Booklet compiled and typeset by Robert T. Hart

Ignatian Retreat that a friend of mine attended. He was so

impressed with the story that he asked for a copy and shared it

with me. I in turn thought it worthy to make available and

thus compiled this booklet.

While this booklet in its format is copyrighted, I hereby

permission.

To purchase printed copies of this booklet, contact:

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What is related in these pages is of the greatest importance.

Though the events in question took place in Germany, what we

give here is, as far as we are able, a faithful translation from the

original language. Translations have also been made into

various other languages.

The “Nihil obstat” was granted by the Vicar of Rome, and

the “Imprimatur” of the Pope’s Vicar for Rome guarantees the

text free from doctrinal error.

These frightening pages must sound a WARNING for us,

describing as they do a way of life which is very common in

present-day society.

The Divine Mercy, in allowing these revelations, lifts for us a

corner of the veil hiding those most awesome mysteries which

await us all at the term of our days on earth.

Claire and Annette were two girls working for a firm in

southern Germany. They were not particularly close friends, but

simply observed normal everyday courtesies towards each other.

However, working as they did side by side each day, they

naturally got around to exchanging views on life, etc. Claire

confessed openly that she was a Christian and she considered it

her duty to instruct her colleague and to call her charitably back

into line when she treated matters of religion lightly or superficially.

Thus they spent some time together until Annette married

and gave up her job to go and live elsewhere.

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That was in 1937. In the autumn of the same year Claire

was spending her holidays beside Lake Garda when, towards

the middle of September, her mother wrote from home with the

sad news that Annette had been killed in an automobile accident

and had been buried the day before.

Claire was horrified by the news, knowing as she did how

little her friend had cared about her religion. Had she been

ready to appear before God? What had been the state of her

soul at the moment of her unexpected death?

The next morning Claire heard Mass, offered her Holy

Communion for her unfortunate friend and prayed fervently for

her soul. But that very night, ten minutes after midnight, the

following vision came to her.

have come to tell you that and to speak to you at length about it,

but do not think I am doing it out of friendship. We who are here

I am because I am forced to. I am acting now as ‘a part of that

power which always wills evil, yet does good.’ To be honest I

would like you too to be cast into this place where I am to spend

eternity. Do not be surprised that I should say that. Here we all

think that way. Our will is irrevocably directed towards evil – at

least what you call ‘evil.’ Even if we happen to do something

good, as I am doing now by letting you know what goes on in

Annette continues: Do you remember when we met four

years ago in southern Germany? You were twenty-three, and

you had already been there six months when I arrived. As I was

a newcomer, you sometimes got me out of scrapes, and you put

me in touch with good people, whatever ‘good’ may mean.

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I used to praise you for your ‘love for you neighbor’. How

ridiculous! Your good turns were just a matter of pure form; in

fact I was already beginning to suspect as much. Here we know

of no goodness in anybody.

You already know something about my early life, so now I

will tell you the rest. If my parents had had their way, I should

never have been born. They felt my birth was somehow

shameful. My sisters were already fourteen and fifteen when I

appeared on the scene. Oh, if only I never had been born!! Why

can’t I just stop existing now and get away from these torments?

No pleasure could compare with that of being able to reduce my

being to dust, like a layer of ash that the wind blows away! But I

have to go on existing. I have to exist like this, the way I made

myself, an existence I wrecked!

My father and mother were still young when they left the

country to go and live in the town, but both of them had already

stopped going to church, and a good thing too!! They got

friendly with other non-churchgoers. They first met in a dance

hall, and at the end of six months they ‘had to get married.’

They brought away just enough religion from the marriage

ceremony to take my mother to Sunday Mass maybe twice a

year. She never really taught me to pray. The only things that

interested her were the day-to-day material tasks that had to be

done, even though we did not have to worry about money.

Those words — ‘pray’, ‘Mass’, ‘religious instruction’,

‘Church’ — I find it unspeakably revolting to utter them. I

loathe it all. I hate people who go to Church. In fact, for that

matter, I hate everybody and everything.

