Impressive testimony of a condemned soul, about what took her to Hell. (last article of 3)

 

In this interim, I had made my own religion. I liked the general opinion in the office that after death the soul would return to this world in another being, reincarnating successively, without ever reaching the end.

With this, the distressing problem of the afterlife was solved. I imagined having rendered him harmless. Why didn't you remind me of the parable of the rich Lurker and poor Lazarus, in which the narrator, Christ, sent one to Hell and the other to Heaven after death? But what would you have gotten? Not much more than you got with all your other pious speeches. Little by little I made myself a god: with enough attributes to be called that. Far enough away from me that he wouldn't force me to have sex with him. Confusing enough, as to be able to transform it at my whim. In this way, without changing my religion, I could imagine him as the pantheistic god of the world or think of him, poetically, as a solitary god.

This "god" had no Heaven to reward me, and no Hell to scare me. I left him alone. This was my worship service. It is easy to believe in what pleases. Over the years, I was quite persuaded of my religion. You lived well like that, without any hassles. Only one thing could have broken my sufficiency: deep and prolonged pain. But this suffering did not come. ¿Do you now understand the meaning of “God punishes those he loves”? During a Sunday in July, the Youth Association organized an A walk. I liked the excursions, but not the insipid speeches and other pious things. Another image, very different from that of Our Lady of Graces by A., had recently been on the altar of my heart. It was the distinguished Max, from the warehouse next door. We had already had an entertaining conversation several times. Just that Sunday he invited me for a walk. The other, the one he used to go out with, was sick in the hospital.

 He had realized that she looked at him a lot. But I didn't think about getting married yet. His financial position was very good, but he was also too kind to all the other girls. Back then I wanted a man who belonged to me exclusively, as the only woman. He always kept a certain natural education. (That's true. Despite her religious indifference, Ani had something noble in her person. It baffles me that even "honest" people can fall into hell, if they are dishonest in fleeing from the encounter with God.)

On that ride, Max showered me with kindness. Our conversations, it is clear, were not about the lives of the saints, like yours. The next day, at the office, you reprimanded me for not going to the Association walk. When I told you about my fun on Sunday, your first question was: "Did you hear Mass?" Silly! How could we go to Mass if we leave at 6 in the morning? I remember that, very excited, I told you: "The good Lord is not as petty as the priests are." Now I must confess that God, despite his infinite goodness, takes everything more seriously than all the priests put together. After this first walk with Max, I only went to the Association once more, at Christmas parties. Some things attracted me. But inside, I had already separated from all of you.

The dances, the movies, the walks continued. Sometimes we would fight with Max, but I knew how to hold him back. I hated my rival so much that, upon leaving the hospital, she was furious. Actually, that worked in my favor. The distinguished calm that I displayed made such an impression on Max that he definitely leaned towards me. I managed to find a way to denigrate her. He calmly expressed himself to me: on the outside, objective realities, on the inside, vomiting gall. These feelings and attitudes quickly lead to hell. They are diabolical, in the strict sense of the term. Why am I telling you all this? To explain to you that this is how I definitively separated myself from God. Actually, Max and I don't often go to the extreme of familiarity. He realized that he would lower me in his eyes if I granted him all the freedom before his time. That's why I knew how to control myself. Really, I was always ready for anything I considered useful. He had to conquer Max. For that, no price was too high.

 We grew to love each other little by little, because we both had valuable qualities that we could appreciate each other. I was skilled, efficient, pleasant to deal with. I held Max firmly and managed, at least for the last few months before the wedding, to be the only one to possess him. That is what my apostasy consisted of, in making my god out of a creature. In nothing else can apostasy be more fully realized than in love for a person of the opposite sex, when that love is drowned in matter. This is his charm, his sting and his poison. The "adoration" I had for Max became my religion. At that time, in the office, I attacked virulently against the priests, the faithful, the indulgences, the rosaries and other stupidities.

 You tried to defend with a certain intelligence everything that I attacked, although perhaps without suspecting that in reality the problem did not lie in those things. What I was looking for was a foothold. I still needed it to rationally justify my apostasy. She was in revolt against God. You didn't realize You thought she was still Catholic. On the other hand, I wanted to be called that; he even paid the contribution for the cult. Because a certain "reinsurance" never hurts. It is possible that your answers sometimes hit the mark. But they didn't reach me, because I didn't give you reason. As a result of these relations on false bases, the pain of our separation, on the occasion of my marriage, was small.

