QUOTATION: Hell

Saints never deny Hell; they fear it. Unrepentant sinners never fear it; they deny it.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Unwanted?

You might think you are unwanted; that’s not true. Both heaven and hell want you badly.

--Jason Evert

QUOTATION: Hell

A third misunderstanding is that hell does not mean that God tortures people there. He does not want their torture. The Bible says that “God is not willing that any should perish.” But that which He essentially is and cannot change—truth and unselfish love—may torture them there, because they have made themselves into the kind of persons that do not love these things but hate them. But God can’t help that: He can’t turn off his love any more than the sun can turn off its light. Thus, paradoxically, God’s essential, eternal character—truth and love—is both the supreme heavenly foundation for moral goodness and its joyful reward and  the thing that tortures the damned in hell, which is the supreme evil and misery.

--Peter Kreeft, Letters to an Atheist, 2014

QUOTATION: Hell

Hell is not so much a place of punishment as the guarantor of love. We cannot truly love God unless we can freely choose not to love him. Hell is the choice not to love God. It is the choice to prefer something else to God.

--Scott Hahn, Angels and Saints

QUOTATION: Salvation

Everyone wants God to save them from Hell, few want God to save them from sin.

--G.K. Chesterton

QUOTATION: Freedom

While God has given to each of us the power to act, He has left us free to exercise the power. Why then blame God when we abuse our freedom? God will not destroy your freedom. Hell is the eternal guarantee of our freedom to rebel, or the power to make fools out of ourselves.

--Fulton J. Sheen, Preface to Religion

QUOTATION: Hell

As fulfilled love, heaven can always only be granted to man; but hell is the loneliness of the man who will not accept it, who declines this status of beggar and withdraws into himself. 

--Cardinal Josef Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Introduction to Christianity, 1968

QUOTATION: Hell

Hell is wanting only to be oneself: what happens when man barricades himself up in himself.

--Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Introduction to Christianity, 1968

QUOTATION: Hell

Hell consists in man's being unwilling to receive anything, in his desire to be self-sufficient. It is the expression of enclosure in one's being alone. These depths accordingly consist by nature of just this: that man will not accept, will not take anything, but wants to stand entirely on his own feet, to be sufficient unto himself. If this becomes utterly radical, then man has become the untouchable, the solitary, the reject.

--Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Introduction to Christianity, 1968

QUOTATION: Judgement Day

All, past, present, and future will be judged: thus the Apostle says: We must all be manifested before the judgement-seat of Christ, that everyone may receive the proper things of the body according as he hath done, whether it be good or evil. Of the wicked, some will be condemned, but not be judged: namely unbelievers whose works will not be discussed, since He that believeth not is already judged. Some will be both condemned and judged, namely the faithful who die in mortal sin: The wages of sin is death, because on account of the faith which they had they will not be excluded from the judgement. Of the good, some will be saved and will not be judged, namely those who for God’s sake are poor in spirit; indeed, they will judge others: You who have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit on the seat of his majesty, you also shall sit on twelve seats judging the twelve tribes of Israel, which is to be referred not only to the disciples, but also to all the poor; otherwise Paul who labored more than the others would not be of their number: and consequently we must understand these words refer to all who follow the Apostles, and of men with an apostolic spirit. Hence the Apostle says: know ye not that we shall judge the angels? – The Lord will enter into judgement with the ancients of his people and its princes. Some, however, will be both saved and judged, those, namely, who die in the state of righteousness: since although they died righteous, yet through being occupied with temporal matters they fell somewhat, and therefore they will be judged, yet saved; in fact, they will be judged concerning all their works both good and bad: Walk in the ways of thy heart…and know that for all these God will bring thee into judgement. All things that are done God will bring into judgement for every error, whether it be good or evil.

--St. Thomas Aquinas, Exposition of the Apostles’ Creed

QUOTATION: Hell

In truth-- one thing is certain; there exists a night into whose solitude no voice reaches; there is a door through which we can only walk alone -- the door of death. In the last analysis all the fear in the world is fear of this loneliness. From this point of view, it is possible to understand why the Old Testament has only one word for hell and death, the word sheol; it regards them as ultimately identical. Death is absolute loneliness. But the loneliness into which love can no longer advance is -- hell.

--Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Introduction to Christianity, 1968

QUOTATION: Hell

If there were such a thing as a loneliness that could no longer be penetrated and transformed by the word of another; if a state of abandonment were to arise that was so deep that no "You" could reach into it any more, then we should have real, total loneliness and dreadfulness, what theology calls "hell".

--Josef Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Introduction to Christianity, 1968

QUOTATION: Hell

Concerning the inquiry whether hell is at or near the centre of the earth, my opinion is that nothing should be rashly asserted, not least because Augustine reckoned that nobody knows where hell is. The lower regions can mean whatever is meant by the term “inferior”. . . For myself I do not believe that man can know the position of hell.

--St. Thomas Aquinas, Declaratio xxxvi Quaestionum ad Lectorem Venetum, 24, 25.

QUOTATION: Self-Will

The national anthem of Hell is 'I did it my way'.

--Peter Kreeft

QUOTATION: Hell

How did the angels become devils? They were all in the sight of God. Lucifer, the angel of light, became the devil of darkness. We read that God gave them a test, that when the Son of God will become man, [they should serve Him]; in their pride, they said "non serviam." Hell was not in the original plan of God, but God was forced to create it.

--Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Where There is Love, There is God, Brian Kolodiejchuk, M.C., Ed.

QUOTATION: Mental Prayer

He who neglects mental prayer needs no devil to carry him to hell. He brings himself there with his own hands.

--St. Teresa of Avila

QUOTATION: Love in Hell

Alas! it is love that lights and feeds the fire of the damned, and their most cutting regret is for not having loved.

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: Christ's Vision of Hell

Those who object to the dogma of Hell on the grounds that it would mean that man would suffer more than God, do not understand God “descended into Hell” on the Cross and in the Garden of Gethsemane more deeply than any man could. The vision in the garden that so terrified Christ that He sweated bloody tears and asked His Father whether it was possible to avoid this “cup” was probably a vision of Hell—a vision of all human souls suffering eternal torment after having rejected Christ’s love.

--Peter Kreeft

QUOTATION: Hell

But if the punishment due for our sins is put off till the next world, then it will be God's avenging justice, which puts everything to fire and sword, which will inflict the punishment, a dreadful, indescribable punishment: "Who understands the power of your anger?" Judgement without mercy, without relief, without merit, without limit and without end. Yes, without end. That serious sin you committed in a few brief moments, that deliberate evil thought which now escapes your memory, that word carried away by the wind, that brief action against the law of God - they shall all be punished for eternity, in the company of the devils in hell, so long as God is God. And this avenging God will have no pity on your torments, on your cries and tears, violent enough to cleave the rocks. To suffer forever, without merit, without mercy, and without end.

--St. Louis de Montfort, Letter to the Friends of the Cross

QUOTATION: Fear of Hurting Feelings

You want people to suffer forever in hell but you don't want to hurt their feelings now? What kind of love is that?

--Mother Angelica