Sunday Evening Reflections on Hell

I can still recall - with an importance borne out by the seriousness with which the grown-ups seemed to consider the topic - a Sunday evening when my evangelical pastor father's church held a Revival service. We had a guest preacher and got to dine him (No wining him - we were teetotalers!) before the church service. My sister and I speculated who would "come forward" to the altar rail to either "get saved" (in some cases, again) or renew their "personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ." In any case, it was serious, and we were inculcated from a very early age on the FACTs of the Last Four Things.

Adults can't manufacture those values; there is no winking to the audience, I am thankful to say. My father and my mother were in deadly earnest when it came to them, and my sister, Linda, and I caught those values.

So, it wasn't surprising to me to find myself after the revival preacher's sermon to find myself coming forward to the altar rail to "accept Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior." It wasn't that I hadn't done so before in private, so to speak; but in our neck of the woods, it you didn't trudge up where everybody could watch you do it, it just didn't count to your credit. See?

Well, I still believe in those Four Last Things, but I also know that I need the fullness of the Church that Jesus our Lord founded on Saint Peter ("Rocky") in Matthew 16, including all the sacramental grace that our Lord provides us creatures made in His image, imago dei. (For more read A Little Guide for Your Last Days.)

In fact, Dale Alquist puts succinctly the words and thoughts of fellow convert, G. K. Chesterton. (I would say fellow author, but the audacity sticks in my craw with an accompanying choking sensation.) A quick and easy essay just doesn't get much better than this one all of a Sunday evening. Read, read, pilgrim, and never forget GKC's insights in A Happy Little Reflection on Hell. And, thank you, too, Dale Ahlquist.

Don't you wish more people thought about the Four Last Things. Like those who garner power with a smug grin of happy and healthy human existence; at least, for now?

Knox - 'He Suffered' - Pt. 4

Ronald Knox's excerpted explanation of "He suffered" from his book, The Creed in Slow Motion, which we began here, continues here in Part 4:

LET'S BE A LITTLE MORE practical. We turn this evil thing, suffering, into a good thing when we accept it as God's will for us. I've tried to explain to you already that the only way in which we human beings can justify our existence in creation at all is to obey God's will for us. That is what we are FOR. A human being who is not out to obey god's will is exactly as much use in his creation as a toothbrush is in the possession of a man who has had all his teeth taken out. And there are two ways in which we can obey God's will, by doing what he wants us to do, and by suffering what he wants us to suffer. There's this trouble about doing what God wants us to do - that it's so often, at the same time, the thing we want to do. Even if it is the kind of thing that doesn't sound very attractive at the first go-off, even if it means (say) going out and being a missionary in foreign parts, or washing dishes all day in a canteen, it's extraordinary how people get to like it, and take a pride in doing it well, and want to go on doing it. That means that we are never quite sure whether we are doing what is God's will because it is God's will, or because it is ours. Self-love, self-admiration, will go on creeping in and disturbing the purity of our motives. But with suffering it's different; I mean, when it's suffering God sends us, suffering we can't get out of. It's almost impossible to feel any pride about that. And if God calls on you to spend twenty years lying on your back, in pain most of the time, and you go on telling him that it is his will, and you want it to happen because it is his will, then, believe me, you are in a fair way to going straight to heaven. (Continues in Pt. 5)

- Ronald A. Knox

Knox - 'He Suffered' - Pt. 3

Ronald Knox's excerpted explanation of "He suffered" from his book, The Creed in Slow Motion, which we began here, continues here in Part 3:

WELL THEN, IF SUFFERING is an evil, that means that you and I have got a right to avoid it. If you've got a toothache, you've a perfect right to have the tooth taken out, instead of saying, "No, thanks, I'd rather offer it up." And indeed it means that you have a duty of looking after your health, because your health is one of God's good gifts, and it isn't polite of you to throw it away carelessly as if you attached no value to it; any more than it would be polite if your rich uncle gives you half a crown to throw it out of the window and say you can get on very well without it. If suffering is an evil, that means that you must not inflict it on other people. I remember a small boy - only he isn't a small boy now, he's grown into rather a great man - who was teasing his sister, and when she complained of this treatment he replied, "A slight mortification, my dear, can only help to get you off Purgatory." That won't do; suffering is an evil, and human beings mustn't inflict it on one another, unless it is for the sake of securing a greater good - as, for instance, when the dentist inflicts suffering on you because that is the only way of stopping a bad tooth.