Before I got married, I went to Confession and Communion one more time. It was a formality. My husband thought the same. If it was a formality, why not comply with it? You say that such a communion is "unworthy." Well, after that "unworthy" communion, I achieved a certain calm in my conscience. That communion was the last. Our married life passed, in general, in harmony. On almost every point we had the same opinion. Also in this: we did not want to carry children. Actually, my husband wanted to have one, just one of course. I finally got him to give up that wish. What I liked best were dresses, luxurious furniture, worldly gatherings, car rides, and other distractions. It was a year of pleasure that intervened between my marriage and my sudden death.

Every Sunday we would go for a drive or visit my husband's relatives. He made me ashamed of my mother. Those relatives excelled in social life, just like us. But inside, however, I was never happy. There was something indeterminate that gnawed at me. My wish was that, when death arrived - which would undoubtedly take a long time yet - everything would end. It happened just as I had heard it as a child, during a talk: God rewards in this world every good deed that is done. If he cannot reward her in the afterlife, he does so on earth. Unexpectedly, I received an inheritance from Aunt Lote. My husband was lucky to see his income increase remarkably. So I was able to install, comfortably, a new house.

My religion was dying, like an afterglow in a distant sky. The city bars, hotels, and restaurants we passed on our travels did not bring us closer to God. Everyone who frequented them lived like us: from the outside in, not from the inside out. If during vacation trips we visited a famous cathedral, we tried to amuse ourselves with the artistic value of its masterpieces. The religious feelings that radiated - especially the medieval churches - I neutralized them by criticizing incidental circumstances of a lay brother who guided us, criticized his negligence in cleanliness, criticized the trade of the pious monks who manufactured and sold liquor, criticized the eternal ringing of bells calling the sacred trades, saying that the only purpose was to earn money...

That was how I managed to push grace aside, every time she called me. I especially took out my bad mood in front of some paintings from the Middle Ages depicting Hell in books, cemeteries and other places. There the demon roasted the souls over red or yellow fire, while his companions, with long tails, bring him more victims. ¡Clara, hell can be drawn, ¡but never exaggerated! I always made fun of hellfire. Remember a conversation during which I put a lighted match under your nose, asking you, "Is this what it smells like?"

 You immediately extinguished the flame. Nobody here can do it. I tell you more: the fire that the Bible speaks of is not the torment of conscience. Fire is fire! It must be interpreted literally when He said: "Depart from me, you cursed, go to the eternal fire". The verbatim! And how can a spirit be touched by material fire? ¿you will ask And how can your soul suffer, on earth, ¿if you put your finger on a flame? Your soul doesn't burn either, meanwhile the pain is suffered by the whole individual. In the same way, we are here spiritually imprisoned in the fire of our being and our faculties. Our soul lacks the agility that would be natural to it; we cannot think or want what we would want.

 Don't be surprised at my words. It is a mystery contrary to the laws of material nature: the fire of hell burns without consuming. Our greatest torment is knowing that we will never see God. How can this torment us so much, if on earth we were indifferent? As long as the knife is on the table, you are not impressed. You see the edge, but you don't feel it. But if the knife enters your flesh, you will scream in pain. Now, we feel the loss of God. Before, we only thought about her.

 Not all souls suffer the same. The greater the wickedness, the more frivolous and determined, the more the loss of God weighs the condemned man, the more the creature he abused suffocates him. Catholics who condemn themselves suffer more than those of other religions, because they generally received and wasted more light and greater graces. Those who had more knowledge suffer more harshly than those who had less. He who sinned through wickedness suffers more than he who fell through weakness. But neither suffers more than he deserved. ¡Oh, if this wasn’t true, ¡he would have a reason to hate!

One day you told me: no one goes to hell without knowing it. That would have been revealed to a saint. I laughed, while she entrenched me in this reflection: "Being like this, I will always have enough time to go back." This revelation is accurate. Before my sudden death, it is true, I did not know hell as it is. No human being knows it. But she was perfectly aware of something: "If you die, she told me, you will enter eternity like an arrow, directly against God; you will have to bear the consequences." Like I told you, I didn't go back. I persevered in the same direction, dragged by habit, with which men act the older they get.

