Hell is Mercy
I would like to thank my son, Richard, who came up with the topic of this post and contributed to its development and writing.
If you Google the phrase “Hell is mercy,” you’ll get about 2,500 hits. Most of them are sites using the phrase, “Everything on this side hell is mercy.” The sites are typically religious in nature and use the phrase as a part of a discourse on the mercy of God.
Though the phrase “Everything on this side hell is mercy” is pithy and probably well-intentioned, it demonstrates a gross underestimation of the Mercy of God. It suggests that hell itself is not mercy and that God is not all merciful because he created Hell. The phrase underestimates the mercy of God, because even hell itself is proof of God’s mercy.
God is all just, all holy, all merciful, as He is infinitely perfect.
In order to determine the complete truth of this statement, we must first determine the nature of hell itself.
How and why did hell come into existence? Was it created to serve as a place of eternal torment? The answers to these questions are discussed below.
Before creation, and before time, there was God, and only God. In his wisdom, and out of love, he created the angels by merely willing them into being. The angels existed in a state of communion with God and there was no other possible state of existence.
If we imagine metaphysical states (which exist outside of space) as locations, there was only one location. There was only Heaven. The only ‘place’ for the angels to be was in Heaven while in communion with God.
However, some of the angels were unhappy with this state of being. The angels were given a “moment” of free will, a “moment” of choice. This moment was the war of heaven - The battle between good and evil. Before and outside the existence of time angels made the choice to either remain in communion with, or to turn away from, God.
Revelation 12:7-9
Then war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels battled against the dragon. The dragon and its angels fought back, but they did not prevail and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. 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.
Luke 10:18
Jesus said, "I have observed Satan fall like lightning from the sky.”
God, who is pure love, realized that some of his creations did not want to remain with Him. Some angels wished to separate themselves from Him. Since the angels exist outside of time, they will never change their minds, because there is no time in which to do so.
God had three options.
1. Being all powerful, He could compel all the angels to desire to remain in communion with Him. However, like a loving father, He does not force his children to love Him.
2. He could destroy the rebellious angels in a mere act of will. However, God, being perfect, and being in love with His creations – His children - would not bring himself to erase them from existence. Like a loving father, he would never destroy even the most rebellious of children.
3. Finally he could set apart a place for them that was apart from Him. It is the only place in the universe, or in any dimension, where God’s presence and God’s grace was not felt.
In an act of mercy, He created a place for them. God crafted Hell as an act of love. In His infinite wisdom He created a ‘place’ in which he was not.
God knew that the angels could not understand the effects of separation from Him. Having never known existence without God, the fallen angels could not comprehend the suffering that would await them apart from God.
The battle for Heaven is a metaphor. The fallen angels simply turned away from God and were then in Hell.
Then God created time, space, and man. His only desire was for us to desire to be in communion with Him.
Catechism of the Catholic Church
54 "God, who creates and conserves all things by his Word, provides men with constant evidence of himself in created realities. And furthermore, wishing to open up the way to heavenly salvation - he manifested himself to our first parents from the very beginning." He invited them to intimate communion with himself and clothed them with resplendent grace and justice
God loves his creations and gives them free will. He does not force his creations to exist in communion with him. He will not force them to love Him. Such love would be false and hollow.
When man sins, it is a consequence of refusing God’s grace. In refusing His grace, we also turn away from God’s love.
In St. Faustina’s diary, she recounts her vision of Jesus telling her, "Oh, how painful it is to Me that souls so seldom unite themselves to Me in Holy Communion. I wait for souls, and they are indifferent toward Me. I love them tenderly and sincerely, and they distrust Me. I want to lavish My graces on them, and they do not want to accept them. They treat Me as a dead object, whereas My Heart is full of love and mercy.”
For men who choose to separate themselves from God, God could end their eternal existence or allow them to freely separate themselves from Him.
Catechism of the Catholic Church
1057 Hell's principal punishment consists of eternal separation from God in whom alone man can have the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs.
679 Christ is Lord of eternal life. Full right to pass definitive judgment on the works and hearts of men belongs to him as redeemer of the world. He "acquired" this right by his cross. The Father has given "all judgment to the Son".
Yet the Son did not come to judge, but to save and to give the life he has in himself. By rejecting grace in this life, one already judges oneself, receives according to one's works, and can even condemn oneself for all eternity by rejecting the Spirit of love.
1037 God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end. In the Eucharistic liturgy and in the daily prayers of her faithful, the Church implores the mercy of God, who does not want "any to perish, but all to come to repentance (Peter 3:9)."
In her diary, St. Faustina wrote, “God's mercy sometimes touches the sinner at the last moment in a wondrous and mysterious way. Outwardly, it seems as if everything were lost, but it is not so. The soul, illumined by a ray of God's powerful final grace, turns to God in the last moment with such a power of love that, in an instant, it receives from God forgiveness of sin and punishment, while outwardly it shows no sign either of repentance or of contrition, because souls [at that stage] no longer react to external things. Oh, how beyond comprehension is God's mercy! But-horror!-there are also souls who voluntarily and consciously reject and scorn this grace! Although a person is at the point of death, the merciful God gives the soul that interior vivid moment, so that if the soul is willing, it has the possibility of returning to God. But sometimes, the obduracy in souls is so great that consciously they choose hell; they [thus] make useless all the prayers that other souls offer to God for them and even the efforts of God Himself.”
God does not so much condemn us to hell, but we choose to go there. God, in his infinite mercy allows us to separate ourselves from him.
Conclusion
Hell is Mercy
With the next post I’ll expand upon the concept that God demonstrates His love by allowing Hell to exist.
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