What about sinners we love/d?

[Polak]

I’d assume this is a question that gets asked from time to time, or at least it is something that is contemplated by Catholics.

During mass today, heaven, hell and purgatory were mentioned.

Actually, purgatory was talked about as a place where we will experience the same or a similar type of suffering experienced in hell, but we will at least know it isn’t never ending, and that we will eventually be with God. This is something I wasn’t aware of actually.

But it was the talk of hell that got me thinking again, and about how it is an eternal place without God and
place of eternal suffering. I know we can do a lot on earth for other souls with our prayers and souls in purgatory and heaven can pray for us, but let’s say you don’t pray enough and a person you love dearly doesn’t make it to heaven, while you do. They go to hell (horrible to think I know). How would that work? Heaven is supposed to be a place of eternal happiness, but surely your knowledge of a loved one being in hell would make you sad? Or would that knowledge just disappear and they would evaporate from your mind, as if you never knew them? If that was the case, that’s quite sad too, don’t you think?

I am well aware that people may not have a definitive answer to this, but it got me thinking. Have you ever thought about this and how it would work? Obviously the best solution is for us to live as well as we can and pray for each other as much as we can.

 

[meltzerboy2]

You are correct that this topic has been discussed before. Some will say that the joys of heaven, being in the presence of G-d, are so awesome that they will obliterate any sadness we might have that a loved one is not there with us. In other words, all we will need is G-d to experience a happiness beyond any conceivable happiness we might have experienced on Earth. It sounds wonderful, but personally I don’t buy it. However, I do trust that G-d will work it out somehow, in a way we cannot imagine, so that we will have no longing for our loved ones and perhaps they will even, in some way, be with us too.

 

[farronwolf]

I don’t have any answers for you.

No one knows what purgatory is like, since no one has been there.

Nor do we know what Heaven or hell is like specifically. We can only make assumptions based on our human way of thinking.

This is where we must be like children and simply have faith that whatever happens it is as God intended it to be and we will experience what God desires.

See not much help.

 

[Polak]

No one knows what purgatory is like, since no one has been there.

Nor do we know what Heaven or hell is like specifically. We can only make assumptions based on our human way of thinking.

Are you sure about that? The priest in today’s sermon, when he mentioned purgatory also being a place of great suffering for us, was going by what saints said about it, at least that’s how he explained what he said in the sermon.

I am sure you know there are saints who have been shown visions of hell, and it sounds like some may have had visions of purgatory too. Of course you can choose not to be believe their descriptions of them, but I assume that most Catholics do.

So we have some idea what it is like, even if we perhaps cannot know exactly what it’s like.

 

[Dan_Defender]

Heaven is supposed to be a place of eternal happiness, but surely your knowledge of a loved one being in hell would make you sad? Or would that knowledge just disappear and they would evaporate from your mind, as if you never knew them?

Heaven is very different from earth. So it may be that those in Heaven receive an exalted knowledge/understanding of the justice of God and that leaves no room for sadness. The feelings of sadness here are sometimes good but at the same time, as some saints have said, are related to attachment of our soul to creatures/fellow souls. In the Beatific Vision, and with the soul being united to God, such feelings would change and we cannot compare them to earthly feelings.

 

[farronwolf]

Are all of their descriptions the same?

I am not sure of what all of them said, but what I understand of some of the descriptions of Heaven, it is a “feeling” of being one with God and having no other wants. Very simplified.

But they are descriptions based on our human ability to express and understand that expression.

I could express what it is like to have the flesh ripped from ones body, but unless you are there experiencing it, you have no real way to understand what it is like.

 

[Vico]

…
I am well aware that people may not have a definitive answer to this, but it got me thinking. Have you ever thought about this and how it would work?
…

Yes. I suppose that our feeling will be overcome with the Beatific Vision and knowledge of both the mercy and justice of hell for those that choose not to have the Beatific Vision. It is also speculated that those that died only in original sin may have a state of natural peace without the Beatific Vision.

State	When​	Eternal​	Can Merit​
Earth sin	living​	no​	no​
Earth habitual grace	living​	no​	yes​
Purgatory	dead​	no​	no, but can receive indulgences​
Heaven	dead​	no​	–​
Heaven	resurrected​	yes​	–​
Hell	dead​	no​	no​
Hell	resurrected​	yes​	no​

 

[TheLittleLady]

surely your knowledge of a loved one being in hell would make you sad?

Those in heaven will be perfected in love, we will understand the justice of God. We will rejoice that God respected the choices of those who chose to reject Him.

 

[Magnanimity]

They go to hell (horrible to think I know). How would that work? Heaven is supposed to be a place of eternal happiness, but surely your knowledge of a loved one being in hell would make you sad? Or would that knowledge just disappear and they would evaporate from your mind, as if you never knew them? If that was the case, that’s quite sad too, don’t you think?

I really like the way you’ve asked your questions here—very probing and quite authentic (almost vulnerable). Good on you for approaching this with such genuine honesty and perplexity. End it is all very perplexing! I think we can use our life experiences here on earth as analogies for the life to come.

Every parent that I’ve ever known who has lost a child, for example, goes light-years beyond what we would regard as “Sad.” Sadness does not even begin to encapsulate what they feel , what they experience and what they know. Brokenness, a scar that will never heal, a lifetime of pain that ebbs and flows, all these ways of speaking about it get closer to the truth.

Then we can consider this And couch it in the context of parents who believe in the life to come and whose belief that they will see their child again as the one thing that helps them press on, that helps give them hope, and not succumb to the deepest of all grief and heartbrokenness. If you were to ask such a parent, “what if your child is in hell?” I wonder what you think the reaction of that parent would be. I would be very surprised if you escaped that conversation with your face in tact and your nose unbroken. Such a thought is to them unimaginable, unconscionable. The thought of seeing their child again in the afterlife is the very thing that helps them get through.

Too often in these considerations we think about hell for “the unspecified other.” When we think about the option of hell for those who are most intertwined and intermingled with our own hearts, hell should become for us equally unimaginable and unconscionable. Saint Catherine of Siena had it right on this issue. May she pray for us!

 

[mythbuster1]

Another possibility is that when their sins are revealed on Judgment Day, you will say, “I never knew you.”

 

[John10]

I think this is similar, to a close friend or family, being imprison after a just trial. Of course I would not be happy about them going to jail, but I would completely understand why they are there.

At the end of our life, we will have to stand trial for all of our actions, omissions, words and even thoughts.

The best thing to do is to live as close as to the Gospel’s values as we can, pray and go to Mass to seek God’s help.