Can we presume that we will be saved, and enter the bliss of Heaven? The answer to that question clearly is - NO. Jesus Himself, in the Gospel spells it out to us: “many will try to enter and will not succeed.” He goes on to say: “you may find yourself knocking on the door, saying, “Lord, open to us”… but he will reply, “I do not know where you come from. Away from me, all you wicked men!”Contrary, then, to the belief of many, not everyone who dies is guaranteed a place in Heaven, but, because of the choices they have made in this life, wilful choices against Christ’s teaching, choices to embrace serious sin, and thereby reject the love of God, some souls will find themselves facing the prospect of eternal damnation in Hell.
The damnation of a human soul is the greatest of all torments, and the greatest of tragedies, where a child of God, so cherished by Him that He offered His own life on the Cross for its salvation, never comes to see the light of God’s face, is separated from His love, and remains trapped, for ever, in the misery which it has created for itself. Hell is the consequence of unrepented mortal sin, a state of torment and punishment described in graphic detail by Our Blessed Lord, who speaks of “weeping and grinding of teeth,” and of “hell fire”, and which the Church confirms to be a state of “eternal death” from which there is “no turning back.”Seeing the horror of the teaching on Hell, some object, and say - I don’t believe that a loving God would condemn a soul to Hell for all eternity. Those who level such hollow criticisms at Christ’s and the Church’s teaching fail to realise, however, that, really, it is the individual soul itself who chooses to be damned - God merely confirms, in His justice, the decision made by that soul of it’s own free will, having given that soul the freedom during it’s life on earth to either embrace His love or to turn away from it - and all the while trying, by His grace, to secure it’s salvation.
As unpalatable a thought as it may be, Hell is a reality, and we have only this life, to make the most of, to make sure that we don’t find ourselves facing that nightmarish prospect.
Jesus exhorts us to “enter by the narrow door” if we want to reach the Heaven for which we were created. He exhorts us, in other words to live His teachings and the teachings of His Church - to not dismiss them, or pick and choose from them, but to embrace them all, and to do our very best with His help and His grace to put these teachings into practice. He tells us, that this will involve renouncing ourselves, making sacrifices, carrying our Cross. He tells us that the way will be hard and demanding. He knows that we will struggle. But what He assures us of, too, precisely because He loves us and desperately seeks our salvation, is that He is with us on this journey to strengthen and support us, to encourage us, and to pick us up, and help us to start again when we fall.
No soul need ever be damned because God has given us all we need in the Sacraments to secure our salvation, and perhaps most especially in the Sacrament of Confession - but if we will not use these gifts that God gives us, if we are too proud to humble ourselves and ask pardon of the Lord, or if we are so stubborn and arrogant as to convince ourselves that what we do is not sinful, even when we know that Our Mother, the Church, teaches us that it is, then we will have only ourselves to reproach when we fail to reach our heavenly homeland.
