Hunolt Sermons/Volume 10/Sermon 42
FORTY-SECOND SERMON.
ON THE COMPANY OF THE REPROBATE IN HELL.
Subject.
The company of the reprobate is a terrible hell in itself.—Preached on the fourth Sunday in Lent.
Text.
Sequebatur eum multitudo magna.—John vi. 2.
“A great multitude followed Him.”
Introduction.
These good people who followed Our Lord, although they were hungry and had nothing to eat, were still full of courage and consolation, partly because they had with them the Son of God, whose society can easily sweeten every bitterness; partly because there was a great crowd together who were in the same necessity. For it is an old saying and one that experience proves true: “It is consoling to have a companion in suffering.”[1] And it is to this fact that the wicked generally appeal when they are threatened with hell, the intolerable pains of which we have been considering up to this. Oh, they say, as a poor sinner once said to me before his conversion: even if I am lost and have to go to hell, I shall not be the only one; I shall have plenty of companions, and amongst them the greatest and noblest. It must be a pleasant company after all. Ah, what reckless talk! May God keep you and me, my dear brethren, out of that company! If there were not in hell that terrible fire that tortures both soul and body, if there were no gnawing worm of conscience to afflict the damned with the recollection of the happiness they have forfeited, if there were no darkness, nor howling and cursing, nor stench, nor hunger and thirst, if there were no other pain in hell, the company alone that the damned find there would, to my mind, make a hell in itself, as I now proceed to show.
Plan of Discourse.
The company of the reprobate is a terrible hell in itself; let us then be on our guard against it. Such is the whole subject.
O God of mercy! move sinners to true repentance by Thy powerful grace, and all others to avoid sin and the occasions of sin, that none of those who are here present may experience what it is to have to live in the society of the damned. This we ask of Thee through the intercession of Mary and of our holy guardian angels.
Unplesant company causes much disgust here on earth. That there is comfort here on earth in having a companion when one is ailing is true enough, provided the companion is a sympathetic one. But in hell things are quite different. If, I repeat, there were no other torment there except having to live in the society of the damned, that alone would make an intolerable hell for souls. For reflect a moment on what occurs here on earth. Many a one has all his pleasure spoiled, even in the most agreeable society, if one happens to be present against whom he has a grudge, especially if the two enemies, who cannot bear the sight of each other, happen to sit together. Oh, then the best meats lose their savor, the choicest drinks become insipid; every word uttered by the one is a thorn in the side of the other; the hours seem lengthened into years by the efforts at enforced courtesy that have to be made to keep up appearances. And yet either, if he chose, might get up and go away.
As experience shows in unhappy marriages. What torment it must then be for two or more who are at enmity to have ave to live together, as is often the case in unhappy marriages! Infallible is the truth spoken by the Holy Ghost: “It is better to dwell in a wilderness than with a quarrelsome and passionate woman.”[2] And there is not a doubt of it. I often think with heartfelt pity of the poor man who is tied to such a disagreeable partner; he hears nothing at home but nagging and complaining, scolding and abuse; so that he is forced to go out of the house to get a little quiet, nor does he come home except with the greatest reluctance and counting the hours till it is time for him to go out again. And still greater is the pity I feel for the poor wife who, good and innocent as she is, must live with a husband who is addicted to drink, or what is worse, is unfaithful to her, and ill-treats and beats her as if she were a servant or a dog. Deserving indeed of pity is the poor woman, who when she hears her drunken husband knocking at the door, trembles in every limb, and has to make up her mind, as she knows by sad experience, to be dragged along by the hair, or kicked, or beaten. Unhappy companions, I think with deep sympathy, when husband and wife regard each other with mutual hatred and aversion; when both drink to excess and curse and abuse each other, and fight and tear each other by the hair; while the children and servants follow the example of their parents and superiors in cursing, and abusing, and fighting; and yet all have to live together. Truly that is a great cross!
The torment thus caused shown by a simile. In ancient times the laws ordained that parricides should be tied up in a leathern sack with a living serpent, a cock, and an ape, and be thrown into the sea, in order that when those animals, that are natural foes to each other, should begin to fight the criminal might be torn to pieces between them. That is a picture of the unhappy household I have been describing: with this difference, however, that the murderer soon loses his life along with his companions, while the others have to drag along a painful existence in mutual hatred, quarreling, cursing, and fighting. For my part I should prefer to die rather than to live constantly in such a house and witness those disorderly scenes, not to speak of taking part in them. It is an old saying that there is hell in the house of two married people who hate each other.
