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St. John Vianney had lots of Confessions to hear, partly because he was brave enough to seek people out in their homes, and to preach about sin and Hell. He did not think it a waste of time to wait in the Confessional at the appointed time until someone came.

God is all holiness, purity, goodness and radiance. When we die, shall we be sufficiently like Him to be able to reach out to Him with joy, or to do so after some preparation? If our immediate reaction will be complete rejection of God there will be no place to go except down, away from Him into the Abyss.

Priests should set an example of holiness and purity, neither giving up nor watering down the Faith, nor developing a worldly spirit in order to be popular. They will do little good if they are disloyal to the Saviour, Who asks them to imitate Him, and keep people safe from Hell.

In medieval times, powerful men had a castle, with towers used as dungeons for enemies. A worse fate awaits people who die in unrepented sin, especially acts of malice or cruelty towards their fellow men. God does not want to send people to Hell. Wicked people condemn themselves, for if they refuse to live with God, Who is good, they must live without goodness, or peace, or love.

It is a marvel of grace, that the Blessed Trinity is present within the soul of a Baptised person. That person shares God's life, and power, and joy and peace. Yet God's presence is light as well as life. There is nothing worse than to extinguish that light, by deliberate mortal sin. If we die in such a state, we are doomed to an Eternity without God.

The truth about salvation is that no unrepentant sinner can reach Heaven. Those who have freely chosen to refuse God's friendship and to continue in their sins are lost. Entry into Heaven is an amazing privilege: a gift given to the pure, not a right. Those who insist on enjoying forbidden pleasures, and never repent, shall fall into the pit, when they die.

Only God can judge the hearts of human beings; but we must be wise, not naïve to the point of foolishness. The most dreadful cruelties are sometimes perpetrated behind the most beautiful facades, as if tortures go on, within a doll's house. Yet cruel people who refuse to repent, and who die, will fall into the Abyss, through their own fault.

When a politician, by his votes to promote or increase abortion provision, walks further and further away from life in God - as if along a long corridor - and avoids every alternative route, he will eventually find himself in a place from which every new route leads to the Abyss. He will have entered a place from which only damnation awaits him, unless he repents before he dies.

Christ came to earth, true God and true man, to dispel the clouds of ignorance of misunderstanding that clouded human minds on the subject of the Godhead. He came here, as a tiny child in the womb of the Virgin Mary, in order to Sacrifice His Life, out of love for us, to save sinners from Hell.

The men who serve Christ in the Church as priests, seem similar, exteriorly; but here and there amongst them are priests in grave sin. Unless they repent, they will suffer the fate of those whom Christ condemned when he said 'Woe to you, Chorazin'. Priests have had wonders worked in their lives. To ignore God's gifts and commit grave sin is to deserve Hell.

Christ wants us to know that He speaks to us about sin and Hell because of His great love for us. Just as a householder acts with kindness if he warns a new neighbour that there is an old well in that person's garden, where anyone could be lost, so Christ acts with kindness when He explains in various ways that certain types of behaviour can destroy the life of grace within our souls, extinguishing the light of the Holy Spirit within us - unless we repent and change.

Those nurses and doctors who dispose of some unborn babies and adult patients, having judged them to be inconvenient or useless, are as if casting them into a pit. Yet they themselves will fall into the pit of doom, unless they repent before they die. The pit represents, for evil-doers, the perpetual alienation from God that they might freely choose.

A priest has been ordained in order to preach the Gospel and to offer sacrifice, in order to rescue souls from their sins and lead them towards Heaven. So a priest who leads a soul towards Hell by suggesting his mortal sins are not serious, and that, in fact, someone can continue in his sins without any pangs of conscience, is a monster, in God's sight, because he is doing Satan's work.

There are people who lead outwardly respectable lives but who are half-way to Hell, God sees, because of their disbelief, and their deliberate refusal to lead good lives in obedience to His laws of morality. Unless they repent before they die, they will fall into the bottomless pit, which represents eternal alienation from God chosen by the wicked.

At the end of human life, we shall ultimately make our way towards Heaven - by the grace of Christ - or to Hell, as a consequence of our own choices and actions. Hell can be pictured as a hole in the ground, from which no-one can return, whether to earthly life or to Heaven. It is a life of utter misery and regret, shared with others who have resolutely refused, until death, to accept Christ's invitation to turn to Him in repentance, to receive the gift of Divine Life.

There were ancient temples where pagans offered sacrifices, and kept their victims in a dark underground chamber. There are many people today who freely 'sacrifice' their own souls by their un holy practices; and by these sins they freely move away from the light of God towards the dark, eternal state of being-without-God, rightly called Hell.

Each of us should ask, if we think about death, "Will my soul rise up to Heaven, helped by the outstretched arm of Christ?" If we do not turn to Christ, and allow Him to forgive our sins, and to bring us to Heaven by His Divine power, we cannot save ourselves. We shall have no-where to go except downwards, into the eternal loss-of-God that is called Hell.

God is so good that He sent His own Son to suffer, to save us. Christ has warned us that we follow a 'hard road' to Heaven, and that few find it. People who have fallen into Hell have died unrepentant, having ignored God's laws, taken no notice of the Gospel, and having refused the help of wise friends who warned them of the danger of continuing in grave sin. And now they cry out in horror at their predicament, in the sea of fire in the depths of the Abyss.

We are all horrified to think of victims of an avalanche, many still trapped beneath tons of rocks and snow, in their vehicles. Those who died have had a dreadful end; yet no suffering is as great as that experienced by people who die alienated from God, and unrepentant. In life, they were being damaged by sin as their intellects and consciences were darkened. Without repentance, sinners risk the loss of God after death, forever: a state called Hell.

Many people inhabit houses which were once a safe distance from the sea; but nearby cliffs have eroded, and the houses are in imminent danger of collapse. This plight mirrors the state of spiritual danger of Catholics who neglect the sacraments and rarely or never pray, and have not repented of their sins. God invites them to act, to find safety, to be freed from fear and danger. Unless they heed Him, they will fall, not into the sea but into the Abyss, for all Eternity.