Events that initially seem distant in time tend to get smashed together with the passage of the years. To someone who was born in 2000 both World War II and 1980 are parts of the rapidly fading past.
Time Never Stops
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
My wakeup call was when I was told I was eligible for Honor Flights as a Vietnam War veteran.
My sons love saying things like this to me. This last October, when we watched the Great Pumpkin, they pointed out that Snoopy fought the Red Baron in that special 47 years after WWI, as opposed to it being 57 years now (2023) since the special itself.
I’ve been thinking about this and the Yeasty Cakes song lately.
In the Great Depression, “candy” bars had to be filling, because they might be a substitute for a meal. My dad remembered the jingle from an ad for Yeasty Cakes and sang it for me a couple of times. In a few years I’ll be the only person alive who’s heard it, and I don’t remember enough of it to pass along. Does it matter? No, and what matters is the essence of the person, the soul, and that’s eternal. I think that in Heaven, all those little forgotten things and mysteries will be made apparent, where you lost that pair of gloves and how many votes Joe Biden really got, but with the perspective of eternity you’ll recognize their unimportance. I wouldn’t be surprised if Hell involves never knowing any of the answers and having nothing but the mysteries playing over and over in your head. And the fire, that too. And maybe yeasty cakes, because they sound like something you’d get fed in Hell.
thanks, Pinky…profound thoughts!
@Pinky: Two thumbs up.
@Pinky: In her diary St. Faustina has a passage where she was given a vision of hell. It is passage 741:
*
Today, I was led by an Angel to the chasms of hell. It is a place of great torture; how awesomely large and extensive it is! The kinds of tortures I saw: the first torture that constitutes hell is the loss of God; the second is perpetual remorse of conscience; the third is that one’s condition will never change; (160) the fourth is the fire that will penetrate the soul without destroying it – a terrible suffering, since it is purely spiritual fire, lit by God’s anger; the fifth torture is continual darkness and a terrible suffocating smell, and despite the darkness, the devils and the souls of the damned see each other and all the evil, both of others and their own; the sixth torture is the constant company of Satan; the seventh torture is horrible despair, hatred of God, vile words, curses and blasphemies. These are the tortures suffered by all the damned together, but that is not the end of the sufferings. There are special tortures destined for particular souls. These are the torments of the senses. Each soul undergoes terrible and indescribable sufferings, related to the manner in which it has sinned. There are caverns and pits of torture where one form of agony differs from another. I would have died at the very sight of these tortures if the omnipotence of God had not supported me. Let the sinner know that he will be tortured throughout all eternity, in
those senses which he made use of to sin. (161) I am writing this at the command of God, so that no soul may find an excuse by saying there is no hell, or that nobody has ever been there, and so no one can say what it is like.
I, Sister Faustina, by the order of God, have visited the abysses of hell so that I might tell souls about it and testify to its existence. I cannot speak about it now; but I have received a command from God to leave it in writing. The devils were full of hatred for me, but they had to obey me at the command of God. What I have written is but a
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pale shadow of the things I saw. But I noticed one thing: that most of the souls there are those who disbelieved that there is a hell. When I came to, I could hardly recover from the fright. How terribly souls suffer there! Consequently, I pray even more fervently for the conversion of sinners. I incessantly plead God’s mercy upon them. O my Jesus, I would rather be in agony until the end of the world, amidst the greatest sufferings, than offend You by the least sin.
One thing I’ve always wondered about Judgment Day: we know that afterwards every saved person can say that God is truly just and merciful. Indeed, while alive we can’t comprehend what it means to be perfectly anything, but it’s doubly hard for us now to conceive of a Being who is at the same time perfectly just and perfectly merciful. But will the condemned be able to say that God is truly just and merciful as well? On the one hand, I can picture the damned fully recognizing that they deserve their punishment. That would make it worse. On the other, there’s a kind of defiance that we see among demons that suggests a refusal to accept any moral truth. Maybe that’s the answer, awareness but failure to acknowledge. But then, every knee under the earth must bend and acknowledge that Jesus is Lord. So maybe “acknowledge” isn’t the right word. Or maybe evil can only acknowledge Jesus’s lordship as power rather than worthiness.
The Infinite Supreme Sovereign Being, God is Father, Son and the perfect love between them, the Holy Spirit of love Who proceeds from the Father and the Son and fills the whole of creation….perfect.
The devil is a dead end. Nothing for nobody. Might I say just like sodomy…a dead end.
Some individuals choose to believe in no hell so as to do everything as they please without referrence to God, morals and their neighbor.
It is said that the worse thing about being in hell is being with individuals like oneself for eternity. Seems like justice to me.
Freedom for me but not for thee is zero in a dead end.
I’ve read that it is important to live a life of balanced virtues. That a lone virtue can unleash as much carnage as any vice. In God all the virtues are in balance. Mercy without justice is just as bad as justice without mercy. The clerical abuse scandal is an example of justice free mercy having been given to the offending clergy.