The fact is that everything is a source of pain for us.

Everything we learned before our death, every memory of things

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we saw or knew is like a cruel flame. And in every one of these

memories we see the graces that were offered to us, the graces we

cannot walk upright. We are spiritually in chains, and we look

with horror, with ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth’, on the ruins of

our lives. All that is left for us is hate and torment; do you

understand? Here we drink in hate like water, even among

ourselves. Above all we hate God, and I will tell you why. The

elect, in Heaven, cannot help loving him, because they see Him

unveiled in all His dazzling beauty. That gives them indescribable

happiness. We know it and that knowledge drives us into a fury.

Here on earth, those who know God through creation and

Revelation can love Him, but they do not have to. The believer —

and it makes me grind my teeth to say it — the believer who in his

meditation contemplates Christ with His arms outstretched on the

Cross will end up loving Him. But the man to whom God comes

like a hurricane, a Chastiser, a Righteous Avenger; the man who

God has rejected as He did us, that man can only hate Him

all the strength of a freely-made decision to be cut off from Him.

We made that decision with one dying breath. Even now we

would not wish to change it, nor shall we ever wish to do so.

Do you understand now why Hell is eternal? It is because

our obstinacy will go on forever.

Because I am forced to I must add that God is merciful, even

to us. I say I am ‘forced’ because, although I am in control of

what I tell you, I am still not allowed to lie, as I should like to. I

am telling you many things against my will, and I have to hold

back the flood of abuse I should like to spew forth. God was

merciful in not giving us time to do all the evil that our ill-will

would have had us do. Had we done it, it would have added to

our faults and so to our punishment. In fact, God either caused

us to die young, as I did, or He brought in some other kind of

extenuating circumstances. Even now He shows Himself

merciful towards us by not making us go any closer to Him than

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we are here in this far-off place of Hell. That lessens our

torment. Every step closer to God would cause me greater pain

than you would feel walking up close to a red hot brazier.

You were shocked once when we were out walking and I

told you that a few days before my First Communion my father

had said to me, ‘My dear Annette, do get a pretty dress. All the

rest is just a farce.’ Because you were shocked I was almost

ashamed. Now the whole thing seems laughable.

The only sensible thing about the whole business was that

children were not admitted to Communion before they were

twelve. Well, by that age I was already crazy about worldly

pleasures, so I did not worry at all about not taking religion

seriously and I did not attach much importance to my First

Communion. It makes us furious when we see that nowadays

many children of seven go to Communion, and we do all we can

to persuade people that at that age their powers of reason are not

yet sufficiently developed. They must have time to commit a

as it would if their souls were still living by faith, hope, and

If you remember, I was already thinking along those lines when I

was on earth.

I have already mentioned my father. He often used to fight

with my mother. I did not say much to you about it because I

was ashamed. How ridiculous, to be ashamed of something

evil!! It is all the same to us in this place.

My parents no longer even slept in the same room. I was in

with my mother, and my father had the room next door, so that

he could come in as late as he liked. He used to drink heavily,

and he was squandering all of our money on alcohol. My sisters

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both went out to work because they said they needed the money,

and my mother took a job to bring something in as well.

During the last year of his life my father often used to beat

my mother when she would not let him have any money. On the

other hand, he was always kind to me. One day, — I told you

about this, and you were shocked at my capriciousness (come to

that, was there anything about me that did not shock you?) —

anyhow, one day my father bought me a pair of shoes, and I

made him take them back at least twice because the style and the

heels were not up-to-date enough for me.

The night my father had the stroke that killed him something

happened to me that I did not dare tell you about for fear you

would take it the wrong way. But now you have to know about

it. It is important because it was then that I was first attacked by

the spirit that torments me now.

I was asleep in the bedroom with my mother. I could tell

from her deep breathing that she was sound asleep. Suddenly I

heard someone calling my name. A voice I did not know was

saying, ‘What will happen if your father dies?’