Far greater shall be the torment caused in hell by the society of the damned. But, my dear brethren, is it really a hell after all? Oh, no! quite different is the society that £he divine justice has, as it were, sewed up in a sack in order to punish His enemies for eternity. According to the testimony of God Himself by the Prophet Job, it is a land “where…no order, but everlasting horror dwelleth.”[3] Just as in heaven the blessed, united by an eternal and perfect love of God, rejoice in each other’s happiness, and thus receive an accidental and continual joy from the happy company in which they are, so on the contrary in hell, the dwelling of disorder and confusion, the damned shall regard each other with hatred and aversion, and thus add to the torments they have to suffer. “As a bundle of thorns they shall be burnt with fire;”[4] such are the words of the Prophet Isaias. Mark this: like sharp thorns they shall pierce each other, and rend each other like mad dogs: “Everyone shall eat the flesh of his own arm:” (that is, as commentators say, children, brethren, and near friends) “Manasses, Ephraim, and Ephraim Manasses.”[5] Now if it is reckoned as a hell for two married people to live together in strife and hatred, what must that hell be where there are millions of damned together, who regard each other with the utmost rage and hatred, where the presence of the one is intolerable to the other, and yet they have no hope of being separated for all eternity, but must live together, packed like herrings in a barrel, amidst incessant cursing and imprecations, tearing, biting, and rending each other in their fury?
Even those who are on the best terms here shall then hate each But, we might ask, shall not those boon companions, those Even those jovial souls who spent the time so pleasantly together on earth, shall not they find some alleviation of their misery in being together in hell? And they who were inflamed during life with other forever. an impure passion so that they could hardly bear to be separated for one hour, and were ready to share all they had, nay, to give up their very lives for each other, shall they have no consolation or pleasure in being together in hell, in seeing that their torments are shared between them? For we know that people of that kind are wont to comfort each other in sorrow, and thus to lessen considerably the weight of the blow. Shall it not be so, I ask, in hell? Ah, nothing of the kind! All this intimacy and friendship, this love and confidence, shall disappear amongst the damned, or to speak more correctly, this former love and confidence, intimacy and friendship, shall rather increase their mutual hatred and aversion, their madness and despair, their curses and imprecations. For it is but right that they who in any way have been instruments and co-operators during life in tasting the forbidden pleasure and offending an infinite God, should also in hell be instruments and co-operators in torturing each other and satisfying the just anger of God.
Especially they who lived together in impure love. Mark this well, O impure man and woman! who now receive so many fatherly warnings and exhortations in sermons and in the confessional, to leave the proximate occasion of sin, to give up the unlawful intimacy, to turn out of the house the person who has captivated you with impure passion (for until you have done this you cannot receive absolution, even if you told your sins to the Pope himself and he pronounced the form of absolution over you), and each time think or say: I cannot abandon that person; my love is too great; I cannot, even if I saw hell opened before me. Nay, so far do you go in your madness sometimes, that you do not hesitate to say or think: I do not care about hell; I should rather be damned (what a thing for pious ears to listen to!) if I was sure of having that person in hell with me. Ah, senseless creature! I sincerely wish that this foolish desire of yours may never be fulfilled! But if it should happen to your eternal misfortune that you are condemned to hell with the object of your sinful love—and that will certainly be the case if you continue in your present mode of life without doing penance for the abominable sins you are committing,—then I tell you, and you may be quite sure of what I say, that there will be no demon in hell for whom you will have more hatred and fear, no demon who will torture and afflict you so cruelly as the person whom you now love in such a senseless and brutish manner. The beautiful countenance that you now call angelic will become so hideous and deformed in that place of torments that the most revolting of the demons, Lucifer himself, will appear to you fair and comely beside it. The eyes that you now so foolishly liken to the stars in the sky will then shoot forth flashes of lightning to fill you with anguish and dread. Those comely locks that now captivate your eyes shall then be changed into writhing serpents to bite and gnaw at you for all eternity. The mouth that now is full of endearing expressions, and lends itself so easily to your caresses, will then vomit forth curses and imprecations on you.
