Plenty of arguments can be advanced against the existence of hell. Smart people tell you it is inconsistent with the belief in a loving God. "If I had a child I loved, and he offended me, I most certainly would not condemn him to hell." "Who ever came back, anyhow, to tell us there is a hell?" "It is ridiculous that a God said to be just should send a soul to a hell of everlasting punishment for a `crime' that is all over in a few minutes."
Against all these sophistries, there stands the unequivocal statement of Christ the Son of God. "If your right hand scandalize you, cut it off and cast it from you. If your right eye scandalize you, pluck it out and cast it from you. It is better to enter into life maimed, or with one eye, than, having both hands and both eyes, to be cast into hell." "Fear not them who can destroy the body, and after that have no more that they can do; but fear Him Who, after He has destroyed the body, can cast the soul into hell. Yea, I say to you, fear ye Him."
There are several other weighty warnings from the lips of the Son of God. Whatever the smart world thinks, we Catholics take our stand on the side of divine truth. We do not like hell. Preachers and writers do not enjoy dilating on its horrors, but the important question is: Are they true ? Jesus Christ says they are, and He is God.
It was not merely to instill a holy fear that He spoke these frequent warnings. These words of Our Lord issue forth from a Heart on fire with love for men. They are prompted by His intense anxiety about our eternal salvation. He is filled with
fear lest He lose us; lest the enemy deceive us. He speaks from the eagerness that consumes Him for our love. He warns because He sees ahead, into the appalling misery that awaits, most certainly, the unrepentant sinner. Hell is evidence, not only of God's justice, but of the enormity of sin, which demands, in justice, such a penalty.
"Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here." If, as it stood before its God, terrified and conscious of its guilt, the Judge was to offer the soul another chance of salvation, what would be its reaction? Surely, in a transport of ecstasy, it would exclaim: "Another chance, Lord? Why, if I may return to earth, there is absolutely nothing I shall leave undone in order to make certain my eternal salvation. I will emulate Your saints in prayer and penance. I will live a thousand years, till the end of time, under the blazing suns of the equator, under the biting winds of the Arctic, if at the end I succeed in escaping hell and saving my soul."
That poor sinner would be a good judge, for whatever we suffer in this world is negligible when contrasted with the sufferings of hell. But these words will never be spoken by Jesus Christ after death. Save my soul once, and I save it forever. Lose my soul once, and it is lost forever. There is no such thing as another chance then. But not yet have I to deal with an inexorable Judge. Right now I have that other chance indeed. He does not ask me to do penance till the end of the world; He does not impose it on me to emulate the saints. He asks me to make a good Confession; once and forever to break away from sin and its occasions.
More He may ask another time. But, for the present, He would have me, in this meditation, put my head between my hands and think profoundly of the tremendous issues at stake in life's combat. Soon I shall pass through the gate leading into eternity. It will be too late to think then. There is no time to think in eternity.
Summary:
1. After death there is no mercy; only inexorable justice.
2. Every excuse possible is useless at the judgment seat of Christ.
3. Hell, a proof of Our Lord's love; "another chance."
Thought:
I can decide beforehand what my eternal sentence is going to be.