ON HELL: A
MYSTIC REFLECTION
Fathers and teachers, I ponder, "What is hell?" I maintain that it is
the suffering of being unable to love. Once in infinite existence,
immeasurable in time and space, a spiritual creature was given on his
coming to earth the power of saying, "I am and I love." Once, only
once, there was given him a moment of active lifting love, and for that
was earthly life given him, and with it times and seasons. And that
happy creature rejected the priceless gift, prized it and loved it not,
scorned it and remained callous. Such a one, having left the earth,
sees Abraham's bosom and talks with Abraham as we are told in the
parable of the rich man and Lazarus, and beholds heaven and can go up
to the Lord. But that is just his torment, to rise up to the Lord
without ever having loved, to be brought close to those who have loved
when he has despised their love. For he sees clearly and says to
himself, "Now I have understanding, and though I now thirst to love,
there will be nothing great, no sacrifice in my love, for my earthly
life is over, and Abraham will not come even with a drop of living
water (that is the gift of earthly active life) to cool the fiery
thirst of spiritual love which burns in me now, though I despised it on
earth; there is no more life for me and will be no more time! Even
though I would gladly give my life for others, it can never be, for
that life is passed which can be sacrificed for love, and now there is
a gulf fixed between that life and this existence." They talk of hell
fire in the material sense. I don't go into that mystery and I shun it.
But I think if there were fire in material sense, they would be glad of
it, for I imagine that in material agony, their still greater spiritual
agony would be forgotten for a moment. Moreover, that spiritual agony
cannot be taken from them, for that suffering is not external but
within them. And if it could be taken from them, I think it would be
bitterer still for the unhappy creatures. For even if the righteous in
Paradise forgave them, beholding their torments, and called them up to
heaven in their infinite love, they would only multiply their torments,
for they would arouse in them still more keenly a flaming thirst for
responsive, active and grateful love which is now impossible. In the
timidity of my heart I imagine, however, that the very recognition of
this impossibility would serve at last to console them. For accepting
the love of the righteous together with the impossibility of repaying
it, by this submissiveness and the effect of this humility, they will
attain at last, as it were, to a certain semblance of that active love
which they scorned in life, to something like its outward expression...
I am sorry, friends and brothers, that I cannot express this clearly.
But woe to those who have slain themselves on earth, woe to the
suicides! I believe that there can be none more miserable than they.
They tell us that it is a sin to pray for them and outwardly the
Church, as it were, renounces them, but in my secret heart I believe
that we may pray even for them. Love can never be an offence to Christ.
For such as those I have prayed inwardly all my life, I confess it,
fathers and teachers, and even now I pray for them every day. Oh, there
are some who remain proud and fierce even in hell, in spite of their
certain knowledge and contemplation of the absolute truth; there are
some fearful ones who have given themselves over to Satan and his proud
spirit entirely. For such, hell is voluntary and ever consuming; they
are tortured by their own choice. For they have cursed themselves,
cursing God and life. They live upon their vindictive pride like a
starving man in the desert sucking blood out of his own body. But they
are never satisfied, and they refuse forgiveness, they curse God Who
calls them. They cannot behold the living God without hatred, and they
cry out that the God of life should be annihilated, that God should
destroy Himself and His own creation. And they will burn in the fire of
their own wrath for ever and yearn for death and annihilation. But they
will not attain to death....
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky