Your Choice: Gehenna or To Be With Jesus Forever?

In the Gospel at Mass today (26th Sunday, Ordinary Time, Cycle B) from the 9th chapter of Mark, Jesus mentions "Gehenna" three times.  What's this "Gehenna?"  It's an actual place.  Before the Israelites arrived in the Promised Land, other peoples had used this valley outside of Jerusalem as a place to offer child sacrifices to their idols.  The Jews considered it such an unholy and unclean place that it was good for only one thing--burning garbage.

Jesus used "Gehenna" 11 times in the Gospels as an image for hell. 

Hell is not something you hear about much.  It does show up as an expression of anger or hatred.  We use it to condemn our enemies or someone who has done a particularly heinous crime: "I hope they rot in hell!" 

For many it's hard to reconcile hell with a good, all-powerful, and infinitely loving God.  How could God send anyone to hell?

God doesn't.  People choose it. 

The "Catechism of the Catholic Church" says that the "state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called 'hell'" (#1033). 

And Pope St. John Paul II said that hell "is not a punishment imposed externally by God" because "God is the infinitely good and merciful Father" who "can only desire the salvation of the beings He created" (General Audience, July 28, 1999).  God can only will or want our good.  But God cannot force that ultimate good of heaven upon us.  Love must be free.  God cannot force people into heaven.  They must freely choose to go.  And if they choose not to go, then there must be another option for them. 

There are some things that are simply incompatible with heaven.  There is no room for the jealousy that we see Joshua exhibiting in our first reading (Numbers 11: 25-29).  Nor is there room for the injustice and greed that James talks about in the second reading (James 5: 1-6).  There is no room for sin in heaven. 

Professor and author Peter Kreeft, who teaches at Boston College, has a shocking remark about this.  In his book "Heaven: The Heart's Deepest Longing," he says that "God does not forgive sins."  Then he goes on to explain that God "forgives sinners and destroys sins" (186).  That makes sense.  God loves sinners and hates sin.  God sees how much sin damages our relationship with him and with one another.  It hurts and damages our very selves and leads to all kinds of misery.  So God wants to free people of their sins and throw them into the garbage dump of the cosmos--hell. 

I grew up fearing God, that God would send me to hell.  I thought that if I were running to church for Saturday afternoon confession in order to get rid of a moral sin and got hit by a car I would hit the greasy shoot to hell. 

I have a different idea now.  It seems more and more clear that death is a process rather than a moment.  We see this from near death experiences in which people have, for all practical purposes, died; their brain waves have stopped as well as their hearts.  And they somehow return to tell stories of an experience of a life beyond this life. 

I believe that no matter who we are and what we believe we all meet Jesus face to face as we die.  And he asks us one question: "Do you want to be with me forever?"  We might hesitate, feeling shame and unworthiness for our sins.  But Jesus presses on, asking us again, "Yes, I know, but do you want to be with me forever?"  Or we might ask if we can be with him on our terms, holding on to something that has no place in heaven.  Jesus will tell us we can't bring that in; we have to let go.

This is so important to Jesus that in today's Gospel he tells us that if we're holding on to something sinful, it would be better to cut off our hand so that it and the sin we cling to do not prevent us from entering his Kingdom.  Or if we hold on to sin with our eyes, we should pluck them out because that sin does not belong in heaven.  It's garbage that needs to be thrown away.

We might wonder: how could anyone say "no" to Jesus' invitation?  I think of how people can hold on to bitter resentments.  I can imagine people answering "yes" but then, as they cross the threshold of heaven they see someone who has hurt them terribly or an enemy.  "What's he doing here?"  Jesus answers: "He admitted he had done wrong and asked for my forgiveness and I forgave him."  And the response could be: "Well, you may have forgiven him for what he did to me but I will never forgive him. I would rather rot in hell than to spend one minute much less eternity with him." 

We are here on earth for one thing: to learn how to live in heaven.  In heaven there is no selfishness, no lustful using other people for one's pleasure.  There is no greed and injustice, no envy or deceit.  There is no racism and hatred.  There is no unforgiveness. 

We have to let go of those things here.  We need to throw out the garbage, lest we end up clinging to it in the cosmic garbage dump that Jesus called Gehenna.  We don't want anything to stand in the way of answering immediately and whole-heartedly "YES!" when Jesus asks us "Do you want to be with me forever." 

"I Have Called You Friends"

Last Friday and again today, the feast of the Apostle St. Matthias, our Gospel was from John Chapter 15 where Jesus tells his apostles (and us): "I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing.  I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father." 