Since he had been treating my mother so badly, I had

stopped loving my father—in fact from that time on I did not

love anyone anymore. I was just fond of a few people who cared

about me. Outright love, a love that does not expect any reward,

that only exists in souls that are in the state of grace, and mine

certainly was not.

I did not know who was asking me this strange question, so I

just said, ‘But he isn’t going to die!’

There was silence for a while then I heard the same question

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There was silence. Then a third time the voice asked me,

‘What will happen if your father dies?’ I began to think of how

my father often came home drunk, shouting at my mother and

beating her. I remember how he had humiliated us in front of

our friends and neighbors. I got angry and blurted out, ‘That will

just be his hard luck!’ After that there was silence.

In the morning, when my mother wanted to go in and tidy up

my father’s room she found the door locked. Around midday

they forced the door open and found my father’s body lying halfdressed

on the bed. He must have had some sort of accident

while he was going to fetch beer from the cellar, and he had been

in bad health for a long time.

You and Martha persuaded me to join the young people’s

association. I never hid the fact that I considered the talks given

by the organizers as pretty parochial sort of stuff, but I liked the

games. As you know I became one of the leaders straight away,

which was typical of me. I liked the outings as well. I even

went as far as going to Confession and Communion occasionally,

although I did not have anything to confess. I did not consider

thoughts and words were of any importance, and at the time I

was not sufficiently corrupted to go in for any really immoral

actions.

You warned me once, ‘Annette, if you do not pray more,

you are headed for Hell.’ Well, you were right when you said I

did not pray much, and when I did it was in a casual sort of way.

You were all too right. All of these now burning in Hell were

people who did not pray, or did not pray enough. Prayer is the

first step towards God, and it is always the decisive step,

Name we never speak.

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Countless souls are torn from the Devil’s clutches by the

spirit of prayer, souls that would otherwise be bound to fall into

his hands as a result of sin.

To tell you all this is burning me up with anger; I am only

going on because I am forced to.

There is nothing easier in this world for a man than to pray,

and it is precisely upon prayer that everyone’s salvation depends.

That is the way God has arranged things. Little by little He gives

to everyone who perseveres in prayer so much light and strength

that even the most hardened sinner can pick himself up once and

for all, even if he is sunk in sin up to his neck!

During the last years of my life I no longer prayed as I

should have done, and so I deprived myself of the grace without

which no one can be saved. Where we are now we no longer

receive any grace, and even if it were offered we should scorn it.

All the ups and downs of earthly life stop when you get here.

You on earth can pass from a state of sin to a state of grace, and

then fall back into sin again, often through weakness, sometimes

through malice. But once you die all that comes to an end

because it is only the instability of earthly life that makes it

possible. From the moment of death our state is final and

unchangeable.

Already on earth, with the passing of the years these changes

in the state of one’s soul become rarer and rarer. It is true that up

to the moment of death one can always return to God or turn

away from Him. But it does happen that the habits a man has

followed during his lifetime all too often affect his behavior at

the point of death. Habit becomes second nature to him and he

goes to his grave still following it.

That is what happened to me. For years I had been living far

from God, and because of that, when I heard the final call of

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grace, I turned away from Him. What was fatal for me was not

that I sinned a lot, but that when I had sinned I had not the will to

pick myself up again.

Several times you told me to go and listen to sermons or to

read spiritual books, and I usually said I had not the time. And

yet what you said increased the uncertainty I felt inside like

nothing else.

I must admit that by the time I left the young people’s

association I had already learned so much that I could very well

have changed my ways. I was ill at ease and unhappy with my

way of life. But always something stood between me and

conversion.

You never suspected what was going on. You thought it

would be so easy for me to come back to God.

One day you told me, ‘Just make a good confession,

Annette, and then everything will be alright.’ I felt you were

right, but the world, the flesh and the Devil already had too firm

a hold on me.