And again, if suffering is an evil, we must do our best to relieve the sufferings of other people. We must feed the hungry and look after the sick; or if we can't do it ourselves we must contribute to the charities that do. All these centuries Christianity has been preaching that suffering isn't what really matters, sin is what really matters. And yet, all these centuries, Christianity has been founding hospitals and running soup kitchens, because it knows that suffering is, in itself, an evil. I suppose that was part of the reason why our Lord, in Gethsemani, prayed to be delivered from the chalice of his Passion. He wanted to show us that suffering is an evil, and unless it is clearly God's will that it should come to us, we have a right to try and avoid it.

But sometimes, you see, it is God's will that suffering should come to us, and that we should not be able to avoid it. How is that? Well, we tried to go into all that last term, when we were talking about the Fall, and how suffering was the appropriate punishment of sin. The whole human race has sinned, and the whole human race has got to suffer; the bit of suffering which comes your way and mine is just you and me doing our bit. We have said that suffering is an evil thing in itself. But the suffering which comes to us in this way, suffering which we can't avoid because it is God's will for us, can be turned from an evil thing into a good thing, if we treat it in the right way. If you look at an electric light bulb when it isn't burning, you will see nothing inside but a rather uninteresting-looking bit of wire; and you might be tempted to say to yourself, "I don't see how anybody's going to get light out of that." But, once you switch the current on, that piece of wire does give light, because the electricity transmutes it into a glowing mass. So it is with suffering in human lives; an evil thing in itself, it becomes a good thing when it is transmuted, by the love of God, into the glowing focus of charity. (Continues in Pt. 4)

- Ronald A. Knox

Knox - 'He Suffered' - Pt. 2

Ronald Knox's excerpted explanation of "He suffered" from his book, The Creed in Slow Motion, which we began here, continues:

SO, YOU SEE, IT isn't necessary to explain away a great deal, if you want to persuade yourself that our Lord never experienced human suffering. There were heretics in early days, as I think I told you before, who thought that; who made out that our Lord didn't really become a man at his Incarnation; he only wore a kind of phantom body, something like a ghost. And in our own day the Christian Scientists - the people who tell you that you haven't really got a toothache, you've only got a stupid idea that you've got a toothache, and therefore the best thing to do is to pray about it, instead of going to the dentist - the Christian Scientists would tell you that our Lord didn't suffer. Oh, no, he was perfectly wise, and therefore he knew that there was no such thing as suffering, and that is why he went about persuading the blind people that they weren't blind, and the lepers that they weren't lepers, and Lazarus that he wasn't dead. If you are perfectly holy, they say, then you must be perfectly healthy. And, you know, it's good Catholic theology, though I don't know whether it's a matter of faith, that our Lord while he was on earth never suffered from any disease. His human body was such a perfect thing that it couldn;t go wrong of its own accord; it was only when he treated it roughly (or when other people treated it roughly) that it could enter into Adam's uncomfortable legacy of pain.

However, there it is; our Lord was hungry, was tired, did suffer, even before Pontius Pilate comes into the picture at all. And at the same time his whole life, as it is recorded for us in the Gospels, is a kind of campaign against suffering - no more blind, no more deaf, no more lame, no more paralytics, no more lepers - that seems to be his ideal. Now, you ask yourself, is suffering a good thing or a bad thing? If it is a good thing, why did he spend so much of his time in making it disappear from the countryside round him, when he might have been attending, instead, to the needs of people's souls? And if suffering is a bad thing, why did he bring upon himself - for it is evident all through that he brought it on himself - a death attended by such crowded circumstances of pain? What are we to make of suffering ourselves? Is it a thing to run away from, or is it a thing we ought to welcome? He suffered; our Lord suffered; what about his servants?