For the Son of God, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, to call us his "friends" is a very great thing.  It is not simply a matter of calling us friends.  Through Baptism he actually changes us and raises us to his level, for true friendship demands a certain equality.  Grace makes this possible.  Sanctifying Grace makes us holy as God is holy.  It is, in the words of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, "deifying grace" (#1999).  As much as dogs have been called "man's best friend," a dog can never really be a friend because it is incapable of entering into a relationship that requires a certain equality.  We too were incapable of friendship until Jesus came, united himself to our human nature, and transformed us so that we could enter into a true relationship with him. 

One of my favorite books for daily meditation is the revised four volume version of Discalced Carmelite Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen's Divine Intimacy.  It first appeared (and is still available) in the 1950's as a one volume work but has been revised to fit the changes in the liturgical calendar after the Second Vatican Council.  Here is a quote about God's friendship with humanity that appears in the reflection for Thursday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time:

Friendship presupposes a certain equality and community of life, whereas between God and men there is a supreme and limitless distance.  But for the very purpose of making friendship possible between himself and men, God became man and shared his divinity with man.  "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (Jn 1:14), so that we might become "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Pet 1:4).  The foundation of friendship, of communion was established.  Friendship demands reciprocal love.  God has loved us first; our love can be only a response: "We love, because he first loved us" (1 Jn 4:19).  We return God's love, first of all my accepting it, by opening our heart to him, and letting ourselves be loved.  The very love which God has infused into us becomes the beginning of our response, of our love.  "Love is from God" (ib. 7), it can come only from him, and moreover we cannot love God supernaturally except with God's very love.  If we correspond, there will be perfect friendship, because it will be based on equality of love.  The mystery of the friendship between God and mankind is based entirely upon the nature of charity, which is not human love, but divine love, by which we become capable of loving divinely.

Jesus calls us friends and then transforms us to make us capable to being real friends, not just in name, the way a dog is "man's best friend." 

Friends spend time together.  They enjoy one another's company and miss each other when they are separated.  So it is with the friendship between Jesus and us.  Prayer is the way in which we spend time with him and prayer can fill our entire day when we offer that day to the Lord and try to remember to renew our offering frequently during the day.  Only sin separates us from him and when we find ourselves away and wandering, the memory of his love draws us back to re-establish our friendship in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Friends also share common interests and concerns.  Or, as Father Gabriel puts it:

The fellowship required by friendship calls for a communion of affections, of desires, and of the will.  A friend desires that which his friend desires.  We are God's friends if we will and do what God wills: if we keep his commandments, if in every thing we seek not our own will, but God's will.

This is what Jesus said right before calling his apostles "friends."  He said: "You are my friends if you do what I command you."  As the friends of Jesus, we share his desire for the salvation of every person.  This is God's will, as St. Paul wrote in 1 Timothy 2: 3-4: "God our savior, who wills everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth."  Jesus acted on his desire to save everyone by suffering, dying, and rising.  We share his desire and act upon it by offering ourselves one day at a time for the salvation of souls.  Jesus saved every soul ever created. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church (#605), quoting the 9th Century Council of Quiercy, states: "There is not, never has been, and never will be a single human being for whom Christ did not suffer." Not everyone has accepted Christ's act of love and the salvation he won for humanity.  Our daily offering now plays a very important part in the ongoing work of salvation by allowing God's will to be done in our lives, thus claiming more and more parts of his creation for him.  As friends of Jesus who do what he commands--"love one another as I love you"--we desire and offer ourselves with him now for the salvation of all.

Sacred Heart Sisters

Soon I'll be celebrating my final Mass with the 44 Sisters of the Society Devoted to the Sacred Heart with whom I've been on retreat. The last eight days of retreat have been a very blessed time for me. When we began, I told the Sisters that I saw myself as John the Baptist--one who was there to direct their attention to Jesus, to facilitate their encounter with Him. The Holy Spirit is the real director of a retreat and last night, as the Sisters shared some of the graces they received on the retreat, I thought about what a privilege it is to give retreats to such blessed people.

During the retreat I was able to learn a little more about this community. It is an international and diverse group of young and old, including three of the founding Sisters. Here is a little bit of the history that I learned from them and from some of their printed materials from which I'll be quoting.

Sister Ida Peterfy was the foundress of the Society Devoted to the Sacred Heart. She "was born on October 7, 1922, of a Hungarian Catholic family in Kosice, Slovakia. From her early youth God prepared her to be a leader, to work for others, and inspired her to establish a new religious community. On October 7, 1940, her eighteenth birthday, Sister Ida pronounced her first vows in Kassa, Hungary (now Kosice, Slovakia). This marks the beginning of the Society Devoted to the Sacred Heart."

