53. Hell is “the outer darkness.” (Matthew 8:12)

Hell is “the outer darkness.” (Matthew 8:12)

YOUCAT Catechism + Catechism of the Catholic Church Lesson 53

Ave Maria series

53.  What is hell?

Our faith calls “hell” the condition of final separation from God.  Anyone who sees love clearly in the face of God and, nevertheless, does not want it decides freely to have this condition instead.  [1033-1036]

The parable of the Rich man and Lazarus depicting the rich man in hell asking for help to Abraham and Lazarus in heaven by James Tissot. .....53

Jesus, who knows what hell is like, speaks about it as the “outer darkness” (Matthew 8:12).  Expressed in our terms, it is cold rather than hot.  It is horrible to contemplate a condition of complete rigidity and hopeless isolation from everything that could bring aid, relief, joy, and consolation into one’s life.  161-162

“Jesus came to tell us that he wants us all to be in Paradise, and that Hell—of which one speaks little in our time—exists and is eternal for all who close their hearts to his love.”  Benedict XVI May 8, 200

“We long for the joy of heaven, where God is.  It is within our power to be with him in heaven even now, to be happy with him in this very moment.  But to be happy with him now means to help as he helps, to give as he gives, to serve as he serves, to save as he saves, to love as he loves.  To be with him twenty-four hours a day, to encounter him in his most frightening disguise.  For he said so:  “What you did to the least of my brethren, you did to me.”  Blessed Theresa of Calcutta (1910-1997)

1033-1036

HELL

1033 We cannot be united with God unless we freely choose to love him. But we cannot love God if we sin gravely against him, against our neighbor or against ourselves: "He who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him."( 1 John 3:14-15.)⁶¹²  Our Lord warns us that we shall be separated from him if we fail to meet the serious needs of the poor and the little ones who are his brethren.( Compare Matthew 25:31-46.)⁶¹³ To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God's merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice from communion with God and the blessed is called "hell." –Catechism. This state of definitive self-exclusion of the Catholic Church, Second Edition

1034 Jesus often speaks of "Gehenna" of "the unquenchable fire" reserved for those who to the end of their lives refuse to believe and be converted, where both soul and body can be lost.( Compare Matthew 5:22,29; Matt 10:28; Matt 13:42,50; Mark 9:43-48.)⁶¹⁴ Jesus solemnly proclaims that he "will send his angels, and they will gather . . . all evil doers, and throw them into the furnace of fire,"( Matthew 13:41-42.)⁶¹⁵ and that he will pronounce the condemnation: "Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire!"( Matthew 25:41.)⁶¹⁶ –CCC

1035 The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, "eternal fire."( Compare Denzinger-Schonmetzer 76; DS 409; DS 411; DS 801; DS 858; DS 1002; DS 1351; DS 1575; Paul VI, Credo of the People of God § 12.)⁶¹⁷ The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs. –CCC

1036 The affirmations of Sacred Scripture and the teachings of the Church on the subject of hell are a call to the responsibility incumbent upon man to make use of his freedom in view of his eternal destiny. They are at the same time an urgent call to conversion: "Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few."( Matthew 7:13-14.)⁶¹⁸

Since we know neither the day nor the hour, we should follow the advice of the Lord and watch constantly so that, when the single course of our earthly life is completed, we may merit to enter with him into the marriage feast and be numbered among the blessed, and not, like the wicked and slothful servants, be ordered to depart into the eternal fire, into the outer darkness where "men will weep and gnash their teeth."( Lumen Gentium 48 § 3; Matthew 22:13; compare Hebrews 9:27; Mt 25:13,26,30,31-46.)⁶¹⁹ --CCC

52. “what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9).

“what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9).

YOUCAT Catechism + Catechism of the Catholic Church Lesson 52

Ave Maria series

Heaven and Heavenly Creatures

52.  What is heaven?

Heaven is God’s milieu, the dwelling place of the angels and saints, and the goal of creation.  With the words “heaven and earth” we designate the whole of created reality.  [325-327]

Hymn: Eye Has Not Seen. A beautiful hymn that finds its roots in earliest Christianity. .....52

Heaven is not a place in the universe.  It is a condition in the next life.  Heaven is where God’s will is done without any resistance.  Heaven happens when life is present in its greatest intensity and blessedness—a kind of life that we do not find on earth.  If with God’s help we arrive someday in heaven, then waiting for us will be “what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9).  158, 285

