Saint Alphonse Liguiori said: “The thought of Hell alone should be enough to deliver us from it.”
The problem is , when no one ever mentions Hell, people tend to think it doesn’t exist. What directly follows is that they say, “There’s no such thing as the devil.” Father John Corapi explained that it hurts when people say this because we are actually saying there is no such thing as sin… which begs the question then why did Christ die ?, What did He come to redeem us from?
Granted , we will come across certain ministers who have more eloquent talents - might we say a “more blessed imagination” than others when it comes to speaking to us about these things.
SSPX aside for a minute, I’ve always found a couple of concepts about Hell to be very sobering .
- Jesus spoke of it as the “Weeping and gnashing of teeth” and the “unquenchable fire”.
- Now everybody smile for a second
(and make sure you smile after too!) . Something that is reliable, yet not mandatory in any way is the Church approved visions of Fatima. Here we can safely say that the three children’s vision of Hell happened long before Raiders of the Lost Ark ever hit the screen. It’s a little unsettling, but it’s reliable. Our Lady’s purpose was to have us pray for souls so they don’t end up there. It is possible then for souls to become so hardened that they would refuse God’s own Mercy when He offers it to them- fully aware of the consequences of cursing Him. That part should scare us all a little bit.
From Sister Lucy’s memoirs at
bibleprobe.com/fatimavisionsofhell.htm :
**Sister Lucy of Fatima Describes the Vision of Hell **
The first part of the Secret was a horrifying vision of hell “where the souls of poor sinners go” and contained an urgent plea from Our Lady for acts of prayer and sacrifice to save souls.
In her Memoirs, Sister Lucy (Lucy Dos Santos) describes the vision of hell that Our Lady showed the children at Fátima:
“She opened Her hands once more, as She had done the two previous months. The rays [of light] appeared to penetrate the earth, and we saw, as it were, a vast sea of fire. Plunged in this fire, we saw the demons and the souls [of the damned]. The latter were like transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze, having human forms. They were floating about in that conflagration, now raised into the air by the flames which issued from within themselves, together with great clouds of smoke. Now they fell back on every side like sparks in huge fires, without weight or equilibrium, amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fright (it must have been this sight which caused me to cry out, as people say they heard me). The demons were distinguished [from the souls of the damned] by their terrifying and repellent likeness to frightful and unknown animals, black and transparent like burning coals. That vision only lasted for a moment, thanks to our good Heavenly Mother, Who at the first apparition had promised to take us to Heaven. Without that, I think that we would have died of terror and fear.”
[Hail Mary said for all those who will die today who may be in danger of being eternally lost]
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