Meditation for Friday

This day thou shalt meditate on the torments of hell, that with such thoughts thy soul may be established in the fear of God, and in the hatred of sin. These Xess 2 XXX 27, 3 S. Matt. xxv. 41.

torments, says S. Bonaventura, may be considered under some of the figures and similitudes which the Saints have presented to us. For instance, he says it will help our purpose to imagine hell to be like some dark lake beneath the earth, or as a deep pit full of fire, or as a city terrible and gloomy, ever sending forth flames, in which no sound is heard but the wailing of the tormented, and the gnashing of teeth. In this awful place, there are endured these two torments, the punishment of sense, and the punishment of loss. As to the first, consider that no outward or inward sense will be without its own torment. For as the wicked have offended God with all their members and senses, and have made use of all for their sin, so is it ordained that each one of them must suffer its own torment, and pay the penalty incurred. And yet this even is not all the suffering to be endured there. The other torment which theologians call the punishment of loss, the eternal loss of the vision of God, is infinitely greater. This is the greatest of all evils, and of all torments, inasmuch as it deprives man of all good things, of God Who is the greatest of all good. These are the general torments of the lost. But besides these there are the particular torments which await each one - in conformity with the special quality of his sin. Thus there will be then the special torment of the proud, the envious, the avaricious, the luxurious, and the like. In return for evil pleasure will come grief ; for presumption and pride, confusion ; poverty and want for extravagance and abundance ; and hunger and thirst for feasting and gluttony.

And, then, in addition to all these pains, there is the eternity of the suffering, the seal and key of all the rest. For all this even would have been tolerable, if there had been an end to it. Nothing is great which comes to an end. But pain without end, or alleviation, or relaxation, or diminution, in which there is no hope of its ever coming to an end—the feeling that this is perpetual, and a banishment never to be repealed, this is the height of anguish in that place! As says a holy teacher, “ If the lost could only hope that their torments would cease when they had drank up all the water of the ocean, taking one single drop every thousand years, then there would be some touch of consolation, but this is not to be. God's Word of sentence must be eternal as Himself: “ Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My Word shall not pass away.”