Are you on the road to Hell?
“Today, I was led by an Angel to the chasms of hell. It is a place of great suffering, awesomely large and extensive,” wrote the modern day Catholic mystic, Saint Faustina, in her spiritual diary.
St. Faustina saw seven kinds of suffering in hell.
“The first kind of suffering I saw, and the main suffering that constitutes hell, is the loss of God;
“the second is perpetual remorse of conscience;
“the third is that one’s condition will never change;
“the fourth is the fire will penetrate the soul without destroying it, it is a terrible suffering, since it is a spiritual fire lit by God’s anger;
“the fifth suffering is continual darkness and a terrible suffocating smell, and despite the darkness, the devils and the souls of the damned see each other and all the evil, both of others and their own;
“the sixth suffering is the constant company of Satan;
“the seventh suffering is horrible despair, hatred of God, vile words, curses and blasphemies. These are the sufferings suffered by all the damned together, but that is not the end of the sufferings,” St. Faustina wrote.
“But I noticed one thing, that most of the souls there are those who disbelieved that there is a hell,” wrote St. Faustina about a common trait of hell’s prisoners.
Where exactly is eternal hell located?
The question as to the place where hell is located has been a matter of conjecture among the Fathers of the Church and theologians.
St. John Chrysostom believed hell was located outside the bounds of this universe.
A significant number of theologians believe that hell is located within the earth itself.
Remember, when Lucifer was cast out of heaven, Scripture says that the fallen angel and his cohorts were cast into earth. “The huge dragon, the ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, who deceived the whole world, was thrown down to earth, and its angels were thrown down with it,” Revelations 12: 9.
When the children of Fatima saw a vision of hell in 1917, the earth opened up and they saw hell down and inside the earth.
Whether hell is located outside the bounds of the universe or within the bowels of this earth, what Catholics should know for sure is that immediately after our judgement before God lost souls are snatched by Satan and driven into hell forever.
St. Faustina warns us that we cannot avoid hell by claiming that we didn’t know it exists.