The Hell There Is

EWTN Global Catholic Radio and St. Joseph Communications proudly present Life is Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Shin. This 50-part series was recorded on photograph records in the 1960s and the sound quality is sometimes limited. But the word of God spoken by Archbishop Shin is timeless. And now here is Archbishop Fulton Shin. Peace be to you. In this lesson we are going to give you hell. I mean the subject of hell. Few today believe in either the devil or in hell. Why do they not believe in the devil when there are so many devilish things about? The Communists have tried to convince us that there is no God. Actually they have not convinced us of that. But they have convinced us that there is a devil. We cannot explain all the evil in the world today. If we are going to deny the evil one. That was the kind of question that Prince proposed in a very interesting little poem. Men do not believe in a devil now as their father used to do. They forced the door of the broadest creed who let his majesty through. There is not a print of his cloven foot or a fiery dart from his bow to be found in earth or air today for the world as voted so. But who is mixing the fatal draft that calls these heart and brain? And loads the earth of each passing year with ten hundred thousand flame. Who blights the bloom of the land today with the fiery breath of hell? If the devil isn't and never was, won't somebody rise and tell? Who dog the steps of the toiling saint and digs the pit for his feet? Who soars the tears in the field of time? Wherever God tells his wheat. The devil is voted not to be. And of course the thing is true, but who is doing the kind of work the devil alone should do? We are told he does not go about as a roaring lion now. But whom shall we hold responsible for the everlasting rile to be heard in home in church and state to the earth three most is bound? If the devil by a unanimous vote is nowhere to be found, won't somebody step to the front forth with and make his bow and show how the frauds and the crimes of the day spring up? For surely we want to know. The devil was fairly voted out and of course the devil is gone. But simple people would like to know who carries his business on. And just as they deny the devil naturally they deny hell. Because they deny the justice of God because they deny the existence of guilt and of sin. Basic reason why so many modernists believe in hell is because they disbelieve in freedom and responsibility. The existence of hell is one of the strongest arguments in the world for the reality of freedom. God allows us free choice and he allows us to have our choice to return it. Through disbelief and hell is to assert that the consequences of good and bad acts are not indifferent. It does make it tremendous amount of difference whether you eat tea and tea or drink tea. And it makes a greater difference if your soul drinks virtue or vice. It is just as difficult to make a free nation without judges and prisons as it is to make a free world without judgment and hell. No state constitution could exist for six months on the basis of that liberal Christianity which deny that Christ meant what he said. When he said the part from the E. Cursed into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels. Have you ever noticed that saints fear hell but never deny it? When the great sinners deny hell but they do not fear it at least for the moment. The devil is never so strong is when he gets the man to deny there is a devil. The modern man who is not living according to his conscience wants a religion without cross a Christ without a Calvary a kingdom without justice and in his church a soft deen who never mentions hell to ears polite and that is modern Christianity. Why is it that we will praise men for making decisions as to whether they will invest in this farm or in that industry and at the same time he choose to give them credit to decide whether they will go to heaven or hell for all eternity. Just suppose there was no heavenly judge. Suppose there was no heavenly ledger which recorded our deeds in our sins. Suppose we had no conscience to devote right and wrong and no memory to record our crimes in our sins and suppose there were no formal sentence of a judge. And there not be still left within us. Something pointing to a destiny according to the way we lived. I mean our passions, threats, melancholies, fears. Here is a secret world which burns inside. It comes out in curious ways. Why is there so much metal distress if there is not already a hell within people? Seeds that are buried seek light. Freeze and a dense forest, mount to absorb the light. Shells in sea creep to the shore. A piece of glass and a body works its way out. Here returns to the scene of his crime for murder without all these unholy deeds are poured out to a psycho-minimist. And along with them all the world woes and worries and wounds, they are troubling them on the inside. If the stomach cannot keep poison food in it, shall not the poison mind vomit the filth that is already in it, and