It’s early Advent, that cheery time of year when our thoughts turn to Things Immortal. This is the customary time for us to ponder the above-mentioned “Four last Things.”
The first Sunday of Advent was medievally called “Doom Sunday,” just to make sure things got off on the right foot. In those days, “doom” didn’t have the same connotation as it does today. It wasn’t something like “we’re doomed, boys, none of us is gonna make it outta here alive.” Doom was the Anglo-Saxon word for “judgment”—as in the famous “Domesday Book” compiled for William the Conqueror. In the medieval churches of England, there was everywhere a standard painting above the Altar rail where people knelt to receive Holy Communion. It was a picture of the “Doom”—the Last Judgment, depicting the Lord Christ, enthroned in Heaven and dividing the people left and right—those to His right going into eternal felicity, escorted by angels, those to His left being dragged by demons straight to hell. I regret we don’t have them anymore.
Most of us nowadays are too smart to believe God would ship anybody off to hell—excepting only politicians, perhaps. Certainly He wouldn’t send me. He loves me, right?
Yes, He does.
He always will. My problem is I don’t want somebody to love me—not real, honest-to-God love. I want people to indulge me. I have only a threadbare idea about what love really is.
I usually don’t want to go where the Lord leads me, and most often I don’t want to do what He has in mind. Fortunately for me, He loves me enough not to leave me to my own devices, imagining I know not only what I want but certain I know what I need. Like a loving father, sometimes the Lord has to use a switch on me.
He does that (St Paul says, “those He loves, He chastens”) because He knows the reality of hell (whether I’m too smart to believe in it or not), He loves me and He doesn’t want me roasting on a spit eternally. That’s why bad things happen—to us as individuals, as families, as parishes, as nations and as human beings. Bad things are God’s way of saying “Uh—you’re not really getting this, are you?”
Bad things don’t come from God—hell included. The bad things that come my way don’t come because God is plotting against me, but because I’m proud, envious, angry, greedy, gluttonous, lustful and slothful. Left to myself, these are the character choices I’d make. So God doesn’t leave us to ourselves. He butts into our lives over and again, trying to turn us from the broad and easy paths we so often choose.
Heaven, of which the Church is the earthly and imperfect image (eikon), is, like the One Church, a communion. Heaven is the perfect communion of the redeemed with God the Three-in-One and with each other.
Hell is the opposite. There is no communion, either with God or anyone else. Hell is Me, Me, Me. Its Biblical symbol is a sulfurous, bubbling lake of brimstone and fire. The image is unappealing—it’s downright unpleasant!—but the reality is much worse. My guess is that hell isn’t a terrifying playground of devils, with pitchfork-wielding imps in red leotards, as much as it is dull. Eternal boredom with Me at the center, unable to love, unable to give (in hell there won’t be anybody to give to) or share of ourselves. Hell is a pathetic “communion” of one—Me with myself.
Hell is peopled with those who made the choice of Me, Me, Me over and again throughout their lives; they don’t know how to make any other.
Next time you kneel at the Altar rail, picture a medieval “doom”—the Lord Jesus separating His sheep from His goats. And be a little grateful for the troubles of the past week. He’s working on you—to make sure Someday, when He’s divvying up His stock, you go off happily, bleating with the sheep.—Fr Gregory Wilcox
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