I voted daily - and shame on anyone that votes “seldom” and considers themselves a devout Catholic. Anyone who thinks that they know better than the Saints and despise their recommendation to meditate DAILY on the miserable state of the Damned is a fool.
Please, if anyone is not making it a daily habit, even a habit that is repeated EVERY HOUR, to **meditate *seriously ***on the Last Four Things, then start doing it NOW.
I know that some people will say or think that what I have said is too old-fashioned, or to focused on God’s Justice and not His Love, but I will say this again - if you do not meditate on Hell, then you will go to Hell.
The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom!
So many people have not even begun.
You bet. The Ascetical Works of St Alphonsus will certainly build one’s faith. I have 5 volumes including PFD. I haven’t read Imitation of Christ yet, but intend to. Or need to
I have Preparation for Death as well, it’s one of my all time favorite books ever, I highly recommend it to everyone.
Tan has an abridged version, I think the one I have is unabridged, I got it when Our Lady of the Rosary Library was still selling them.
And he opened the bottomless pit: and the smoke of the pit arose, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke of the pit.
Apocalypse 9:2
And many of those that sleep in the dust of the earth, shall awake: Some unto life everlasting, and others unto reproach, to see it alwaysl
Daniel 12:2
A fire is kindled in my wrath, and shall burn even to the lowest hell: and shall devour the earth with her increase, and shall burn the foundations of the mountains.
Deuteronomy 32:22
Their wine is the gall of dragons, and the venom of asps, which is incurable. Are not these things stored up with me, and sealed up in my treasures? Revenge is mine, and I will repay them in due time, that their foot may slide: the day of destruction is at hand, and the time makes haste to come.
Deuteronomy 32:33-35
Therefore I also will deal with them in my wrath: my eye shall not spare them, neither will I shew mercy: and when they shall cry to my ears with a loud voice, I will not hear them.
Ezechiel 8:18
And he said to them: You are from beneath, I am from above. You are of this world, I am not of this world.
Therefore I said to you, that you shall die in your sins. For if you believe not that I am he, you shall die in your sin.
John 8:23-24
For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but delivered them, drawn down by infernal ropes to the lower hell, unto torments, to be reserved unto judgment: And spared not the original world, but preserved Noe, the eighth person, the preacher of justice, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly.
And reducing the cities of the Sodomites, and of the Gomorrhites, into ashes, condemned them to be overthrown, making them an example to those that should after act wickedly. And delivered just Lot, oppressed by the injustice and lewd conversation of the wicked. For in sight and hearing he was just: dwelling among them, who from day to day vexed the just soul with unjust works.
The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly from temptation, but to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be tormented. And especially them who walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness, and despise government, audacious, self willed, they fear not to bring in sects, blaspheming.
2 Peter 2:4-10
The wicked shall be turned into hell, all the nations that forget God.
Psalms 9:18
Thou shalt make them as an oven of fire, in the time of thy anger: the Lord shall trouble them in his wrath, and fire shall devour them.
Psalms 20:10
Know you not that the unjust shall not possess the kingdom of God? Do not err: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, Nor the effeminate, nor liers with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor railers, nor extortioners, shall possess the kingdom of God.
1 Corinthians 6:9-10
‘In the second place, the sin of impurity produces obstinacy of the will. “Once fallen into the snare of the devil, one cannot so easily escape it,” says St. Jerome. And according to St. Thomas, there is no sin in which the devil takes so much delight as in impurity; because the flesh is strongly inclined to that vice, and he that falls into it can be rescued from it only with difficulty. Hence the vice of incontinence has been called by Clement of Alexandria “a malady without remedy;” and by Tertullian, “an incurable vice.” Hence St. Cyprian calls it the mother of impenitence. “It is impossible,” says Peter de Blois, for him that submits to the domination of the flesh to conquer carnal temptations." Father Biderman relates of a young man, who was in the habit of relapsing into this sin, that at the hour of death he confessed his sins with many tears and died, leaving strong grounds to hope for his salvation. But on the following day his confessor, while saying Mass, felt some one pulling the chasuble; turning round he saw a dark cloud, which sent forth scintillations of fire, and heard a voice saying that was the soul of the young man that had died; that though he had been absolved from his sins, he was again tempted, yielded to a bad thought, and was damned.’
St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori
‘The wicked bodies of the condemned shall simmer and blaze in those living fires.’
St. Cyprian
