One Saint's Vision of Hell

[Cathdefender]

From my personal encounter, I would willingly chose to spend an almost eternity in purgatory in anticipation of that ultimate union.

My experiences were 100% sensual - not in the sexual sense.

When the Holy Spirit first arrived, I did not know what was going on. The enormous roare of His power was awesome but not in the least bit frightening because it was accompanied by His great awesome peace. His power is so powerful great and awesome that all human strength, arms and armies pale into absolute nothingness. They are equal to nothing.

Then came the encounter. I could not make sense of it at first. That was hardly surprising given that it was outside of the realm of my experience. There was nothing in human memory [neo-cortex] to compare it with. We can only make sense of the world by what we know. If we do not know, we cannot understand. But when one meets the Risen Lord in this life, you naturally try to assimilate what you are experiencing with what you already know. But you have no resources to fall back on. Then you realise that awesome power, love, peace, joy sheer unadulterated happiness, then comes that which is too emotional for me to describe here.

Please do not get me wrong or misunderstand me. I am a scarlet sinful wretch,. I was in no way deserving of the encounter. I had done nothing to earn it. It was His free gift, I know not why. I am pure unadulterated sin. I wish I were not so. My flesh is so weak, I judge myself totally unworthy of Him and volunteer myself to Purgatory to put right that which stands between me and Him.

Great and glorious is our God, His is the victory, He reigns for ever and ever. He IS and that is all that matters. He is the ultimate reality. All else is trivia

Blessings and peace

I am confused here. What exactly happened to you?

 

[Lilyflower]

There is so much more to come and God be with you and in you! You must have kissed the Face of God!

It was preceded by my meditations on the love of God. I felt so melancholic. I actually uttered to Almighty God that He has given us that great gift of tactility. We can embrace others but He whom we love most of all, we cannot embrace. I groped empty air with my arms expressing my sense of futility. I said I wanted to experience HIm not because my faith demanded it, but because I just wanted to put my arms around Him to hug Him to show Him how much I love Him. Of course I was feeling very sad, but I did not expect anything to happen, I was merely expressing how I felt.

It was then that it happened. It was given to me that actually we cannot embrace Almighty God. He is vaster than the universe, vast though it is to us, it is a mere created thing. But we can embrace God by taking Him in the Holy Eucharist. We can also embrace Him by embracing [showing love, tolerance, understanding, empathy as brothers and sisters] those whom society rejects.

Almighty God came to me in a way that was physical and capable of being grasped by the senses. It was sheer bliss. There are not words to explain it. All language fails.

I was delighted to read your reply that my experience was not so unique. It has really bothered me that He should chose this scarlet sinful wretch. I have met many folk far more worthy of such an encounter.

Those few seconds were worth more than the entirety of the rest of my life. I still do not know why He chose me.

Blessings and peace

 

[LutheranDK]

Red St Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica…everything is in there!

Erm…I don’t really follow? Thomas Aquinas most definately had no knowledge of whether or not Hitler became a protestant?

 

[LutheranDK]

If at the moment of death the soul can experience the reality of Christ, it will not reject it. By comparison all else pales away into insignificance. There is no alternative. I believe that even Hitler if he experienced the Ultimate Reality would have chosen to spend an almost eternity in purgatory in the hope of final union.

No soul would in my experience reject Christ on death. His awesome love and peace just does not equate to any other human experience so it is not so much a choice as the only option worth considering.

Blessings and peace

I totally fail to see what your reply has to do with the post of mine that you quoted?

 

[Shoshana]

It was preceded by my meditations on the love of God. I felt so melancholic. I actually uttered to Almighty God that He has given us that great gift of tactility. We can embrace others but He whom we love most of all, we cannot embrace. I groped empty air with my arms expressing my sense of futility.

It was then that it happened. It was given to me that actually we cannot embrace Almighty God. He is vaster than the universe, vast though it is to us, it is a mere created thing. But we can embrace God by taking Him in the Holy Eucharist. We can also embrace Him by embracing [showing love, tolerance, understanding, empathy as brothers and sisters] those whom society rejects.

I was delighted to read your reply that my experience was not so unique. It has really bothered me that He should chose this scarlet sinful wretch. I have met many folk far more worthy of such an encounter.

Those few seconds were worth more than the entirety of the rest of my life. I still do not know why He chose me.

Blessings and peace

The Lord knows our hearts…nad He allowed yours to be filled. We do more than embracing God in the Eucharist. We CONSUME the totality of God the Father, Son and Spirit. And not only that, we CONSUME the totality of Jesus…his incarnation, his birth, his walking the whole of Israel, his passion, his death, resurrection and ascension. We CONSUME His emotions while on earth, his yeyes that looked upon his world with love, his hands that touched so many, his mouth that was so blessed, his laugh, his tears, his dancing, his embracing his mother…we consume verything!!! And this is all happening during the consecration and the cosuming of Him who loved us to leave Himself to us. He di dnot leave us orphans…

We CONSUME God’s most innermost being…

 

[Lilyflower]

I totally fail to see what your reply has to do with the post of mine that you quoted?