“Walk with your feet on earth, but in your heart be in heaven.”  St. John Bosco (1815-1888, patron saint of youth)

325-327

Heaven and Earth

325 The Apostles' Creed professes that God is "creator of heaven and earth". The Nicene Creed makes it explicit that this profession includes "all that is, seen and unseen". --Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition

326 The Scriptural expression "heaven and earth" means all that exists, creation in its entirety. It also indicates the bond, deep within creation, that both unites heaven and earth and distinguishes the one from the other: "the earth" is the world of men, while "heaven" or "the heavens" can designate both the firmament and God's own "place" - "our Father in heaven" and consequently the "heaven" too which is eschatological glory. Finally, "heaven" refers to the saints and the "place" of the spiritual creatures, the angels, who surround God.( Psalm 115:16; Ps 19:2; Matthew 5:16.)¹⁸⁶ --CCC

327 The profession of faith of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) affirms that God "from the beginning of time made at once (simul) out of nothing both orders of creatures, the spiritual and the corporeal, that is, the angelic and the earthly, and then (deinde) the human creature, who as it were shares in both orders, being composed of spirit and body."( Lateran Council IV (1215): Denzinger-Schonmetzer 800; compare DS 3002 and Paul VI, Credo of the People of God § 8.)¹⁸⁷ --CCC

Fourth Sunday of Easter, April 22, 2018

Christ Carrying the Cross as portrayed by El Greco,1580.

Fourth Sunday of Easter, April 22, 2018
Lectionary: 50

Reading 1  ACTS of the Apostles 4:8-12

Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said: "Leaders of the people and elders: If we are being examined today about a good deed done to a cripple, namely, by what means he was saved, then all of you and all the people of Israel should know that it was in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead; in his name this man stands before you healed.

 He is the stone rejected by you, the builders,
which has become the cornerstone.

There is no salvation through anyone else, nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved."

Responsorial Psalm  PSalm 118:1, 8-9, 21-23, 26, 28, 29

R. (22) The stone rejected by the builders has become the cornerstone.
Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good,
for his mercy endures forever.
It is better to take refuge in the LORD
than to trust in man.
It is better to take refuge in the LORD
than to trust in princes.

R. The stone rejected by the builders has become the cornerstone.
I will give thanks to you, for you have answered me
and have been my savior.
The stone which the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone.
By the LORD has this been done;
it is wonderful in our eyes.

R. The stone rejected by the builders has become the cornerstone.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD;
we bless you from the house of the LORD.
I will give thanks to you, for you have answered me
and have been my savior.
Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good;
for his kindness endures forever.

R. The stone rejected by the builders has become the cornerstone.

Reading 2  1 JohN 3:1-2

Beloved:
See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God.  Yet so we are.  The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.  Beloved, we are God's children now;
what we shall be has not yet been revealed.  We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him,
for we shall see him as he is.

Alleluia  JohN 10:14

R. Alleluia, alleluia.
I am the good shepherd, says the Lord;
I know my sheep, and mine know me.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.

Gospel  JohN 10:11-18

Jesus said:
"I am the good shepherd.  A good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.  A hired man, who is not a shepherd and whose sheep are not his own, sees a wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away, and the wolf catches and scatters them.  This is because he works for pay and has no concern for the sheep.  I am the good shepherd, and I know mine and mine know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I will lay down my life for the sheep.  I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.  These also I must lead, and they will hear my voice, and there will be one flock, one shepherd.  This is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again.  No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own.  I have power to lay it down, and power to take it up again.  This command I have received from my Father."

51. “God allows evil only so as to make something better result from it” (St. Thomas Aquinas).

“God allows evil only so as to make something better result from it” (St. Thomas Aquinas).

YOUCAT Catechism + Catechism of the Catholic Church Lesson 51

Ave Maria series

Divine Providence (continued)

51.  If God is all-knowing and all-powerful, why does he not prevent evil?

“God allows evil only so as to make something better result from it” (St. Thomas Aquinas). 