thus even though they deny God and judgment, they are attesting to it by the effects of their own lives. Their burdened conscience cannot escape reaping a judgment on its own excesses and torturing its health with its own inner hell. Those who are denied the fruit of love. Seek as it were the children of windowpains looking in, denied wounds and whosons. And there is all of the distractions and worries, the nights and fears of those who are conscious of their own sin, whereas the poet is pushed even an atheist, as hot afraid of the dark. All those in this world who are in the state of great evidence themselves in the sea of glory, and those who are in the state of mortal sin, even though they deny God, have within themselves the sea of hell. Hell begins here, so does heaven. Heaven does not end here, neither does hell. Need only read modern literature. See how hell is moved from the inside as people have denied it on the outside. It has become even more real than it was before. Arbrested Lord spoke fifteen times of hell. Eleven times he mentioned eternal fire. Thirty times in the New Testament, eternal fire is mentioned. There is no doubt about why our blessed Lord said. For example, fear you not them that kill the body and are not able to kill the soul, but rather fear him that can destroy body and soul into hell. For again, our Lord says, world to you, scribe, fire, hypocrite, use heavens, generations of fipers. How will you flee the wrath of hell? Our blessed Lord often describes it as the place where the worm die of not and the fire is not extinguished. Ordinarily in this earth a worm feeds on a decaying body and then dies. On this earth fire consumes fuel and dies. But our Lord is here speaking with the worm that never dies and the fire that never goes out. That worm that never dies is the memory of the past which is always annoying at the conscience of the Internet. And our Lord therefore implied two kinds and two elements of destruction, the internal corruption, the worm and the external consuming force which is the fire. Maybe these fires are lighted already in this life by that annoying conscience for having rejected God's love. As the poet Yates put it, whatever flames the puns of night, my own resinous heart has fed. Now true that is as each one has locked in his own uniqueness. And Shelley, who wells in hell, described it and conscience that undying serpent calls her venomous blooms to their eternal task. The worm the die of the. Well we may ask why should God not warn us? What good would another warning do? That was what the rich man asked, remember in the parable of the rich man and the poor beggar Lazarus? He asked that someone go back to tell his brothers about how much he was suffering in hell. Now suppose God had granted the request and sent Lazarus back to his five brothers and they recognized him. They didn't think that would change them. They would probably demand proof that he had really lived and died and visited the region of the departing soul. The point is that judgment and hell are things of faith not of sight. If the risen Christ is no proof to the senses much less can our any one risen from the dead via convincing with this and warning to us. If the resurrection of Christ would not convince those who saw it, the resurrection of a dead man who came from hell will not. If a messenger came back from the rich man the brothers would probably have cried to kill him just as the Pharisees cried to kill the Lazarus that our blessed Lord rose from the dead. Why do souls go then to hell? They go to hell simply because they refuse to love. That's the only reason. The young man loves the young woman he gives her gifts. He is faithful to her, generous and kind. She has this loyal, takes gifts, this traitorous. And after being deceived a thousand times he still continues to love her but eventually there comes a moment when he will say, all right I am through now. Love is finished. In the so-to God the hound of heaven pursues us all to ring life, inviting us to his kingdom, beating us sit down at the banquet of the Eucharist, fortifying us with his grace and the sacraments. And we reject, we betray, we are disloyal, we refuse to love and eventually when death comes. Then our life is sealed and that kind of love does not come back. Love is eternal therefore. You so as hell what is the one thing that love cannot forgive? Can never forgive. It is hate. What is the one thing that life can never forgive? It is death. Why because death withiness is destruction. What is the one thing that truth can never forgive? Err and the refusal to love is eternal. What is the punishment like? Well the punishment is twofold. We call out there is a double character to sin. Whenever we commit a serious sin there is first of all a turning away from God. It is another as a turning to creature. Take for example alcoholism. Obviously a turning away from God will be put out of the reason that he is given to us. And thirdly or secondly rather there is the turning to creatures named as alcohol. It is fitting therefore that there be a