Dear Friends,

In our own time, statistics and data demonstrate that we, post-modern Catholics, along with almost everyone else, have allowed ourselves to let our religious sensitivities become muted, our faith in the Real Presence of Jesus diminished, our respect for life as a gift from God entrusted to our care qualified and our reverence for the laws of nature and nature’s God stifled. We have allowed ourselves to be convinced of the convenient lie that hell is not real, because we can’t wrap our minds around the human-made caricatures of a place that is enveloped in hellfire brimstone, inundated with the odor of sulphur and inhabited by red demons with horns, pointy tails and pitchforks. Satisfied with this description and certain that God doesn’t play such childish games, we definitively dismiss the notion as nonsense. Dante Alighieri (c. 1265–1321) is often credited with forming the illustrations of our imaginations concerning hell; and while his graphics may not appeal to our contemporary sensibility, his insights are quite perceptive. In the first part of “The Divine Comedy,” titled Inferno (Hell), he describes Hell proper reserved for “the Fraudulent” in three distinct circles for those who have accepted the “Great Lie” and exist outside of God’s Truth. The first circle is for the Simply Fraudulent who have separated themselves from God by their duplicity; namely panderers, sycophants, gossips, sorcerers, corrupt politicians, hypocrites, thieves, counselors, sowers of discord and liars. The deeper section is reserved for those whose inability to accept the Truth of God precipitates the loss of the truth of themselves through Treachery, including traitors to their family, their nation, their very self and ultimately to God. The deepest circle of Hell, according to Dante, is called Judecca, after Judas Iscariot. Unexpectedly it is not enveloped in flames, but is a frozen and silent state of non-being in which the souls are distorted, listless and immobile. In contradistinction, the third and final part of “The Divine Comedy,” titled, Paradiso (Heaven) concludes with the ecstatic prayer of St. Bernard of Clairvaux in God’s Presence, as Pope Benedict so beautifully expressed: “The cosmic excursion in which Dante, in his Divine Comedy, wishes to involve the reader, ends in front of the perennial Light that is God Himself, before that Light which is at the same time ‘the love that moves the sun and the other stars.’ (Par. XXXIII, v. 145). Light and love are one and the same. They are the primordial creative powers that move the universe.” (Pope Benedict XVI, “Address to the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, 23 January 2006) My point in describing Dante’s vision of Hell is not to instill fear, but to reassert the truths of our Catholic Faith.

That, we believe in one God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—who created all that came into being when His creative Word carried on His Breath spoke Light, Order and Meaning into the darkness, chaos and nothingness of the void. That, the loving design of the Creator of our Original Holiness was subverted through the selfish decision of our first parents to trust the word of a fallen creature rather than accepting the truth of the One in whose image and likeness they had been created. That in that free choice to reject Him, humanity firstly, separated themselves from the Paradise of being in Communion with God as He designed; and secondly, established this world of artifice and pretense—the realm of death. By the Father’s eternal Will and through the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, His Passion, Death and Resurrection in history, our human nature has been conjoined to the Divine nature and the condition of the possibility of accessing Real Life as God intended our communion with God for all eternity. At this moment in our history, in which people, ignorantly, irresponsibly and insensitive to the victims, throw around the moniker “Nazi;” it would serve us well to reflect on a period of history, not much different than our own when true evil visited our world. At first people refused to admit that such evil could exist, let alone be rationalized to seem acceptable. In his masterful work, “The Cost of Discipleship” (published in 1937), Dietrich Bonhoeffer drew a distinction between “Costly” Grace which is authentic and the “Cheap” grace for which we settle as he bore witness to the truth of God amid the evils of Nazism. His critique of Germany is poignantly relevant for us amidst the widespread cultural amnesia of both the real presence and gracious action of God in the world and in our lives. He writes: “Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. … Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks' wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. ... Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, Baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.” (The Cost of Discipleship, pp. 43-45) In conjunction with pondering the “end of this world” as presented in today’s Gospel, let us not be conducting ourselves in a disordered and divisive way, by not keeping busy but acting like busybodies, minding the business of others; but, by our perseverance we will secure our lives.

Be of good cheer and have a blessed week!

Msgr. Grous

THIS WEEKEND, MR. ANDREW PINTO, ONE OF OUR SEMINARIANS FOR THE ARCHDIOCESE OF PHILADELPHIA, WILL BE PRESENT WITH US FOR THE ST. CHARLES BORROMEO SEMINARY ANNUAL APPEAL. THANK YOU FOR YOUR GENEROSITY IN THE PAST; PLEASE BE GENEROUS IN ASSISTING IN THE PREPARATION OF THE NEXT GENERATION OF PRIESTS.