[309-314, 324]

Photo above: Saint Edith Stein.  Edith and her sister Rosa, born Jewish, converted to the Catholic faith.  They were arrested by the Nazis on August 2, 1942 and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where they died in the gas chamber a week later on August 9.  Edith was canonized by Pope Saint John Paul II in 1998. She is one of the six patron saints of Europe, together with St. Benedict of Nursia, Sts. Cyril and Methodius, St. Bridget of Sweden, and St. Catherine of Siena. …..51

Evil in the world is an obscure and painful mystery.  Even the Crucified asked his Father, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46).  Much about it is incomprehensible.  One thing, though, we know for sure:  God is 100 percent good.  He can never be the originator of something evil.  God created the world to be good, but it is not yet complete.  In violent upheavals and painful processes it is being shaped and moved toward its final perfection.  That may be a better way to classify what the Church calls physical evil, for example, a birth defect, or a natural catastrophe.  Moral evils, in contrast, come about through the misuse of freedom in the world.  “Hell on earth”—child soldiers, suicide bombings, concentration camps—is usually man-made.  The decisive question is therefore not, “How can anyone believe in a good God when there is so much evil?” but rather, “How could a person with a heart and understanding endure life in this world if God did not exist?”  Christ’s death and Resurrection show us that evil did not have the first word, nor does it have the last.  God made absolute good result from the worst evil.  We believe that in the Last Judgment God will put an end to all injustice.  In the life of the world to come, evil no longer has any place and suffering ends.  40, 286-287

“What did not lie in my plan lay in God’s plan.  And the more often something like this happens to me, the livelier becomes the conviction of my faith that—from God’s perspective—nothing is accidental.  St. Edith Stein (1891-1942)

“God whispers to us in our pleasures; speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”  Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963, English writer, author of The Chronicles of Narnia)

309-314, 324

Providence and the scandal of evil.

309 If God the Father almighty, the Creator of the ordered and good world, cares for all his creatures, why does evil exist? To this question, as pressing as it is unavoidable and as painful as it is mysterious, no quick answer will suffice. Only Christian faith as a whole constitutes the answer to this question: the goodness of creation, the drama of sin and the patient love of God who comes to meet man by his covenants, the redemptive Incarnation of his Son, his gift of the Spirit, his gathering of the Church, the power of the sacraments and his call to a blessed life to which free creatures are invited to consent in advance, but from which, by a terrible mystery, they can also turn away in advance. There is not a single aspect of the Christian message that is not in part an answer to the question of evil. –Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition

310 But why did God not create a world so perfect that no evil could exist in it? With infinite power God could always create something better.( Compare St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I,25,6.)¹⁷⁴ But with infinite wisdom and goodness God freely willed to create a world "in a state of journeying" towards its ultimate perfection. In God's plan this process of becoming involves the appearance of certain beings and the disappearance of others, the existence of the more perfect alongside the less perfect, both constructive and destructive forces of nature. With physical good there exists also physical evil as long as creation has not reached perfection.( Compare St. Thomas Aquinas, SCG III,71.)¹⁷⁵ –CCC

311 Angels and men, as intelligent and free creatures, have to journey toward their ultimate destinies by their free choice and preferential love. They can therefore go astray. Indeed, they have sinned. Thus has moral evil, incommensurably more harmful than physical evil, entered the world. God is in no way, directly or indirectly, the cause of moral evil.( Compare St. Augustine, De libero arbitrio 1,1,2: Patrologia Latina 32,1221-1223; St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologia I-II,79,1.)¹⁷⁶ He permits it, however, because he respects the freedom of his creatures and, mysteriously, knows how to derive good from it:

For almighty God. . ., because he is supremely good, would never allow any evil whatsoever to exist in his works if he were not so all-powerful and good as to cause good to emerge from evil itself.( St. Augustine, Enchiridion 3,11: Patrologia Latina 40,236.)¹⁷⁷  –CCC

312 In time we can discover that God in his almighty providence can bring a good from the consequences of an evil, even a moral evil, caused by his creatures: "It was not you", said Joseph to his brothers, "who sent me here, but God. . . You meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive."( Genesis 45:8; Gen 50:20; compare Tobit 12:12 (Vulg.).)¹⁷⁸ From the greatest moral evil ever committed - the rejection and murder of God's only Son, caused by the sins of all men - God, by his grace that "abounded all the more", (Compare Romans 5:20.)¹⁷⁹ brought the greatest of goods: the glorification of Christ and our redemption. But for all that, evil never becomes a good. –CCC

313 "We know that in everything God works for good for those who love him."( Romans 8:28.)¹⁸⁰ The constant witness of the saints confirms this truth:

