For us salvation is not possible, but with God all things are possible. My friend I encourage you to soldier on. Like you said… To whom else would we turn?
I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said. Certainly, St. Leonard’s sermon is not Church doctrine - but it is frightening because it is
consistent with Church doctrine and it is backed up by asserted Divine private revelations and some pretty authoritative saints.
My
hope is that the private revelations and St. Leonard’s reasoning are not literal, but rather figurative. This
might, but is in no way dispositive, be substantiated by some facts. There were about 800 million people in the world in 1750 when St. Leonard died. With a worldwide life expectancy of
roughly 35 years, you can average that 1/35 of the population died every year. If you divide 800 million by 35 and then divide again by 365 days in a year and 24 hours in a day you get a rough approximate average of 2,600 deaths per hour. That’s far below the 60,000 deaths in an hour in one of the visions mentioned in his sermon; however, deaths certainly come in large spikes due to war, disease, disaster, etc - so 60,000 deaths in one hour at that time remains consistent with the reported vision.
The point I’m making is that if the numbers are off, then it’s more likely that the vision is figurative. However, there’s nothing inconsistent with the numbers vision and the world population at the time, so it’s possible also that the vision was literal.
However, he referenced more than one vision - but rather a consistent set of visions all indicating that extremely few people are saved from Hell.
In any case, given the “wiggle room” in the vision and in all private revelations, what I am
hoping is that the visions are there to scare us to life and to be very serious about our own salvation.
However, if the visions and the estimates are
true, then salvation is next to hopeless. Even people who think they are “willing” salvation for themselves, think of themselves as being in full union with Rome, and think they are properly catechized - in all likelihood are not saved at all. Notice that St. Leonard was primarily preaching to
Catholics.
I reiterate that I think the thought of 1 in 10,000 people being saved
AT ALL (even purgatory) will drive the
vast majority of people to despair and hoplessness; worse, give people reason to abandon goodness altogether in the name of “getting some” before they are doomed to Hell (i.e., buy into the Devil’s lies).
In other words, what is the point of trying to be good and undertaking penances if you are likely doomed to Hell anyway because your good acts and penances were insufficient? Why not just abandon that difficult path and just cast oneself into sex, drugs, and rock and roll so you get a little pleasure before burning in Hell regardless?
Clearly, we don’t want to encourage despair and hoplessness. We also don’t want to encourage overt evil and hedonism. Therefore, I am fairly convinced that this type of preaching or persuasion is counter-productive and should not be used -
at all. Mind you, we DO need to be more active on teaching the reality of Hell and the pressing need to be ready for the Lord; however, this also means that I think St. Leonard was wrong to preach the way he did, even if he was correct.
God have mercy on me if I am wrong.
* 32,999 (the rest of us)