They shall curse each other forever. Accursed seducer, it will cry out; do I see you here? You have brought me to the abyss of hell! I have satisfied your brutish passion through love of money, or the hope of marriage, or human respect, or poverty, or mere sensuality. Accursed wretch! now I will revenge myself on you for all eternity! And you in turn will exclaim: wanton woman! you are the cause of my damnation; it is you alone I have to thank for being in hell; your indecency in dress, the unchaste songs you sang, the letters you wrote, your flatteries and caresses, your efforts to please me brought me down to the depths of vice, and from there into hell! For all eternity I shall give you no rest; you shall be the object of my undying rage and hatred. In a word, the very presence of the person whom you now find so hard to leave will then be to you a hell in itself. A certain prince who was taken prisoner in battle, seeing his captor standing before him, cried out with averted countenance: take away that man out of my sight, or else have pity on me and strike me dead! Unhappy sinner! how many thousand times you will wish to die in hell; or since death will then be an impossibility for you, what a great alleviation you would think it to have that person removed from your sight whom you now call your treasure and the idol of your heart! But all in vain: you will be able to curse and revile that hellish fury, but her society you will never be freed from for all eternity.
So, too, shall husbands and wives. But, we might think and ask, how will it be then with those who lived together on earth in lawful, honorable, dutiful love, such as should exist between man and wife, father and son, mother and daughter, brothers and sisters, friends and relations? Will not these, at least if they are together in hell, console each other somewhat in their misfortunes by mutual sympathy? No, dear Christians; in that place where, according to the words of God Himself, there is no order nor reason, but eternal confusion, all friendship and relationship, all love and sympathy shall lose their names and be changed into bitter anger and hatred, especially if one of the formerly beloved persons was the occasion of sin to the other. Accursed wife, the husband will cry out in rage and hatred, must I have you always at my side to increase my torments? Would that I had never seen you, for then I should not perhaps be here; for your sake I often forgot my duty to God and my own conscience; to save you trouble or to retain your affection I have often done what I knew to be unlawful; to maintain you in idleness, frivolity, wasting your time paying and receiving visits, gambling, and amusing yourself, extravagance in dress, I have had recourse to unlawful means to make money, and have been obliged to withhold from Jesus Christ, in the persons of the poor and needy, what belonged to Him by right. Accursed wife, another will cry out, your obstinacy and disobedience, your spirit of contradiction, your bad temper, your fondness for company, your freedom of manner with others whom you cared for more than for me, have been the occasion of the many sins that I committed against my marriage vows; and now you have brought me into this place of torments! And you, accursed husband, the wife will exclaim, you are the cause of my eternal damnation because you allowed me too much liberty, or encouraged me to lead a vain, unchristian life; for your sake I have neglected many acts of devotion, many a confession and Communion, lost many a sermon, and indulged our children in all kinds of vanities and pleasures; the drunken and debauched habits that led you so often into leaving me alone at home with the children, the cruelty with which you acted towards me as if I were your servant or your dog, drove me to sadness and despair, and to many sins that sprang therefrom, and finally into this abyss of hell!
Parents and children. Accursed son, a father will say, it is on your account that I am damned, for I often sacrificed my conscience in my anxiety to provide for your future; frequently had I made the resolution of restoring ill-gotten goods to their lawful owners, as I was bound to do by the divine law, but my inordinate love for you deterred me each time; I was so desirous of leaving you something at my death that I kept what I had no right to, and am now in hell. Accursed father, the son will reply, you rather are the cause of my ruin; if you had kept me under better restraint, and led me in my youth to fear God, and kept me away from sin and dangerous occasions; if you had taken more care of my spiritual and less of my temporal needs; if you had not prevented me from following my religious vocation, I should now be in heaven, and should have escaped the eternal torments which are caused me by your hateful presence in hell! Accursed daughter, a mother will say, my foolish love for you has been my ruin; I allowed you to spend your time in idleness, vanity, and worldliness, and did not chastise you for your bad and scandalous conduct! Truly, accursed mother, the daughter will reply, you should have kept me in check; it was your duty as a mother; if you had been attentive to it I should not now be lying in hell. The bad example you gave me, the dangerous company into which you brought me, the pride you inspired me with, the vanity in dress that you encouraged or permitted in me by your silence, has brought me to eternal ruin, to everlasting fire! Cruel mother! did you bring me into the world that you might have a hellish fury to be your companion here, and that one of us might eternally torture the other? Accursed the day and the hour in which you gave me birth! Such is the manner in which brothers and sisters, friends and relations will rage and storm at each other.