Please accept my sincere apologies. I mis-quoted you.

It just goes to show how Almighty God choses what is foolish by human reckoning .

Blessings and peace

 

[Shoshana]

Erm…I don’t really follow? Thomas Aquinas most definately had no knowledge of whether or not Hitler became a protestant?

Sorry my bad. I jumped the gun by seeing ‘information’ in your post but forgot it had to do with Hitler and not the levels of hell…forgive me…

 

[LutheranDK]

Please accept my sincere apologies. I mis-quoted you.

It just goes to show how Almighty God choses what is foolish by human reckoning .

Blessings and peace

No big deal - thought it was something like that

 

[Lilyflower]

The Lord knows our hearts…nad He allowed yours to be filled. We do more than embracing God in the Eucharist. We CONSUME the totality of God the Father, Son and Spirit. And not only that, we CONSUME the totality of Jesus…his incarnation, his birth, his walking the whole of Israel, his passion, his death, resurrection and ascension. We CONSUME His emotions while on earth, his yeyes that looked upon his world with love, his hands that touched so many, his mouth that was so blessed, his laugh, his tears, his dancing, his embracing his mother…we consume verything!!! And this is all happening during the consecration and the cosuming of Him who loved us to leave Himself to us. He di dnot leave us orphans…

We CONSUME God’s most innermost being…

Thank you for your profound understanding and words of encouragement

Blessings and peace

 

[LutheranDK]

Sorry my bad. I jumped the gun by seeing ‘information’ in your post but forgot it had to do with Hitler and not the levels of hell…forgive me…

Np - this thread has derailed to an extend that it is hard to keep track anymore

 

[Lilyflower]

Np - this thread has derailed to an extend that it is hard to keep track anymore

If discussing ‘visions of hell’ leads to sharing an understanding of the reality of Almighty God then that can be no bad thing.

Just my opinion.

Blessings and peace

 

[Shoshana]

Np - this thread has derailed to an extend that it is hard to keep track anymore

Just my french coming out…:whacky: :hypno:

 

[emeraldcoast]

Sorry, your source is not reliable.

LOL - and you just decided that here and now?
How convenient…

A couple of questions, though:

1: What do you base this judgement on? This seems to me like a classic case of killing the messenger…

2: You have not yet provided ANY source whatsoever (let alone a reliable one) to back up YOUR claim.

Please do!

Thanks LutheranDK - I about spit my Diet Coke all over the monitor after reading Catholicdefender’s response. I was trying to work through Catholicdefender’s logic on this one - glad to see that someone agrees there isn’t any.

God Bless!

 

[JackQ]

This makes me fear hell, but it does not make me love God. Why would anything with true power resort to this? Not that God should meet my understanding.

But truly…it is hard to choose to love a being that would allow someone to suffer thus if they had the power to prevent it.

NO ONE would choose that. So don’t speak to me of free will. No one…would choose to spend eternity that way.

The error some people make when thinking about this issue is to confuse hell with human penal systems. In human penal systems, there are actions followed by consequences. But the actions and the consequences are severable, and, in fact, many get away with their crimes. And no, criminals do not choose to go to prison really. What they choose is the action, and hope that they won’t get caught.

But when talking about hell it is important to understand that the action and the consequence are not severable. Sin and the torment that comes to the sinner cannot be separated anymore than “up” can be separated from “down.”

Now God frees us from our sins, which is, by the way, the miracle of all miracles. To take advantage of that we must choose. To continue in sin is another choice. To speak of heaven and hell is to do no more than describe the nature of that choice.

I think the meaning of visions such as this is to show how far life can sink where there is a total rejection of God. Indeed we can see how bad things get here on earth when God is rejected. Hell is the condition of the total rejection of God, and it is horrible.

Why would God resort to this? He doesn’t. We do. Our own sins are what end up tormenting us.

Why doesn’t God stop us? Because heaven is only heaven if it is populated entirely by the willing.

So, if you really want to go to heaven, you will. But that’s only if you really want to. Remember, that’s where God is–the real one, not the projection of our desires that some make their god. So saying you want to go to heaven is saying that you want to be with God. At the end of the day, there are only two choices: being with God or not being with God. Apparently, it is possible to choose the latter.

 

[cheddarsox]

The error some people make when thinking about this issue is to confuse hell with human penal systems. In human penal systems, there are actions followed by consequences. But the actions and the consequences are severable, and, in fact, many get away with their crimes. And no, criminals do not choose to go to prison really. What they choose is the action, and hope that they won’t get caught.

But when talking about hell it is important to understand that the action and the consequence are not severable. Sin and the torment that comes to the sinner cannot be separated anymore than “up” can be separated from “down.”

Now God frees us from our sins, which is, by the way, the miracle of all miracles. To take advantage of that we must choose. To continue in sin is another choice. To speak of heaven and hell is to do no more than describe the nature of that choice.

I think the meaning of visions such as this is to show how far life can sink where there is a total rejection of God. Indeed we can see how bad things get here on earth when God is rejected. Hell is the condition of the total rejection of God, and it is horrible.