Well, let us take the answer to that question bit by bit. In the first place, suffering is of its own nature a bad thing, not a good thing. When I say that it's a bad thing, I don't mean of course that it's wicked to have a toothache; I don't want to have you coming round to me on Saturday evening and confessing that you've had a slight attack of neuralgia. I mean that suffering is an imperfection, brought into this world of ours by the fall of man: it's a blot on creation, it degrades us. And therefore, in the presence of a very good person, suffering tends to run away and hide itself; when our Lord met a leper, the leprosy couldn't maintain itself, it fled from his presence. And so it has been in the lives of his saints. You can read in the Bible how a dead man was being carried out to burial once, when a party of invading Syrians appeared; and the undertaker and his assistants thought it would be a good thing to cut short the funeral procession, so they dropped the corpse into the nearest tomb they could see. It happened to be the tomb of the prophet Elisha, who had just died. And the dead man immediately came to life. Death, you may say, couldn't bear to find itself anywhere near anyone as holy as Elisha, just as the undertaker couldn't bear to be near a party of invading Syrians. Death said (as it were), "Oh, gosh, I can't stand this," and ran away, leaving the man to come to life. That's putting it rather crudely, but you see what I mean; suffering is of its own nature an evil, and it tends to disappear when it is brought into contact with a very holy person, just as darkness disappears when you bring a candle into a room. (Continued in Pt. 3)

- Ronald A. Knox

Knox - 'He Suffered' - Pt. 1

Monsignor Ronald A. Knox, writing and preaching to his war-time (WWII) congregation of school girls at Aldenham, produced for my money the most lucid explication of the Creed in print, The Creed in Slow Motion (readily available from Ave Maria Press, Notre Dame, IN).

Chapter by chapter, Knox elucidates bite-sized portions of the Creed in a manner that one reviewer says exhibited "a freedom from ecclesial decorum which is sometimes startling, yet always with a purpose;" namely, to show how the age-old faith resonates with our contemporary experiences.

So, my purpose now is to display Knox's superlative grasp of the Catholic faith in a series of posts in which I will, gentle reader, give you in its entirety chapter IX, "He Suffered." It is apropos for this season of Lent, and, in a few short pages, it brings to us the meaning and purpose not only of our Lord's salvific suffering, but the meaning and purpose of our own suffering in this mortal plane of temporal existence. I hope you will find it as important as I have.

By the way, as friend Gil Bailie notes, good authors always create their own precursors. I lay no claim to being a "good author," but I will say that Knox here gives the foundation for my own book, A Little Guide for Your Last Days that was written, submitted, and published long before I laid eyes on Knox's book.

And so I begin presenting to you, "He Suffered - Part 1, excerpted from The Creed in Slow Motion."

I EXPECT SOME of your will be wanting to complain that I've only given you half a clause out of the Credo there, instead of a whole clause. When you say the Credo, you say, "Sufton Plntius Pilate," and that's that. But, you see, quite apart from the question when or how our Lord suffered, it is important to get it into our heads that he did suffer. Go back for a moment to what you rememeber of the Gospels, and tell me what evidence we have, earlier than his agony in the garden of Gethsemani, to tell us that our Lord did suffer? It's not so easy, is it? I think I'm right in saying that there are only three occasions, before Gethsemani, on which we hear of our Lord as suffering any kind of bodily discomfort. When his temptation in the wilderness was over, we are told that he hungered. When he passed by the fig tree that had leaves but no fruit on it, we are told that he was hungry. And when he sat down by the well and talked to the woman of Samaria, we are told that he was tired after his journey. Elsewhere we hear of his being sorry about things - he wept over Jerusalem, for example, and over the grave of Lazarus - but except on those three occasions I don't think we ever hear that he suffered bodily discomfort - till Gethsemani. (Continues in Pt. 2)

Athos' Excellent Adventure

Happily, gentle reader, old Athos wound his way to the television studio of Marcus Grodi's The Journey Home last Monday. The interview for the television show went well, I think. I had the added pleasure of discussing the seventh chapter of St. Paul's Letter to the Romans (12-25) with Mr. Grodi for his radio program, Deep in Scripture. I did, of course, work in the vital topics of Marian chivalry and a means of avoiding distraction from the reality of our mortal life.

