From the Desk of Father Martin, December 11

Praised be Jesus Christ! “Hell is not a subject to be avoided; it is a place to be avoided. Thinking about Hell is actually a very good idea. It’s a good way to keep ourselves out of it.” Dale Ahlquist spoke these words and they give us food for thought as we continue our meditation on the four last things (death, judgment, Heaven and Hell). For the record, Ahlquist is the president of the G.K. Chesterton Society (www.chesterton.org) and one of the most delightful speakers around. Speaking of Chesterton, he wrote a fabulous book titled The Ball and the Cross which tells the tale of two men willing to duel to the death over the existence of God. The atheist and the believer are chased from one town to the next by people who find it ludicrous that anyone would take such things so seriously. And isn’t that the problem these days – not that much has changed in the many millennia of human history – Socrates famously quipped that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” Our topic of hell, for instance, is not one that many of us give much thought. There were times when fire and brimstone homilies had people shaking in their boots, but those days are gone and in their wake we rightfully realize that fear is not the best motivator. Just the same, some fear and trembling help us to approach life with the right amount of seriousness – that our actions could lead us and others to an eternal punishment more horrible than we could ever fathom. C.S. Lewis gave a very famous sermon in 1942 titled “The Weight of Glory” and the following lengthy quote deserves more than a cursory glance: “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.” As Lewis, Chesterton, and Socrates make clear, our actions determine our fate. For those who deny the existence of Hell, they unknowingly also deny the existence of freedom; if there is no Hell, then it does not matter how I live or how I treat my fellow man – for better or worse I am going to Heaven because there is no alternative. Even without Divine Revelation, the existence of Hell is a reasonable thing to believe because it means “everybody won’t be treated all the same.” The preceding words are lyrics from Johnny Cash’s song “The Man Comes Around,” which is a meditation on the Book of Revelation. Check it out sometime – you’ll never read Revelation the same way again. Heavenly Father, convince us of the slavery of evil so as to avoid it and the eternal punishment it brings!
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Your friend in Christ,
Father Martin