Why would God resort to this? He doesn’t. We do. Our own sins are what end up tormenting us.

Why doesn’t God stop us? Because heaven is only heaven if it is populated entirely by the willing.

So, if you really want to go to heaven, you will. But that’s only if you really want to. Remember, that’s where God is–the real one, not the projection of our desires that some make their god. So saying you want to go to heaven is saying that you want to be with God. At the end of the day, there are only two choices: being with God or not being with God. Apparently, it is possible to choose the latter.

Your explanation makes sense. Not that God is bound or required to make sense to humans.

What I have a hard time teasing apart is that on one hand the Church teaches what you explain above, that hell is a choice and that the torment is being eternally away from God.

On the other hand, we have visions of fire, pits of torture, levels of hell and torment by demons, from saints, and in art and literature. Some which may be in keeping with teachings or traditions of the church, others may not.

So where does the teaching of the everyday joe and mortal sin come in? Chris and Jenny go a bit too far one night after a movie, and before Chris gets to confession he gets killed in a car accident. He was a good Catholic boy, he knew third base was wrong, he knew it was a mortal sin…and he knows that the teaching is that if you die with an unconfessed mortal sin…you are damned.

I have often asked, even begged…will the REAL Catholic church please stand up. It can be hard to unearth it from 2000 years of stories, culture, metaphor, etc. And sometimes the Catechism isn’t that great of a help…it seems to say that both things are true, dying with unconfessed mortal sin makes one a good candidate for hell, yet hell is for one who willfully and totally rejects God.

Maybe mortal sins are a lot rarer than they were when I was being brought up Catholic, because we were pretty much all in for it for one slip up or another.

And I have always heard that WAY more people will are hell bound than heaven bound. But I don’t see how the majority of people are willfully and totally rejecting God.

I guess it is one of those mysteries.

And again…I defer to the Church, it is not my call to make.

 

[Cathdefender]

Thanks LutheranDK - I about spit my Diet Coke all over the monitor after reading Catholicdefender’s response. I was trying to work through Catholicdefender’s logic on this one - glad to see that someone agrees there isn’t any.

God Bless!

Of course you will both disagree, YOU ARE NOT CATHOLICS. Therefore I expect these kinds of answers…and diet coke? I prefer Dr. Pepper

 

[Shoshana]

Of course you will both disagree, YOU ARE NOT CATHOLICS. Therefore I expect these kinds of answers…and diet coke? I prefer Dr. Pepper

Pepsi for me I say!:bounce:

 

[stevekrok8]

This makes me fear hell, but it does not make me love God. Why would anything with true power resort to this? Not that God should meet my understanding.

But truly…it is hard to choose to love a being that would allow someone to suffer thus if they had the power to prevent it.

NO ONE would choose that. So don’t speak to me of free will. No one…would choose to spend eternity that way.

From what I’m reading you’re not getting the whole story. Imagine your friends are all watching a movie. You walk in an hour after the flick starts. You’re watching for a few minutes and then start making comments about the characters and the plot and what they’re doing. You’re very emotional about what you’re saying. To which you’re friends look at you as if you have two heads and say “how can you say that? You haven’t seen the first hour to understand why this is happening.”

When I first read about the saints and there visions of hell I was terrified. For me to question why would a loving God do such a thing to people would be a very prideful question. Pride is one of the seven deadly sins. What gives me the authority to question God? Have I done everything in my life so perfect that I can judge or question God? I know I have sinned. My sins are like little tattoo’s I put on myself. One day I looked at them and saw how ugly they were to me. I asked Jesus to cover my tattoo’s with a beautiful new growth of skin. Without hesitation he did. The memory that they were once there is my humility. The new skin that covers them is my joy.

When I looked deeper into the story I see that God is doing everything to keep us from going to Hell. God became man. God loved us so much and wants so badly to save us from Hell that he came down from Heaven and became a man. He gave us the example of how to live. He gives us the strenghth to follow that example through the Eucharist every single day. How can we not love a being that would go to those that extreme to love us. We must look at and understand the entire story before we are qualified to comment on a certain part.

No one chooses to spend eternity that way. But we do choose how we are to live our lives. Perhaps rather than questioning God on his almighty power (which is futile) to judge a soul after their death, we should live a good life and be compassionate towards those that are in need of mercy and love. And hopefully we have secured ours and their places in heaven.

 

[distracted]

everytime we sin, we nail Jesus to the cross.

.

every time we sin, we distance ourselves from Jesus… and open the door to satan… and that is what crucifies Him…

(i am writing this because the 1st time i heard of that - what u say - i didn’t understand it).

 

[distracted]

No one chooses to spend eternity that way. But we do choose how we are to live our lives. Perhaps rather than questioning God on his almighty power (which is futile) to judge a soul after their death, we should live a good life and be compassionate towards those that are in need of mercy and love.

i couldn’t always understand either…

But it is like math…

I always hated math, have never been good at it… but I know that

Sin - Repentance = death

Sin + Repentance = hope of life (eternal)