St. Catherine of Siena said to "those who are scandalized and rebel against what happens to them": "Everything comes from love, all is ordained for the salvation of man, God does nothing without this goal in mind."( St. Catherine of Siena, Dialogue On Providence, ch. IV, 138.)¹⁸¹

St. Thomas More, shortly before his martyrdom, consoled his daughter: "Nothing can come but that which God wills. And I make me very sure that whatsoever that be, seem it ever so bad in sight, it shall indeed be the best."( The Correspondence of Sir Thomas More, ed. Elizabeth F. Rogers (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947), letter 206, lines 661-663.)¹⁸²

Dame Julian of Norwich: "Here I was taught by the grace of God that I should steadfastly keep me in the faith. . . and that at the same time I should take my stand on and earnestly believe in what our Lord shewed in this time - that 'all manner [of] thing shall be well.'"(Julian of Norwich, The Revelations of Divine Love, tr. James Walshe SJ (London: 1961), ch. 32,99-100.)¹⁸³ –CCC

314 We firmly believe that God is master of the world and of its history. But the ways of his providence are often unknown to us. Only at the end, when our partial knowledge ceases, when we see God "face to face",(1 Corinthians 13:12.)¹⁸⁴ will we fully know the ways by which - even through the dramas of evil and sin - God has guided his creation to that definitive sabbath rest(Compare Genesis 2:2.)¹⁸⁵ for which he created heaven and earth. --CCC

IN BRIEF

324 The fact that God permits physical and even moral evil is a mystery that God illuminates by his Son Jesus Christ who died and rose to vanquish evil. Faith gives us the certainty that God would not permit an evil if he did not cause a good to come from that very evil, by ways that we shall fully know only in eternal life. --CCC

50. “We are here to help each other Walk the mile and bear the load”

“We are here to help each other Walk the mile and bear the load”

YOUCAT Catechism + Catechism of the Catholic Church Lesson 50

Ave Maria series

50.  What role does man play in God’s providence?

The completion of creation through divine providence is not something that happens above and beyond us.  God invites us to collaborate in the completion of creation.  [307-308]

1937 during America’s Great Depression. ........Mrs. Hale and oldest son in front of their home near Black River Falls, Wisconsin. This farm house was built with a total expenditure of three dollars in money.  Lee Russell, 1903-1986, photographer. …..50

 “We are pilgrims on a journey, We are trav’lers on the road; We are here to help each other Walk the mile and bear the load” (The Servant Song, verse 2). .....50

Man can reject God’s will.  He does better, though, to become an instrument of God’s love.  Mother Teresa during her lifetime strove to think in this way: “I am only a little pencil in the hand of our Lord.  He may cut or sharpen the pencil.  He may write or draw whatever and whenever he wants.  If the writing or drawing is good, we do not honor the pencil or the material that is used, but rather the one who used it.”  Although God works with us and through us also, nevertheless we must never mistake our own thinking, planning, and doing for the working of God.  God does not need our work, as though he would lack something without it.

[307-308]

GOD CARRIES OUT HIS PLAN: DIVINE PROVIDENCE

Providence and secondary causes

307 To human beings God even gives the power of freely sharing in his providence by entrusting them with the responsibility of "subduing" the earth and having dominion over it.( Compare Genesis 1:26-28.)¹⁶⁸ God thus enables men to be intelligent and free causes in order to complete the work of creation, to perfect its harmony for their own good and that of their neighbors. Though often unconscious collaborators with God's will, they can also enter deliberately into the divine plan by their actions, their prayers and their sufferings.( Compare Colossians 1:24.)¹⁶⁹ They then fully become "God's fellow workers" and co-workers for his kingdom.( 1 Corinthians 3:9; 1 Thessalonians 3:2; Colossians 4:11.)¹⁷⁰ –Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition

308 The truth that God is at work in all the actions of his creatures is inseparable from faith in God the Creator. God is the first cause who operates in and through secondary causes: "For God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure."( Philippians 2:13; compare 1 Corinthians 12:6.)¹⁷¹ Far from diminishing the creature's dignity, this truth enhances it. Drawn from nothingness by God's power, wisdom and goodness, it can do nothing if it is cut off from its origin, for "without a Creator the creature vanishes."( Gaudium et Spes 36 § 3.)¹⁷² Still less can a creature attain its ultimate end without the help of God's grace.( Compare  Matthew 19:26; John 15:5; Jn 14:13)¹⁷³ --CCC