How terrible the company of the demons must be! O ye demons! you are not needed in hell, since the wicked themselves will thus torture each other unceasingly! It is true; still those evil spirits will also enter into that dreadful company, not merely as hateful and odious enemies, but also as cruel executioners of the divine justice, and they will strain every nerve to heap torments on the damned. For this their terrible appearance should alone suffice, for they are so hideous that the seraphic St. Francis, to whom a demon once showed himself in visible shape, acknowledged to his companion Ægidius, that if God had not miraculously preserved his life, the mere sight of such a hellish monster for one moment would have been enough to deprive him of life through fear and terror. St. Antoninus writes of a priest who once saw a devil, and who said that he would rather leap into a flaming furnace than look at that evil spirit or one like him again. St. Catharine of Siena in her dialogue with Our Lord offered to walk on burning coals till the day of judgment rather than look at a devil again. Now, I ask, if one demon seems so terrible to a mortal who merely looks at him, what must it be in hell where there are so many millions of evil spirits who not only terrify the damned by their appearance, but also add to their torments by their laughter and sneering, and by the tortures they inflict on them?
Thus the company of the damned must be itself an intolerable hell. Hell, what a sad and dismal dwelling-place thou art! How terrible to have to live forever amidst all imaginable torments, in the society of countless companions filled with undying hatred for and torturing each other unceasingly! The Catholic Church permits married people who have a great aversion for each other to be separated as far as living together is concerned, although the marriage-tie can never be dissolved; and she does so through a compassionate desire of saving them from the heavy cross they would have to carry in being in each other’s company. Oh, if the damued had that consolation, and could separate themselves from their hated companions, and hide away in some crevice of the earth to suffer their hellish pains by themselves, they would be freed from one of their worst and most bitter punishments! But any wish or hope of that kind would be utterly vain for them. “The wicked shall see, and shall be angry,” such are the words of the Prophet David; “he shall gnash with his teeth and pine away.” For all eternity he shall behold his hated companions, and gnash his teeth against them with rage and despair, and be filled with unconquerable loathing for them; but all his desires to be freed from them shall be unavailing, for “the desire of the wicked shall perish.”[6]
How foolish to comfort one’s self with the thought of the company to be met with in hell! Where are you now, O sinners! with your former reasoning? Oh, you say, what does it matter if I should go to hell? I shall find plenty of comrades there, and amongst them the richest and noblest of the world to bear me company. O foolish and unhappy people! Do you talk and mock in that style when during your life-time a public calamity scourges the city or country? when, for instance, a fire breaks out and consumes a whole street, and your own house is burnt with the rest? Then every one of you would run out at once and leave everything for the sake of saving dear life, regardless of the poverty and distress that must ensue from the loss of property. When the ship, overwhelmed by the raging waves, begins to sink, every one does his best to save his life by swimming to land. When in war-time the hostile army is engaged in plundering and devastating a country, the inhabitants do what they can to save their own effects. Now in such circumstances why do not people say or think: what is it to me? Even if I do lose my life by fire, I shall not be the only one; I shall have many companions in misfortune. If I am drowned, all the others who are in the ship with me shall share in my fate. If the soldiers plunder me, many others shall be brought to ruin with me. Why, I ask, do not people try to console themselves in that manner under the circumstances? Because the consolation is then utterly inadequate. It is only when there is question of the eternal ruin of the immortal soul, of the eternal loss of the joys of heaven, of an eternal fire with the demons in hell, that men can laugh, and joke, and comfort themselves with the thought of the companions who are to share in their damnation, and who must suffer the same loss, the same ruin, the same eternal pains. Then they can say: I am not the only one. Truly, O wicked man! you are not the only one who shall burn forever in hell; you have entered on the broad way to your destruction, of which Our Lord speaks in the Gospel of St. Matthew: “Wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat.”[7] Truly, sinner, you shall not be alone in hell; for many, very many, nay, the majority of men shall be there with you; if you were there alone there might still be some consolation for you; but as it is, the society of so many shall be, as we have seen already, a new and an intolerable hell for you, and it shall be all the more painful as the number of your companions is greater. According to the teaching of St. Thomas, the multitude of the damned increases the pain of each one of them.[8]