At that time I never believed that the Devil was at work, but

now I can assure you that he has an enormous influence on

people who are in the state I was in then. Only many prayers,

from myself and others, together with sacrifices and sufferings

would have been able to tear me from his clutches, and even then

it would have been a slow process. There may be few who are

openly possessed, but many are inwardly. The Devil cannot take

away the free will of those who put themselves in his power, but

as a punishment for what you might call their calculated

desertion, God permits the Evil One to settle within them.

I even hate the Devil, though at the same time I like him

because he is out to destroy you people. Yes, I hate him, him

and his hangers-on, those spirits that fell with him at the

beginning of time. There are millions of them prowling about

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the earth like swarms of gnats, and you do not even notice them.

It is not us, the damned souls, who tempt you. That job is only

for the fallen angels.

The truth is that each time they bring a soul here it increases

their torment; but what limit is there to hate?

I was wandering far from God, yet He followed me. I

opened the way for grace by natural acts of charity which I

performed quite often, simply because I was naturally inclined to

do so.

There were times when God drew me towards a church, and

then I felt a kind of home-sickness. When my mother was ill and

I was looking after her at the same time as doing my job at the

office I was really making a kind of self-sacrifice. Those were

the times when God’s calls were especially strong.

Once when you took me into a hospital chapel during the

lunch break something happened which led me to the brink of

conversion — I wept!! But immediately the pleasures of the

world flooded back into my mind and overshadowed God’s

grace. The good seed was choked by the thorns.

They often said at the office that religion was just a matter

of emotion, so I took that excuse to reject that call of grace as I

had all the others.

You told me off one day because instead of making a proper

genuflection in church, I just did a half-hearted sort of bob. You

thought I was just being lazy. You did not even seem to suspect

that I had already stopped believing in Christ’s presence in the

Sacrament. I believe in it now, but only in a natural way, as you

believe in a storm when you see the damage it leaves behind.

Already I had just made up my own religion to suit myself. I

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agreed with the others at the office that when you died your soul

went into someone else so that it went on a kind of everlasting

pilgrimage. That solved the agonizing question of the ‘beyond’

and you did not have to worry about it any more.

Why did not you remind me of the parable of Dives and

Lazarus, where Christ sends the one to Paradise straight after his

death, and the other to Hell? Oh, sure, you wouldn’t have got

anywhere with it, any more than with any of your other pious old

maids’ stories.

Bit by bit I made up my own god – a god who was properly

dressed up to be called god and was sufficiently remote for me

not to have any dealings with him. He was a vague sort of god,

to be made use of when I needed him. A kind of pantheistic god

if you like, the sort of abstract god who might come in useful for

poetry but who wouldn’t have anything to do with my real world.

This god had no heaven to reward me with and no hell to punish

me. My way of worshipping him was to leave him alone.

It is easy to believe what suits you. For years I got on very

well with my religion and so I was happy.

Only one thing could have shattered my stubbornness — one

lasting and deep sorrow. But it didn’t happen. Now do you

One Sunday in July the young people’s group arranged an

outing to somewhere. I would have quite liked to go but those

old-hat talks, those old maids’ ways of carrying on all put me off.

Besides, for some time I had been keeping a very different

picture from that of the Madonna on the altar of my heart! It was

that good-looking Max N. in the shop next door. We had already

cracked a joke together a few times. Well, as it happens, that

very Sunday he had invited me to go out with him. The girl he

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had been going out with was ill in the hospital. He had realized I

had my eyes on him, though I hadn’t then thought of marrying

him. He was obviously well off, but he was too nice to all the

girls, and up till then I had only wanted a man who did not think

of anyone but me. I did not just want to be his wife: I wanted to

be the only woman in his life. I was always attracted by wellmannered

men, and when we were out together Max went out of

his way to be nice — though you can imagine we did not talk

about the pious stuff you and your friends go in for!!