double punishment. A punishment corresponding to turning away from God which is the pain of loss which is the most terrible of all of pain because that is the loss of God himself. And then there is the pain of sins. We are punished by the very creatures which we abused. Or take for example that pain of loss. The soul on his life during it refuses to love God and no longer responds to his love just as a magnet. He cannot have any influence on wood. If they ever thought of God, practically rejected all of his mercy. When death comes the soul cannot do without God any longer. It is thrown back on the need of God. But God is not there. It is just as if one had been playing blind man's buff and he takes off the hatred and discovers that he has gone blind. The godless universe it has made for us. And the soul knows that it cannot be happy with our life and truth and love. And yet it has eternally rejected those. And that is the pain of loss. That is hell. I take the pain of sins. Now alcoholic abuse is alcohol. And if alcohol were endowed with consciousness that would say to the drunken man, I was made by God to be used rationally and with sobriety. You have abused me. I therefore will turn against you. When there comes the slavery, the excesses and also the hangover, which are punishments as it were, the keen from alcohol itself. Hence there will be different kinds of punishment and hell. The fears of the grip pleasures had on the soul in this life more fiercely with the fires of torment and eternity. Here are three brief and quick ways of describing hell from our own human experiences. First, hell is the hatred of things you love. The sailor lost on a raft at sea, love's water. He was made for it and water was made for him. He knows that he ought not to drink the water from the sea, but he does. Now a nightmare. The soul was made to live on the love of God. But if the soul perverts that love by sauthing it with sin, then as the sailor hates the very water he drinks, so the soul hates the perverted love it seeks. Just as the sailor becomes mad because he wants water and cannot do without it. No to the soul in hell, once love, and yet that love has been refused and salted with rejection. We could do not want hell because they enjoy its torment. They want hell because they do not want God. Hell is eternal suicide for hating love. The second fact is this. Hell is the mind eternally mad at itself for wounding love. How often during life you said, I hate myself for doing that. And you hated yourself most when you heard someone that you loved. Now the souls in hell hate themselves most for wounding perfect love. Just as you heard someone whom you loved, they can never forgive themselves for that. Hence their hell is eternal. Eternal self-imposed unforgiveness. It is not that God would not forgive them. It is rather that they will not forgive themselves. And finally, hell is submission to love under justice. We are free in this world. We can be no more forced to love God than we can be forced to love classical music or antiques. How it happens in this life very often? The souls fall out of love. When your wife is tied to a drunkard or a worthless husband until death do them part, they do not freely love one another. But they are forced in virtue of the justice of their contract to love one another until death do them part. And they be forced to love anyone is hell. The lost souls could have loved God freely. But they chose to rebel against that love. And in doing so they came under divine justice as a criminal falls from the love of country to its justice. Justice forces the souls in hell is it were to love God. That is to submit to his divine order. But to be forced to love is the negation of love. That is hell. You do not think that if a soul went to heaven it would be happy. Suppose that you hated mathematics and you had to spend your whole life with mathematicians. And every time you picked up a newspaper spoke to a friend they were talking about logarithms and now it's your blood. That would be a hell for you. Well suppose you hated perfect life and truth and love which is God in his revelation in Christ our Lord. And you were forced to live with perfect life and truth and love. And that would be a hell for you, a greater hell than the one you had. Do not think that God is. Is angry because he sentences us to hell. Remember this. The sun which shines on wax softens it. The sun which shines on mud hardens it. There is no difference in the sun but only in that upon which it shines. So to the love of God shining on a soul that loves him turns to heaven. And the love of God shining on a soul that hates him turns to hell. Hell is a place where there is no love. Could anything be words? God love it. This has been Life is Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Shin. For more information about this series contact St. Joseph Communications at 1-800-526-2151. Outside the US call 818-3313-3549. And please join us again next time for Life is Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Shin on EWTN Global Catholic Radio.