The television interview will air on Monday, February 28.

New Year's Eve - Knox

Bl Philip Howard - Earl of Arundel

On the brink of the New Year, some can look on our human cultural scene with optimism (they call it 'hope' - it seems a bit shallow to go that far), some with a sense of gloom. I will, instead offer the words of my newest mentor, Monsignor Ronald Knox (1888-1957), that come from his reflections on one of the English martyrs, Blessed Philip Howard.

THE PRISONER'S LOT, AFTER all, is a type, especially, of human life as it has to be lived by us Christians in a fallen world which is not our true home, only a place of detention. Every man born into this world lives in a condemned cell; the warrant for his death will be issued not at an hour of his own choosing. Meanwhile, the environment of his life, his social ties, his limited opportunities, interfere with his liberty of action; when all is said and done, he has little of real freedom. And we Christians, whose faith forbids us to think of this world except as the ante-chamber of the next, can think of death as the warrant for our release; there is a window high up in our cell which gives us tantalizing glimpses of a wider world beyond, and we long to taste its more generous air. We must look, then, to the prison life of Philip Howard as a sacrament of human life in general; we must learn from him to face the ten years, twenty years, whatever it may be of life that remains to us, in the same spirit in which he faced those ten years which saw him a prisoner in the Tower of London ...

Let us ask Philip Howard, a prisoner no longer, but a courtier of the Queen of Peace, to remember the days of his low estate, and pray for all that multitude of human beings who lie, justly or unjustly, necessarily or needlessly, in prison. May the slow years that pass over them, and pass them by, bring them nearer to God, instead of making them disappointed in themselves, embittered against their fellow men. May he win freedom for the souls that are crushed by captivity; and for us, who go free, may he do more; may he bring every thought of ours into the captivity of our Master, Jesus Christ.

- Ronald A. Knox

Purgatory, Holy Souls and Us - Knox

Dante gazes at Mount Purgatory (1530) - Agnolo Bronzino

IF YOU ACCEPT THE FULL teaching of the Church - I am perhaps speaking to some who do not, but they must pardon me for parting company with them here - if you accept the full teaching of the Church, these scruples (of unworthiness) will be sublimated for you by the doctrine of purgatory. We have, most of us, a despairing sense of inadequacy when we contemplate the holiness of God's saints, and compare our own record with it; we have, many of us, a feeling almost of envy when we visit people, or hear of people, whose life seems nothing better than one long round of suffering. Why is it that this discipline of suffering has fallen so little on us, who need it so greatly? If I may use a modern phrase, we are appalled at the differential. It straightens things out for us, if we believe that after death we shall go through a period of waiting and of discipline before we can become what we long to be, yet almost fear to be - perfect souls.

So, all through the month of November, we (remember) in our prayers the needs of the faithful departed; the holy souls, we call them, but we mean that they are not quite holy enough. What picture are we to form of those needs? We shall not find, I think, even in Dante, much aid to the imagination. But we can, perhaps, get some glimpse of what it all means if we concentrate our attention on the ancient prayer which the Church uses in this connection: "Grant them, O Lord, eternal rest, and may perpetual light shine upon them."

- Ronald A. Knox

Purgatory - Foothills of Heaven

Rapidly approaching the Month of Holy Souls, here is your review sheet on Purgatory, compliments of Rev. John A. Hardon, S.J.

Monsignor Ronald Knox, remember, had thoughts on the subject too. Like this: " ... death strips us; puts away the toys we cherished. Shrouds have no pockets; a cheque signed by a dead man is no longer honoured."

Knox - Purgatory

YOU AND I, MAYBE, after death, will find ourselves in the twilight state known as purgatory. Saved (please God) by faith in the risen Christ, we shall not yet be partakers in the glory of his Resurrection.