The next day at the office you were telling me off because I

had not gone with the rest of you on the outing, and I told you

what I had been doing that Sunday. The first thing you asked

was ‘Did you go to Mass?’ Idiot!! How could I have gone to

Mass seeing we had arranged to leave at 6:00 A.M.? And no

doubt you remember how I lost my patience and said, ‘God

doesn’t make a fuss about these little things like you and your

priests do!!’

But now I have to admit that despite His infinite goodness,

God weighs things up much more exactly than all your priests

put together.

After that first outing with Max I only went back to the

young people’s association once more. That was for the

Christmas Celebrations. There was still something that attracted

me to ceremonies of that kind, but at heart I was not one of you

anymore.

Movies, dances, outings—it was one thing after the other all

the time. Max and I sometimes had rows, but I could always get

him to make up.

I had a lot of trouble with his other girlfriend, who went

after him like a mad thing as soon as she got out of the hospital.

That was a bit of luck for me because my ‘noble calm’, which

was quite the opposite of her behavior, made a big impression on

Max, and he ended up opting for me.

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I had learned how to use words to turn him against her. On

the surface I would seem to be saying nice things but inwardly I

would be spitting venom. Feelings like that and that kind of

behavior are an excellent preparation for Hell. They are

diabolical in the strictest sense of the word.

Why am I telling you this? It is to explain how I cut myself

off once and for all from God. Oh, it was not that at that stage

Max and I had become very ‘intimate’ in our relationship. I

knew I would have gone down in his estimation if I had let

myself go all the way too soon, and that knowledge made me

hold back, but deep down I was ready to do anything if I thought

it would further my aims, because I was out to get Max at any

cost. I would have given absolutely anything to have him.

In the meantime we were slowly learning to love each other.

We both had valuable personal qualities, which we were learning

to appreciate in each other. I was clever, capable, good

company, and at least in the last months before we married I was

his only girlfriend.

My desertion of God consisted in this: that I made an idol of

a human creature. That kind of thing can only happen when you

love someone of the opposite sex with a love which remains

bound by earthly considerations. It is this kind of unbalanced

love that transfixes you, obsesses you and finally poisons you.

My ‘worship’ of Max was really becoming a kind of religion for

me. That was the time when, at the office, I started saying

everything bad I could think of about churches and priests and

rosary-jabbering and all that kind of tom-foolery.

You tried to defend it all, more or less subtly. You

obviously did not realize that deep down I was not so anxious

with insulting those things as with finding something to bolster

of God.

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Yes, the fact was that I had rebelled against God. You did

not understand. You thought I was still a Catholic, and I wanted

people to think I was. I even went as far as paying my tithes — I

told myself a bit of insurance could not do me any harm.

Sometimes your reactions struck home, but they did not

have any lasting effect on me: I had made up my mind you were

wrong. It was this strained relationship that made neither of us

sorry to say ‘goodbye’ when I left to get married.

Before the wedding I went to Confession and Communion

once more, as was required. My husband thought the same way

as I did about that — why should we be made to go through

those formalities? Still we did go through with it like everyone

else. You people would call a Communion like that ‘unworthy’.

Well, after that ‘unworthy’ Communion my conscience was a lot

cleared. In any case, I never went to Communion again.

By and large we were very happy in our married life. We

agreed about everything, including the fact that we did not want

the responsibility of having children. At a stretch my husband

might have wanted to have just one, but in the end I managed to

get even that idea out of his mind. I was far more concerned with

clothes, fancy furniture, meeting friends, going out, taking trips in

the car and other pleasures. The year between my marriage and

my sudden death was a year of sheer pleasure for me.

Every Sunday we went out in the car, or else we went to

visit my husband’s parents, who lived just as superficially as we

did.

At heart of course I was not happy, even though I put on a

smiling face for the world. All the time there was something

gnawing away inside me. I should have liked to believe that

death, which I naturally thought was many years away, would be

the end of everything.

