confession every week; if in temptation I had recommended myself to God, I would not have relapsed into sin. I proposed to do these things so often, but I did not do them. I began to practice these means of salvation, but afterward I gave them up; and so I am lost.
2. This torment of the damned will be increased by the remembrance of the good example given them by some young companions who led a chaste and pious life even in the midst of the world. It will be increased still more by the memory of all the gifts the Lord had bestowed upon them, that by their cooperation they might gain eternal salvation: the gifts of nature—good health, riches, respectable birth, talents—all granted by God, not that they might live amid earthly pleasures or lord it over others, but that they might employ them for the good of their souls and so become saints. So many gifts of grace, so many divine lights, holy inspirations, loving calls, and so many years of life to repair the evil they had done. But they shall forever hear from the angel of the Lord that for them the time of salvation is past: “The angel whom I saw standing, swore by Him that liveth forever and ever… that time shall be no longer” (Rev. 10:6).
3. Alas, what cruel swords shall all these blessings received from God be to the heart of a poor damned Christian, when he shall see himself already shut up in the prison of Hell, and that there is no more time to repair his eternal ruin! In despair he will say, weeping, to his wretched companions: “The harvest is past; the summer is ended; and we are not saved” (Jer. 8:20). Past, he will say, is the time of gathering fruits for eternal life; ended is the summer in which we could have saved our souls; but we are not saved. The winter is come—but an eternal winter, in which we must live in misery and despair as long as God shall be God.
4. O fool that I have been! he will say. If I had borne for God the pains I submitted to in order to indulge my passions—if the labors I endured for my own damnation had been borne for my salvation, how happy I should now be! And what now remains of all those past pleasures but remorse and pain, which torture me now and shall torture me for eternity? In the end, he will say, I might have been forever happy, and now I must be forever miserable. Ah, this thought will torment the damned more than the fire and all the other torments of Hell.
Second remorse of the damned, arising from the remembrance of the trifles for which they lost their souls.
5. Saul, while in the camp, forbade the people, under pain of death, to taste any food. His son Jonathan, who was then young, being hungry, tasted a little honey. When the king learned that Jonathan had violated the command, he declared that he should die. Seeing himself condemned to death, Jonathan said with tears: “I did but taste a little honey, and behold, I must die” (1 Kings 14:43). But the people, moved to pity for Jonathan, interceded with his father and delivered him from death. For the unhappy damned there is no compassion; there is no one to intercede with God to deliver them from the eternal death of Hell. On the contrary, all rejoice at the just punishment they suffer for having willfully lost God and Paradise for the sake of a passing pleasure.
6. After eating the pottage of lentils for which he sold his birthright, Esau was tortured with grief and remorse for what he had lost, and “roared out with a great cry” (Gen. 27:34). Oh, how great shall be the roaring and howling of the damned at the thought that, for a few poisonous and momentary pleasures, they have lost the everlasting kingdom of Paradise, and are condemned for eternity to a continual death!
7. The unhappy damned shall be employed continually in dwelling on the wretched cause of their damnation. To us who live on earth, our past life seems but a moment, but a dream. Alas, what will the fifty or sixty years they may have spent in this world appear to the damned, when they find themselves in the abyss of eternity, and when they shall have passed a hundred and a thousand millions of years in torment, and shall see that their miserable eternity is only at its beginning, and shall be forever at its beginning?
But were those fifty years spent on earth full of pleasures? Did the sinner, living in enmity with God, enjoy unbroken happiness in his sins? How long do the pleasures of sin last? Only a few moments; and for those who live far from God, the rest of life is full of anguish and pain. Oh, what will those moments of pleasure appear to a damned soul, when she finds herself buried in that pit of fire?
8. “What hath pride profited us? or what advantage hath the boasting of riches brought us? All those things have passed away like a shadow” (Wis. 5:8). Unhappy me! each of the damned shall say. I lived on earth according to my own whims; I took my pleasures; but what did they profit me? They lasted but a short time; they made me lead a life of bitterness and disquiet; and now I must burn in this furnace forever, in despair, and abandoned by all.
Third remorse of the damned, arising from the knowledge of the great good they have lost by their own fault.
9. A certain unfortunate princess, Elizabeth, queen of England, blinded by the passion to reign, said one day: “Let the Lord give me a reign of forty years, and I will renounce Paradise to him.” The unhappy queen did have her forty years of reign; but now that she is in the other world, confined to Hell, she surely cannot be content with the renunciation she made. Oh, how great must be her anguish at the thought of having lost the eternal kingdom of heaven for the sake of forty years of an earthly reign, possessed amid endless troubles, crosses, and fears! Plus coelo torquetur, quam gehenna—“Souls are tormented more by the loss of heaven than by hell itself,” says St. Peter Chrysologus. To the damned the voluntary loss of Paradise is a greater loss than the very pains of Hell.
10. The greatest pain in Hell is the loss of God, that sovereign good who is the whole joy of Paradise. “Let torments,” says St. Bruno, “be added to torments, and let them not be deprived of God” (Sermon on the Final Judgment). The damned would be content to have a thousand Hells added to the Hell they suffer, provided they were not deprived of God; but their Hell shall be precisely this, to see themselves deprived of God forever through their own fault. St. Teresa used to say that when a person loses through his own fault some trifle—a small coin, or a ring of little value—the thought of having lost it through his own neglect afflicts him and robs him of peace. What, then, must be the anguish of the damned to reflect that they have lost God, a good of infinite value, and have lost him through their own fault?
11. The damned shall see that God wished them to be saved, and had placed in their own hands the choice of eternal life or eternal death: “Before man is life and death, that which he shall choose shall be given to him” (Ecclus. 15:18). They shall see that, had they wished, they might have made themselves eternally happy, and that by their own choice they are damned. On the day of judgment they shall see many of their companions among the elect; but because they would not put an end to their sinning, they have gone to end their days in Hell.
“Therefore we have erred,” they shall say to their unhappy companions in Hell; we have erred in losing Heaven and God through our own fault, and for our error there is no remedy. They shall exclaim continually: “There is no peace for my bones because of my sins” (Ps. 38:3). The thought of having been the cause of their own damnation produces an inner pain, lodged in the very bones of the damned, that never lets them find a moment’s rest, as they see that they themselves were the cause of their ruin. Each of them shall thus be to himself an object of the greatest horror, suffering the pain the Lord has threatened: “I will set thee before thy face” (Ps. 50:21).
12. If, beloved brethren, you have until now been so foolish as to lose God for a miserable pleasure, do not persist in your folly. Now that you have it in your power, seek to repair your past error. Tremble! Who knows whether, if you do not now resolve to change your life, God may not abandon you, and you be lost forever? When the Devil tempts you, remember Hell—the thought of Hell will deliver you from Hell. Remember Hell, I say, and have recourse to Jesus Christ and to most holy Mary for help, and they will deliver you from sin, which is the gate of Hell.
Points for Reflection
1. “If I had avoided such an occasion of sin, such a companion, I should not now be damned. If I had frequented some pious confraternity; if I had gone to confession every week; if in temptation I had recommended myself to God, I would not have relapsed into sin” (§1)
2. “If I had borne for God the pains I submitted to in order to indulge my passions—if the labors I endured for my own damnation had been borne for my salvation, how happy I should now be!” (§4)
3. “When the Devil tempts you, remember Hell—the thought of Hell will deliver you from Hell. Remember Hell, I say, and have recourse to Jesus Christ and to most holy Mary for help, and they will deliver you from sin, which is the gate of Hell” (§12)