you are so good to pray for the souls of the unrepentant sinner. Our Lady of Fatima said that souls are falling into hell because there was no one to pray for them! You will save souls....as we all should. God bless you!
I agree. If any religious education teacher taught the truth about hell in class at our parish there would be an immediate backlash from parents. The teacher would be dismissed in a heartbeat for frightening the class. I fear the fires of hell because the good sisters who instructed me believed like Our Blessed Mother, that saving our souls was more important than any nightmares we may have about hearing the truth about hell and Satan. I had one nun in the 5th grade who would scare the wits out of us with her stories of souls spending an eternity in hell. In fact, even the books we studied from were quite graphic, and I can still recall the frightening pictures in those books to this very day.
as it should be...scary as hell! Truth is truth...hard or not. Eternity in Hell is no Sunday school picnic!
I remember the sermons on hell. I think they stopped around 1965 in my parish. We had a huge parish in a DC suburb. Lots of military and government workers, predominantly Catholic neighborhoods. It was truly glorious to attend Mass, lots of times standing room only. We had 4 or 5 priests. Each priest had a Confessional with his name on it. There was one Confessional for Fr Visitor. Take your chances having him hear your Confession. I miss those days so much.
Going to COnfession in ROme can be strange. It teaches you that Spirituality from different parts of the World can be so different. I went to a priest from Korea who was like the Voice of Doom. Scarey But I like priests to be as severe as possible. This is how you learn.
Yes, but it’s still terrifying at the time! You feel like bolting out of there. Yikes Btw, the priest who taught me catechism and received me into the Catholic Church was Irish. Fr Christopher Twohig. After he retired from the Archdiocese of Washington, he went back to Ireland and finished up his life at Knock Shrine. He had quite a brogue and a cheery personality.
I always found the confession boxes in Knock spooky, its like an undergorund nuclear shelter. Like entering purgatory.
Just as we know that there are nine choirs of Angels and so nine levels of heaven, so by implication that there are nine Levels of Purgatory and Nine levels of hell. Purgatory is a staging post . A hall way to heaven. So when we die we are heading for one of these nine levels. Jesus spoke of this in Scripture when He said, To Whom Much is Given, Much Will Be Required. To whom much is given, much will be required (Luke 12:48) .and st Therese of Liseaux wrote very beautifully on the subject. https://blog.littleflower.org/prayers/pearls-of-wisdom/st-thereses-wisdom-garden-of-souls/ Jesus has been gracious enough to teach me a lesson about the mystery of the differences in souls, simply by holding up to my eyes, the book of nature. I understood how all the flowers God created are beautiful- how the splendor of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not take away from the perfume of the violet or the simplicity of the daisy. I understood that if all flowers wanted to be roses, nature would lose her springtime beauty, and the fields would no longer be decked out with little wildflower. And so it is in the world of souls… Jesus’ garden. He willed to create great souls comparable to lilies and roses, but he created small ones as well… and theses must be content to be daisies or violets destined to give joy to God’s glances, when he looks down at His feet. Perfection consists in doing God’s will… in being what He would have us be. -St. Therese of Lisieux
I had a dream that I was in Hell a few years back. I've told it before; but since I've had time to draw a few insights into it and check it out from other sources, I'll tell it again with comments. (Maybe I learnt a little more sine then) It was dark, darker then night and I flew in like a bird over two large pillars, the famous Gate Way to Hell. They reminded me of pillars near my home that used to be the exclusive Fortwilliam Park a couple of centuries ago.