Exhortation often to think on this. You should reflect on this, O sinner! who are now in the proximate occasion of sin, so that the fear of being condemned to that unhappy company may urge yon to give up that sinful intimacy. You should reflect on this, O seducer of souls! who by unchaste songs and conversation, or impure books, or diabolical teaching, or vain and scandalous dress, or by giving bad example, are in any way the means of leading the innocent astray, and are thus actually adding to the number of the reprobate to your own greater future torment. Reflect on this, you who now are so fond of dancing, debauchery, drunkenness, and gambling. If the only mischief done on those occasions were the loss of the precious time that God has granted men for their salvation, it would be bad enough and quite unworthy of a Christian. Reflect on this, O parents! when you take with you or allow your sons and daughters to go into dangerous society; when you send your young daughters into foreign countries that they may learn to know the world, away from under your eyes, and to be able to live like others. Truly, they learn to know the world all too soon in that manner; for, generally speaking, as experience teaches, they come back vain worldlings, who have learned nothing but to live and dress according to the corrupt and perverse fashions of the world, to show themselves off before others, and to lose their time in idleness and walking about the streets. O unhappy father who has such children! O miserable mother who has nursed them! O unhappy marriage whose fruit is even one child that must burn forever in hell, in the society of the reprobate! Last of all, reflect on this, you married people who have lost your mutual love for each other, and have thus embittered your lives! Reflect on this, all of you who have to live or deal with any persons to whom you have an aversion; think, I say, in order to preserve yourselves in Christian meekness and humility, and to turn to the good of your souls the annoyances you experience from such persons: ah, why should I trouble myself about these people? They are not by any means as bad as the society of the damned in hell. May God keep you and me from that terrible fate, that we may never know by experience what a fearful torment, what an intolerable hell is the company of the reprobate!
Prayer to the saints to obtain for us grace that we may avoid that company. And you, O saints! chosen children of God, who are now beyond all danger of sinning, and are enjoying the happy company of each other, and of Jesus and Mary, in the kingdom of heaven, oh, think of us, poor, miserable sinners, who still wander about in this vale of tears in countless dangers and occasions of being lost forever! Pray for us to the God whom you love so much, and whom you behold face to face, that we may all repent sincerely of our sins, carefully avoid all dangerous occasions in future, and serve our God constantly to the end, that not one of us may be banished to that accursed company in hell, but that as we are now assembled in this church, so we may all one day meet in your society, and rejoice forever in heaven. Amen.
Another introduction to the same sermon for the third Sunday after Epiphany.
Text.
Filii autem regni ejicientur in tenebras exteriores.—Matt. viii. 12.
“But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into the exterior darkness.”
Introduction.
Exterior darkness, in which weeping and gnashing of teeth shall be the eternal refrain! Hell! what a terrible place thou art! And who are to be cast forth? The children of the kingdom; that is, many of those who, in preference to others, were called to the light of the true faith, and were richly equipped with the means of gaining heaven, if they had only wished to use them; these shall be condemned to hell on account of their wicked lives. Ah, my dear brethren, let us serve God zealously during the short and uncertain time of our lives, that we may not be amongst the number of those unhappy ones. I have promised to speak to you of a society, the like of which has never been seen on earth, a society that all men should do their utmost to avoid; that is, the society of those who must live together in the exterior darkness of hell. Have we not the greatest reason for most carefully avoiding all sin, that none of us may have to dwell in that wretched society? Society, I say; for even if there were no other torment in hell, etc. Continues as above.
- ↑ Dulce est habere socium in pœna.
- ↑ Melius est habitare in terra deserta, quam cum muliere rixosa et iracunda.—Prov. xxi. 19.
- ↑ Ubi nullus ordo, sed sempiternus horror inhabitat.—Job x. 22.
- ↑ Spinæ congregatæ igni comburentur.—Is. xxxiii. 12.
- ↑ Unusquisque carnem brachii sui vorabit: Manasses, Ephraim, et Ephraim Manasses.—Is. ix. 20.
- ↑ Peccator videbit et irascetur, dentibus suis fremet et tabescet, desiderium peccatorum peribit.—Ps. cxi. 10.
- ↑ Lata porta et spatiosa via eat, quæ ducit ad perditionem, et multi sunt qui intrant per eam.—Matt. vii. 13.
- ↑ Ex damnatorum multitudine pœna singulorum augetur.—D. Thom. in 4. dist. 50. Q. 2. A. 1.