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A person who refuses Divine Help, and pursues his selfish desires until death, inevitably experiences the painful separation from God which they chose in earthly life and which continues into Eternity. Without God, all is pain and grief, unending, in the company of the demons and all the damned.
There are souls in Hell who are being tormented by demons. In earthly life, they refused to listen to God who loves them. They chose to walk on the path to Hell as they cried out, until death. 'I can do whatever I like'.
A person who sins, and who says to himself, "I can do whatever I want", would be wise to remember that by his decisions and acts he aligns himself either with God and the Saints and Angels, or with Satan and his demons and all who love evil. He should pause, to ask: "Whose side am I on?"
Christ told me that He had spoken the truth when He once declared that few people find the Way to Heaven. Not many are saved, He said, because the human heart is so hard and wilful. Very many people persist in sinning, even when they know they do wrong; and in this way these people freely choose their destination.
Christ pointed out two groups of people who are unlikely to go to Heaven: those who commit serious sin, yet have no fear of death, no desire to change, and are blithely determined to stay the same; and those who would like to go to Heaven but make no effort to co-operate with Christ, or to pray or do works of charity.
Christ told me, as we prayed together, that although I had just been looking at my picture of Hell, He was at that moment seeing the reality. He can see all those souls who refused to listen to Him as He spoke through their conscience, their good friends, and the Church. He gave them freedom; they chose to ignore Him.
It's as if it almost breaks Christ's heart when someone refuses to listen to Him, refuses to accept the truths taught by His Church about good and evil, and deliberately walks away from the life of grace, joy and union with God to enter the fire of Hell, where live Satan and the demons and all rebellious and unrepentant souls.
Lapsed Catholics do not grow in the knowledge and love of God; and when they die, those who see God and are ashamed of their earlier indifference go to Purgatory, whilst those who hate God and are resolute in their rejection of Him hurl themselves away from Him and therefore into Hell, which is life without His light and peace.
Some Catholics who receive Christ in Holy Communion don't want to open their hearts and minds to Him, or His light might shine upon their sins and bad habits. It's as though they are heaping sacks of coal onto a trap door, to prevent Him from entering their lives; but in shutting Him out, they shut out His joy and peace too.
There are three groups that endanger their salvation by not benefiting from the 'Bread of Life' which is Jesus our Eucharistic Lord: those who refuse to believe in Him or to join the Church, those other Christians who insist on believing that their Orders are valid, but who receive only bread, and those Catholics whose Communions are ineffective because of the refusal of those Communicants to believe in what Christ teaches them through His Church.
A person trapped in mortal sin who does not want to be rescued and who does not really believe that he is in danger of damnation is like an old man living in a basement room, covered in dirt and dust, and who struggles to climb the steep stairs, but who refuses to live elsewhere. He blithely ignores the danger of being fatally ill, and alone.
A person who refuses to believe in God, when there is plenty of evidence for His existence, makes a barrier of unbelief, like a cloud, above him, which prevents the graces that God wishes to shower upon him from penetrating his mind, soul and heart.
A person who refuses to believe in God, when there is so much evidence for His existence, is like the child who does not want to hear what her mother has to say about normal behaviour, and who hides beneath the blankets to keep out the sound of her voice.
God looks with horror upon abortion and related sins; it is as though a large fence separates the lives of those who do God's Will and obey His laws from those who deliberately choose to go against Him. Beyond the 'fence' lies darkness of soul and intellect and little hope of eternal joy.
Those who love God and live according to His laws, following the Way made by Jesus, the Son of God, can rise up when they die to join the Father in Heaven, to share His glory, and to experience bliss at His heart, in the Communion of Saints. Those who rejected Him have rejected Heaven.
In the whole universe, or the whole of eternity, there is only one Heaven, which people can reach who follow Christ's Way, made by Him to overcome the alienation which followed the Original Sin. There is no alternative to Heaven, for those who refuse to love God, but only a great fall into the depths of the Abyss.
During our life on earth, if we lift up our hands to God, He will draw us upwards towards holiness, through the grace of Christ and our trust. He will even draw us up as far as Heaven, when we die. If we refuse to trust in Him, however, or refuse to believe in Him, we shall slide into the pit, at death, by our own choice, with no-one to blame but ourselves.
The life of grace is like a journey up a mountain, round hairpin bends. Drivers need to know the highway code, and refrain from drink; so we must know about God's Will, and by prayer and other means be able to do it. In the life of grace, however - unlike mountain driving, where there are foolish drivers who might kill us - no-one loses his own soul and goes to Hell except through his own fault.
The Church is like a house, where the faithful are happy. Only if people leave the 'cellars' of sinful behaviour are they free to follow Christ to Heaven when He calls them, at the end of earthly life. His is the only Way. To refuse His invitation is to be lost forever, unable to ascend to where the Saints live, in Eternal Bliss.
A person who has freely chosen to deny the existence of God and to live as though God does not exist and makes no demands of us, is like a man who shuts himself into an underground cellar, in darkness, without the light of Christ. It is so dark that he is in danger of losing the keys of the door, and of imprisoning himself forever in darkness, instead of climbing Christ's ladder to Heaven.
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