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Once when I was a child I heard a priest say in a sermon that

God rewards us for every good work we perform and that when

He cannot reward us in the life to come He does it on earth. That

is very true. Out of the blue I inherited some money from my

Aunt ‘Lotte’, and at the same time my husband started earning a

very good salary, so I was able to fit out my new home very

nicely. By this time the light of religion had become for me

something very distant, a pale light, dim and flickering.

The cafes in the towns, and the inns we stayed at on our

travels certainly did not point us towards God. All the people

who went to those places lived like us, getting their pleasures

from external things first and foremost instead of living primarily

an interior life. If we did sometimes visit churches when we

were traveling around on holidays; we only did so for their

artistic interest. There was a religious atmosphere emanating

from those buildings, especially the medieval ones, but I could

neutralize it by making some criticism which seemed to the point

at the time. For instance, I could have a go at some lay-brother

for making a bit of a mess of showing us around, or for being

sloppily dressed, or I would think how scandalous it was that

monks who pretended to be holy should sell liqueurs, or perhaps

I would think about the endless bell-ringing calling the people to

services when all the Church was interested in was making

money. That is how I turned away from God’s grace each time it

knocked at the door of my soul.

I gave free reign to my bad temper, especially on the subject

of certain medieval paintings of Hell in cemeteries and other

places showing the Devil roasting souls over glowing coals while

his companions dragged other victims down with their long tails.

I always had my own ideas about the fires of Hell. You

remember we were discussing the question once and I struck a

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match under your nose and said sarcastically, ‘Does that smell

I assure you that the fire the Bible talks about is not just the

torment of conscience. It is real fire. When He said, ‘Depart

from Me, ye accursed, into everlasting fire,’ He meant it literally

You will say to me, ‘How can spirits be affected by material

fire?’ But on earth, doesn’t your soul suffer when you put your

fingers in the fire? The soul doesn’t actually burn, but what

agony your whole being goes through.

Likewise, we in this place are spiritually bound to the fire

according to our nature and our faculties. The soul is deprived of

its natural freedom of action. We cannot think what we should

like, nor as we should like.

Do not be shocked at what I am telling you. This state

means nothing to you, but I am being burned here, without being

consumed.

Our greatest torment is the certain knowledge that we shall

never see God. How can that torment us so much when we were

so indifferent about it on earth? As long as a knife is left on the

table it does not worry you. You can see it is sharp, but you are

not afraid of it. But just let it cut into your flesh and you will be

writhing in pain. It is now that we are actually feeling the loss of

God, whereas before we only thought about it.

Not all souls suffer to the same degree. The more

maliciously and systematically a man has sinned, so much the

more heavily will the loss of God weigh down upon him.

other religions because usually they have been offered and have

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refused more graces and more enlightenment. The man who had

more knowledge in his lifetime suffers more severely that the

one who knew less. If one has sinned through malice one suffers

more cruelly than if it had been through weakness. But nobody

suffers more than he has deserved. Oh, if only that were not

You told me one day that it had been revealed to some Saint

that nobody goes to Hell without knowing. I laughed, but

afterward I reassured myself by saying secretly, ‘In that case, if

the need arise, I can always do an about-turn.’ That is true.

Before my sudden end I did not know Hell for what it is. No

human being knows it. But I was fully aware that it existed. I

said to myself, ‘If you die you will go into the life beyond

straight as an arrow aimed at God, and you will have to suffer the

consequences.’ But, as I have already told you, despite such a

thought I did not change my ways. Force of habit pushed me on

and I let it take control of me. For the older one gets, the

stronger the power of habit becomes.

This is the way my death came about. A week ago — a

week, that is, as you would reckon time, for from the point of

view of the pain I have suffered I could well say I have been

burning in Hell for ten years already; however, a week ago, last

Sunday, my husband and I went out for what was to be our last

drive. It was a beautiful morning, and I was feeling on top of the

world. A foreboding sense of happiness came over me and

stayed with me all day. On the way home my husband was

blinded by the lights of a car coming in the other direction, and

our car went out of control.