Preachers who discuss the conditions of that intermediate state are apt to lay stress on the severity of the divine punishments. They may be right; it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Only, I dare to hope that the severity of it will be relieved by something we had no right to expect, something we had never been told about, the influence of our blessed Lord's passing, on Easter Eve, through the place of departed spirits. The holy water still glistens on your table when the priest has come and gone; what if our Lord, on that first Holy Saturday, blessed it once for all with the lustration which time can never efface? I like to think of purgatory, however long and however dreary it be, as consoled in some measure by the consciousness that he has been there before us; as a process of passing onwards from room to room, always with the sense that the presence of one we love has only just been withdrawn. Not strong enough, yet, to follow him out into the sunlight, we shall follow him eagerly through the dark. Is that fanciful?

At least let me say this: I think we do well ... to remember our dead. No, do not exclaim that I am a kill-joy, clouding your festival with sad thoughts ... But consider, when you see our Lord represented as rising from the tomb with a banner in his hand, it is the symbol of a military penetration; he, the Victor, in rolling back the stone has made a breach in the enemy's lines, for what? So that the army of his redeemed may pour through at his heels. Or, if you will use St Paul's metaphor, his is the first birth out of death; he has opened the barren womb of extinction, not for himself only but so as to be the first-born of many brethren. Vidi aquam - our Lord's Resurrection is the opening of the springs; the full river has yet to flow. It broadens out, reaches its fulfillment, in ours.

- Ronald A. Knox

Memento Mori

A quick reminder: if you, a friend, or loved one are facing a poor prognosis or terminal illness, remember a slim volume that is written in faithfulness to the Church's teachings and has received high marks from a few folk like Mark Shea, Joseph Pearce, Fr. Dwight Longenecker, and Amy Welborn. Namely, A Little Guide for Your Last Days.

It is comforting, at times humorous, always as truthful as the author can make it, facing, as he is, a struggle with cancer himself.

For a wonderful collection of written resources visit the Little Guide blog here.

Offering One's Death - Knox

IS IT POSSIBLE THAT the hall-mark of the true Christian is not, necessarily at least, being brave about death; but rather, being prepared to offer whatever shrinking he feels about it as part of the sacrifice which he makes of his life to God? Fear is not a sin. You may through fear, by neglecting your duty, by denying your faith; granted. But fear in itself is not a sin; or what was our Lord doing in Gethsemani? It seems to me that whatever were the precise feelings of fear and disgust; the Greek is perhaps better represented if we say that he began to be mystified and dismayed - he was evidently condescending, as far as Incarnate God could, to our human weakness, and inviting us to unite our secret misgivings about death with the sacrifice he was making then. We were to see - that is how I read the story - that we should not be held responsible for having a dry feeling in the mouth, and a quaking about the legs, in moments of danger; that was not the point.

The point was, first, that we should do our duty, whatever inward tremors we had to crush down in the doing of it. And second, that we should make an offering to God of this human weakness, this shameful disability, and tell him, "My God, I know I'm a coward, but I want to offer my terrors, like every other discomfort my human destiny involves, to you. Cowards die many times before their deaths; and all those deaths I offer to you" ...

The dearer a thing life seems to you, the harder it seems to relinquish, the more motive for generosity in offering it. So little, the real value of the sacrifice we make, when we give our souls into his hands; all the better, then, if (by a kind of sentimental value) it means much to us, who make it.

- Ronald Knox

Bosch - Four Last Things

The Four Last Things (1485) - Hieronymus Bosch

Knox - Probation

Dives and Lazarus (1660) - Giordano

(W)E ARE NOT TOLD of any specially grave sin that Dives committed; pride, hypocrisy, self-satisfaction, the leaven of the Pharisees, brought him to the pass we know of. His purple had blinded his eyes to his spiritual needs, while Lazarus' running sores were enough to keep him in mind of his spiritual infirmities. It is not enough simply to know, as a theological proposition, that we are on our probation here; we have to apply that knowledge and live in the light of it. There are so many other things to be done in the world, so many echoes that deafen us, that we are apt to forget the first principle of our probation, which is this: that the most important moment of our lives, the moment around which all the rest of our life ought to be grouped as its centre and its climax, is the moment when we leave it...

