continued……
Does anyone else here have children
Well, we had ten. At each new life, I rejoiced at the thought that we had participated in the creation of a new eternal life: that will never, never, be taken away. And we rejoiced in the Gift of the Faith that showed us the Way to heaven for ourselves and for this new eternal soul. Yes, I knew that the world was full of temptations and full of souls who (apparently) care nothing about pleasing God. Do not be alarmed that your children might fail! Be happy to be tipping the scales in God’s favour with these souls you yourself have care of, raised in the Faith!
and feel the deep resentment I feel about this?
Yes, it is terrifying if we focus on the picture of a soul in hell.
Are the people in these forums really this unfeeling
Our Lord did not give us an unconditional promise that He would take us to Heaven no matter what.
Dear
Mijoy2, He has not told you or me that
our children will go there. These souls, however, with our own, are the only ones we have very direct control over.
Well, ‘pious’ is the Latin for ‘loving’: especially the love in a family.
This simply cannot be. If it is, then I’m out-here! As I said before, what do I have to lose? For how could I (even if I were one of the lucky ones)
My dear father would always say, “There is no such thing as luck”. It was the worst mistake of Calvin to teach the abominable doctrine that God predestines certain souls to damnation. G.K.Chesterton wrote that this teaching, although it was not seriously held for many years, nevertheless darkened the mood of Calvinist countries for centuries.
enjoy a moment in heaven knowing the children I love more then life itself is burning in hell? Is it me, or is this ludicrous? Ridiculous beyone belief, more evil then evil itself?
No, it is a normal parent’s reaction. But we are made in the image of God. A human father is only a ‘copy’ of God the Father. And a human mother, of Our Blessed Lady. We cannot actually make an accurate picture of either heaven or hell, or of our own thoughts when we are there (either Up or Down). When we think as you describe (and which parent cannot think like this, at least fleetingly?) We are simply missing something out of the picture. For example, would we murder another parent’s child if it saved our own? If one of our loved children, living in our house, were discovered to be a serial murderer, and would not listen to us, would we not have to give him up to the lawkeepers?
When Francisco of Fatima first saw the image of hell, he was at first distressed at the thought of the souls going to hell. But later on his short spritual journey, he was distressed because of the grief it gave
Our Lord to have His Divine Love thrown back in His Face.
Are we better parents than God the Father and His Blessed Mother? Do they not love us? Yet is there not a hell? And the souls there – did they not have parents? We simply cannot get out of the dilemma. Luckily, we are asked, not to think too much about whether it will happen to us or ours, but to obey Our Lord’s lovely Law of Love, secure in the promise, “Do not fear, little ones: it has pleased My Father to give you The Kingdom” (Luke).
Some of us have had the dreadful experience of having to break a relationship: friend or family; because of a decisive rejection from the other. Is it not true that, one of the greatest sorrows is that we ourselves are under an obligation to terminate our own care for that person, let them go, and leave them in God’s care?
The saints tell us that this is a real sorrow of God: that having given free will to His children, when they reject Him, He is, in our way of speaking, obliged to suspend His own Graces to that soul. For whom ought we to feel the more grief, the ungrateful one, or the God who died on the Cross to save him?
Finally, let me say that it is one of the sweet lies of certain religious leaders to promise, as a certain truth
now, that we are ‘Saved’. That was never the teaching of Christ and His Church. It does have disastrous consequences. Yet it draws people away from the Church, the Fountain of Truth.
Mijoy2 and others, I don’t feel I’m doing a very good job in this posting. Reading it, I seem to be very cold and clinical. It is just my own personality, which has a very analytical style. What I would really like to do is to warn people that, just as there are certain impure images that will damage us if we attend to them, so there are other images which are actually the wrong way to approach some of the Mysteries of the Faith: they do distort the Truth, even if they seem they must be accurate. We are wise to resist the temptation to dwell on them for this reason.
Padre Pio had a name for being on the gruff side. And he did have direct revelations about the eternal fate of many souls. When I read his words on this topic recently, I was surprised how encouraging he is. He would say, “Ah! If God were as strict as you think, there would be no hope for any of us”, and “God’s Mercy is much greater than you think”.
Rather than dwell on these images of despair, Let us rest in good Christian Hope. How happy the devil would be if we lost our Faith and Hope just because somebody told us that others went to hell.
A priceless gift!