Automatically I uttered the name ‘Jesus’, but it was just an

exclamation, not a prayer.

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I felt a searing pain in every fiber of my being, though it was

nothing compared to what I am suffering now. Then I lost

consciousness.

How strange it was that on that very morning a persistent

thought had been nagging at me for no apparent reason. A voice

inside kept saying, ‘You could go to Mass once more.’ It was as

though someone were begging me. But I stifled the notion with

with that nonsense once and for all.’ Now I have to suffer the

consequences of my resolution.

You already know what happened after my death, what

became of my husband and my mother, and of my body, and the

details of the funeral. I know all about it with the natural

knowledge we are allowed here. In fact we know everything that

happens on earth, but only in a dim and confused manner. It is

like that, that I see the place where you are staying now.

At the moment of my death I found myself in a misty world,

but then suddenly I emerged into an overwhelming blinding

light. I was still at the place where my body was lying. It was

like being in a theater. The lights go out all of a sudden, the

curtain goes up with a terrific noise and you find yourself faced

with an unexpected scene. For me that scene was lit up with a

with all the graces I had rejected from my youth up until my final

confronted in court with his victim’s dead body.

Of course, I could no longer bear to feel upon me the eyes of

the God I had finally rejected. All that was left for me was to

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flee from His Presence. Just as Cain fled from the body of Abel,

all my soul could do was to flee from that vision of horrors.

And then my soul, smothered in sulfur, hurled itself like a

shadow into everlasting torment.

(NOTE BY FRENCH TRANSLATOR: We could point out that most of the

statement made by this damned soul are identical with the teachings of St.

Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologica.)+++

When the Angelus rang next morning, still deeply moved by

that terrible night, I got up and hurried downstairs to the chapel.

My heart was pounding wildly. The people from the hospice

who were kneeling around me looked at me in astonishment. I

expect they were thinking that perhaps I had come downstairs

too fast and upset myself. But one good lady from Budapest

had watched me more carefully, and after Mass she said to me

something else at the root of my trouble, and she went on

talking to me. And as she went on with her kindly advice, I was

hope to possess him in Heaven, whatever sacrifices it may cost

~Saint Ignatius

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Hell is a pit enclosed on every side, where no ray of the sun or any

other light ever enters: ‘He shall never see light’ (Psalms xlviii. 20). St.

Basil explains it: ‘The Lord will divide the fire from the light, so that this

fire will only perform the office of burning, and not the giving of light.’

The sense of smell shall be tormented. What torment would it be

to find oneself shut up in a room with a putrid corpse! ‘Out of their

carcasses shall rise a stink’ (Ps. xxxiv. 3). The damned must remain

in the midst of so many millions of other reprobates, who are alive to

pain, but corpses as to the stench they send forth. St. Bonaventure

says, that if the body of one of the damned were driven from hell, the

stench would be enough to destroy all men! And yet some fools say: If

I go to hell, I shall not be alone. Miserable beings! the more there are

in hell, the more they suffer (says also St. Thomas)….. They suffer

more, I say, from the smell, the shrieks, and the narrowness of the

place; besides which, in hell they will be one over another, heaped up

together like sheep in the winter season: ‘They are laid in hell like

sheep’ (Psalms xlviii. 15).

Thus, as the damned fall into hell at the last day, so will they have

The hearing shall be tormented by the continual howling and

wailing of those despairing wretched. The appetite shall be tormented

by hunger… ‘They shall suffer hunger as dogs’ (Ps. lviii. 15). So

great will be their thirst, that the water of the ocean would not suffice to

quench it; and yet they never shall obtain even a drop of water.

…For the day will come in which thy impurities will become as

pitch in thy entrails, to increase and aggravate the torments of the

flame which will burn thee in hell… ‘thy lust shall be turned into pitch,

to feed in my bowels the everlasting fire.’

The damned will be tormented in his memory, by the

remembrance of the time which was given him in this life to save his