Sister Ida felt called to teach children about God and others soon joined her in this work, including Sisters Hermine, Agnes, and Eva, all of whom I had the privilege of meeting and talking with during this retreat. "God called Sister Ida to bring forth a new community in times when the universal Church was under attack in her Chief Pastor and in her religious children. As the future of formal religious education became uncertain [given the Nazi and then Communist occupation of Hungary], the times called for religious who dedicate their lives to proclaim the Good News of our Lord Jesus Christ in a new, appealing and personal way."

"Sister Ida's ardent faith in God and inspiration of the Holy Spirit developed an innovative catechetical method which initiated the community's religious education charism, the Five Step Illustrated Method." This method was so successful that the Society Devoted to the Sacred Heart has introduced it around the world and it forms the basis for the Paul VI Pontifical Catechetical Institute in St. Louis. It also led to one of the Sisters being appointed to the fifteen member International Council for Catechetics which works closely with various Vatican Congregations.

Priests, religious educators, and parents saw how effective Sister Ida's Five Step Illustrated Method was and asked for more. The result was the production of the "Sacred Heart Kids' Club"--"a method's course on video, and 30 half hour video tapes with teachers' guides." This is a "unique religious education program for children in harmony with the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The program spread to five continents in English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean and Hungarian."

Though Sister Ida died on February 8, 2000, her charism lives on in the Society Devoted to the Sacred Heart. Her work continues through their generous and talented members who work in Southern California, St. Louis, Taiwan, and Hungary. I would like to tell more about their international work but the truth is that some of it includes work in dangerous places and I cannot talk about it without jeopardizing both the ministry and the safety of the Sisters.

This is the remarkable thing about the Society Devoted to the Sacred Heart. They were born at a time and in a place of danger and turmoil. Their work continues at a time when the Church is in desperate need of good religious education. And it reaches out to parts of the world where the Gospel and those who proclaim it are at risk. The blessing of this retreat has been for me to experience their heroic charity.

Holy Saturday

This morning I gave a talk in Burlington, Wisconsin on "Living the Eucharist" to a group of men who are part of a group called "Men of Christ." Besides an annual conference for which several thousand men gather, the group promotes spiritual growth throughout the year by means of local gatherings like today.

Since it's Holy Saturday and we were not able to celebrate their usual monthly Mass, I led the group in praying the Midday Prayer for Holy Saturday. As part of our prayer I talked about a curious line that appears in the Apostles' Creed: "He descended into Hell." Here's how the "Catechism of the Catholic Church" explains that line:

"Jesus, like all men, experienced death and in his soul joined the others in the realm of the dead. But he descended there as Savior, proclaiming the Good News to the spirits imprisoned there. [See 1 Peter 3: 19 and 4: 6]

"Scripture calls the abode of the dead, to which the dead Christ went down, 'hell'--Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek--because those who are there are deprived of the vision of God. Such is the case for all the dead, whether evil or righteous, while they await the redeemer: which does not mean that their lot is identical, as Jesus shows through the parable of the poor man Lazarus who was received into 'Abraham's bosom' [See Psalm 89: 49; 1 Samuel 28: 19; Ezekiel 32: 17-32; Luke 16: 22-26]: 'It is precisely these holy souls, who awaited their Savior in Abraham's bosom, whom Christ the Lord delivered when he descended into hell' [quote from the Roman Catechism]. Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him."

This is what happened that first Holy Saturday and it is depicted in religious art as "The Descent into Hell" or "The Harrowing of Hell."

I invited the group today to accompany Jesus to the abode of the dead and to pray for people we have known who have died: relatives, friends, enemies. We did so reflecting on words of Pope Benedict XVI that can be found in #48 of his encyclical on hope, "Spe Salvi":

"The belief that love can reach into the afterlife, that reciprocal giving and receiving is possible, in which our affection for one another continues beyond the limits of death--this has been a fundamental conviction of Christianity throughout the ages and it remains a source of comfort today. Who would not feel the need to convey to their departed loved ones a sign of kindness, a gesture of gratitude or even a request for pardon? ... Our lives are involved with one another, through innumerable interactions they are linked together. No one lives alone. No one sins alone. No one is saved alone. The lives of others continually spill over into mine: in what I think, say, do and achieve. And conversely, my life spills over into that of others: for better and for worse. So my prayer for another is not something extraneous to that person, something external, even after death. In the interconnectedness of Being, my gratitude to the other--my prayer for him--can play a small part in his purification. And for that there is no need to convert earthly time into God's time: in the communion of souls simple terrestrial time is superseded. It is never too late to touch the heart of another, nor is it ever in vain."