My death happened like this: A week ago - I say according to your accounts, because if I calculated by my pain, I could have been burning in hell for ten years - my husband and I went on another Sunday excursion, which was the last for my. The day was radiant with sunshine. I felt very good, like few times. However, a sinister feeling passed through me. Unexpectedly, on the return trip, my husband and I were blinded by the headlights of an oncoming car at high speed. Max lost control of the vehicle. Jesus! He escaped from my lips, not as a prayer but as a cry. I felt crushing pain: compared to the current torment, a trifle. Then I lost consciousness.

How weird! That very morning, without explanation, this thought had arisen in my mind. "For once, you could go to Mass." It was like a plea. ¡A “don’t!" clear and decided cut the course of the idea. "With those things I have to end definitely." That is, I assumed all the consequences. Now I bear them.

What happened after my death you know. The fate of my husband, my mother, what happened to my body, my burial, I know from a natural intuition that all of us here have. Of the rest of what happens in the world we have a confused knowledge. We know what concerns us. This way I see the place where you live. I woke up unexpectedly at the moment of my death. I found myself flooded with a dazzling light. It was the same place where my body had fallen. It happened like in the theater, when the lights go out in the room, the curtain goes up and a tragically illuminated scene appears. The scene of my life. As in a mirror, my soul showed itself. I saw the graces despised and trampled, from my youth to the last "no" before God.

I felt like a murderer, being brought to court to see the lifeless victim. repent? Never! ¿embarrass me? Never!

Meanwhile, he could not remain under the gaze of God, whom he rejected. She only had one way out: escape. As Cain fled from Abel's corpse, so my soul projected itself away from this vision of horror. This was the particular Judgment.

 The invisible judge spoke: "GET AWAY FROM ME." Immediately my soul, like a yellow shadow of sulfur, plunged to the place of eternal torment.

Clara's epilogue:

Thus ended Anita's letter about Hell. The last words were almost illegible, so crooked were the letters. When she finished reading the last line, the letter turned to ashes. What I hear? Amidst the harsh terms of the words she imagined she had read, she rang out the sweet tolling of a bell. I woke up immediately. I was lying in my room. The morning light came through the window. The chimes of the Hail Marys came from the parish church. It had all been a dream?

I had never felt so much comfort at the Angelus before as I did after that dream. Slowly, I was saying the prayers. Then I understood: the blessed Mother of the Lord wants to defend you. She venerates Mary filially, if you don't want to have the destiny that she told you - even if it was in dreams - a soul that will never see God. Still trembling from the night vision, I got up, dressed in a hurry, and fled to the house chapel. My heart was beating violently. The closest guests looked at me with concern. Perhaps they thought she was agitated from running down the stairs.

A kindly lady from Budapest, a self-sacrificing soul, small as a child, myopic, still fervent in the service of God, of great spiritual insight, said to me in the garden in the afternoon: "Miss, Our Lord does not want to be served with excitement. ". But she noticed that something else had turned me on and she still worried me. She kindly added: "Nothing disturbs you-you know Saint Teresa's advice-nothing frightens you. Everything passes. Whoever has God lacks nothing. Only God is enough." As she whispered this, without adopting a magisterial air, she seemed to be reading my soul.

"God alone is sufficient". Yes, He will suffice me, in this world or in the next. I want to possess him there one day, no matter how many sacrifices he has to make here to win. I don't want to fall into hell.

 Conclusion:

Perhaps not as an objection, but one question cannot be avoided: ¿How could Clara have remembered with such precision all the words of the condemned woman’s letter? We answer: whoever does the most, can do the least. Whoever begins a work can also finish it. If the manifestation from beyond the grave is a preternatural event, Clara must also have had preternatural assistance to accurately write all the words read during her vision.

 The eternity of the pains of hell is a dogma. Surely the scariest of all. It has its foundation in the Holy Scriptures.

Our Lord Jesus Christ gives us an example of the convenience of illustrating this dogma with a particular case in the parable of the rich Epulon and poor Lazarus. There is a description of hell and the danger of falling into it. There is no other intention of this work. The following advice also expresses our purpose: "Let us go to hell while we are alive, so as not to fall there after death."