“Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire” (Matthew 25:41)

Hell is the logical and inevitable outcome of unrepented sin.  Sin is separation from God, Hell is that separation made permanent by the sinner’s own will.  For our freedom to choose God as the object of life’s journey carries with it also our freedom to reject him.  And as he is the source of all goodness and lasting happiness, so without him there can be neither goodness nor happiness.  Hell, therefore, is not a punishment inflicted on sinners by God as an act of revenge, but is a state of misery which is inseparable from their rejection of him.

For it is the spiritual condition of sinners, for which they themselves are responsible by the exercise of their free will, that is their own Hell.

Heaven is where God is seen, Hell is where he is unseen and unfelt and, so far as the people in Hell are concerned, to all intents and purposes has ceased to exist.  The next life is a spiritual one not a material one, and so Hell is the continuation of a person’s spiritual life here, but without the material comfort and distractions of this life.

Those who go to Hell, therefore, are they who hate God or have no use for him.  They are those who commit the supreme and unforgivable blasphemy against the Holy Spirit of saying, “Evil, be thou my good”. (1) Purity, charitableness, honesty, self-control and a readiness to forgive are despised.  The sins and vices, which are the opposite of these virtues, are desired and freely followed.  Hell is not for those who would like to be with God in Heaven only he insists on shutting them out; rather it is for those who have no inclination for the life of Heaven and would be completely miserable if they were obliged to share it.  Heaven would have no more appeal to them in the next life than holiness does in this.  They go to Hell because they prefer Hell.  In the words of Holy Scripture, “They say to God, ‘Leave us alone!  We do not desire to know your ways’ “ (NRSV, Job 21:14).

Lucifer – Satan – was the first to enter Hell, that outer darkness beyond the consciousness of the presence of God; and what sent him there was his pride, that is, the substitution of himself for God as the centre of his life.  So now pride, the foundation of all sin, is the real cause why anyone goes to Hell.  As Holy Scripture says, “The beginning of human pride is to desert the Lord, and to turn one’s heart away from one’s maker” (Jerusalem Bible, Ecclesiasticus 10:12).  It is therefore quite easy to go to Hell perfectly respectably, for the essence of pride is self-centredness.  The Rich Man in the parable was a very respectable citizen.  He did not go to Hell because he was rich, although admittedly that handicapped him – as Our Lord says, “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” (NRSV, Luke 18:24).  No, the Rich Man went to Hell because he was the centre of his own life.

The people in Hell have made themselves their own god.  They refused to submit to the authority of God, and recognised nothing as higher or more worthwhile than their own desires.  They cared only for themselves, and so in the end they have only themselves to care for.

So Hell, the final state of selfishness, is a place of utter loneliness.  Each soul hates its fellows as they hate it.  All is confusion and discord.  They have lost God for ever, for their Judge has spoken and passed his sentence, “…go away from me, you evildoers” (NRSV, Matthew 7:23), although they had already gone away from him long before.  So now they have neither hope nor love.  All is hatred and despair and blasphemy.  For the souls of the eternally lost are literally beyond redemption, having rejected the salvation Christ offered them.

As they look back on their lives they are filled not with penitence but with the torment of remorse.  That is to say, they do not grieve over their past sins because by them they have wounded the love of God; rather they wish bitterly but in vain that they could undo the past because they dimly perceive that it is their selfishness and their sins that have brought the misery of Hell upon them.

In addition to remorse there is a never ending sense of frustration.  Sin provides pleasures and sometimes happiness, though only temporarily.  Hell provides neither.  “The souls of the lost picture to themselves all the pleasures of their past life in contrast to their present lack of every kind of comfort.  As St Bernard says, ‘What is more intolerable than ever to long for that which will never be; and ever to rebel against that which will always be’ ” (2)

These torments – the misery of separation from God, the ceaseless gnawing of remorse, the frustration and the despair – together constitute the symbolic fires of Hell.

The existence of Hell is not a mere supposition, it is a fact which has been revealed to us by our Blessed Lord.  Indeed, it is through him, our loving Saviour, that we know without doubt that there is such a place.  And he told us it with his own lips so that we might understand what comes of substituting oneself for God in one’s life.  And this revelation of Hell has, as he intended, saved many souls from entering it – souls who in the first instance came to love God through fear of what happens to those who have no use for him.

1. Milton, J. (1674) Paradise Lost, Book 4, 108.  Available from: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Paradise_Lost (Accessed 19 October 2010) (Internet).

2. Quoted in Langridge Retreats for priests.