The real commercial equivalent of our life on earth is not so much pleasure, so much fame, so much love from those around us, so much attractiveness to our neighbours, but so much done for God. We are on our trial; there is a term to our effort, a limit to our opportunity. And the time is short and the end sudden. Blessed are those servants whom the Lord, when he comes, shall find watching.

- Ronald A. Knox

Father Mark Delery - Requiescat in pace +

With the arrival of our diocesan newspaper, I was saddened yet not surprised to see that long-time friend and spiritual director, Father Mark Delery, had died.

Author, former abbot, medical doctor, fellow cancer survivor, Fr Mark was droll, insightful, wise, and, at times, hilarious. I was blessed on my last retreat to share with him my newest cancer battle news during spiritual direction, and he to hear my Confession and bless a few small articles I had brought with me. Too, he celebrated Holy Eucharist that Saturday morning at Holy Cross Abbey.

A soul guide, confidant, and friend. Pray for us, Fr Mark.

Pax et Bonum

"Hello, beastie."

As I have alluded, my "beastie" with which I had a spot of bother two years ago has returned, now in my liver. A renowned surgeon at Johns Hopkins will endeavor to resection my liver on Wednesday, two days from now, God willing. And then, after that ordeal, I will begin a regimen of general chemotherapy.

I am grateful for the renewed number of prayers, petitions, intentions, and good thoughts folk have offered up for me. I am reminded that I would not be published had this "terrible beastie" not entered my life in the first place, and I received the gift of the awareness of my mortality in a way that was longed-for in the high days of Christendom.

So, posting may occur if it strikes my fancy. But I will endeavor to keep you abreast of matters on the other side of Wednesday in any case. Pax et bonum. +

Use Your Suffering Chivalrously

Before leaving Portugal, Pope Benedict asked the suffering and dying to help save the world.

Great advice, Holy Father. I was bolstered to hear you saying it.

Eberstadt, Doino, Hendrix

Mary Eberstadt has a great piece in The Weekly Standard on the The Convert Conundrum - The long parade of worldly believers. [h/t: Francis Beckwith]

By the way, William Doino, Jr. currently reviews my book, A Little Guide for Your Last Days there, too, in Exit Strategy.

Agli Inferi

When I arrived home after a retreat weekend, I caught Benedict XVI on EWTN as he spoke about the Shroud of Turin (just behind him where he sat), Holy Saturday, and our Savior's entering our deepest mortal fears. Via ZENIT:

"[The Shroud] witnesses precisely to the unique and unrepeatable interval in the history of humanity and the universe, in which God, in Jesus Christ, shared not only our dying, but also our remaining in death. The most radical solidarity."

A voice in the dark

Benedict XVI reflected how in "that 'time-beyond-time' Jesus Christ 'descended into hell' -- 'agli inferi.'"

What does this mean, he asked? "It means that God, made man, went to the point of entering into the extreme and absolute solitude of man, where no ray of love enters, where there is total abandonment without any word of comfort: 'hell' ('gli inferi'). Jesus Christ, remaining in death, has gone beyond the gates of this ultimate solitude to lead us too to go beyond it with him."

The Pope compared this solitude to the childhood experience of fear of the dark, when only the presence of a loved one could bring comfort.

"So, it is exactly this that happened in Holy Saturday," he said. "In the kingdom of death there resounded the voice of God. The unthinkable happened: that Love penetrated 'into hell -- 'negli inferi' -- that in the most extreme darkness of the most absolute human solitude we can hear a voice that calls us and find a hand that takes us and leads us out.

"The human being lives by the fact that he is loved and can love; and if love even has penetrated into the realm of death, then life has also arrived there. In the hour of extreme solitude we will never be alone."

Read more here.

Read not the Times, Read Eternity

The Holy Father hits the nail on the head: Let's not be afraid to think and talk about Eternal Life. It is amazing how much muck and mess is cleared away when worship of Mammon and fear of death are seen in the "normal" lives of people, high and low, important and not so. We are, and allow ourselves to be, distracted to death.