Finally, the torment of Hell is greatly augmented by the eternal shame which will be its portion.
St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that the sins of each one will be as fully known to the others as if they could behold them with their bodily eyes. Every one can imagine what anguish this must be. For what is so painful on earth as to be put to open shame?
To a man who has lost his good name life is not worth living ; it is only a burden to him. In former times, in some countries, it was customary to brand evil-doers, robbers, for instance, with a mark on the forehead or the shoulder. What ignominy for any one who had a spark of self-respect! Whenever anybody looked at him, he must have blushed crimson.
The devil will brand all the reprobate with the mark of shame on their foreheads, or on that part of the body wherewith they sinned, in order that all the shameful deeds they perpetrated in their life time may be made known. It is this everlasting disgrace which God foretells to the sinner by the mouth of His prophet: "I will bring an everlasting reproach upon you, and a perpetual shame which shall never be forgotten" (Jer. xxiii. 40). Let the damned do what they will, no effort on their part will ever avail to efface this mark, or to conceal it from their fellow-sufferers. Thus, as St. Ephrem says, this shame and infamy will be more insupportable
