What is hell like?

What is hell like? I sometimes get asked questions about what heaven and hell are like. For some, heaven is a beautiful golf course in which every shot we hit goes exactly where we want it to, and hell is a golf course in which you miss a six-inch putt. While this example may be simplistic, we all have some image in our mind in which we can think of heaven or hell.

There are many different images of what hell can be like from Dante’s epic work the Divine Comedy – Inferno, in which Dante takes his journey through hell. Hell is depicted as having seven levels in which the upper levels are where the punishment of the less serious sins happens and the lower ones for the more serious ones. At the upper regions, the damned are constantly chasing the things they chased on earth, for example those who commit the sin of lust are desperately trying to hold on to another person in a great wind storm. In the lower regions, people are encased in ice either right side up or upside down and the three worst sinners are spending eternity being chewed up by Satan.

I was watching a movie and it had an interesting take on what hell was like; it was a place in which you spent eternity watching all of the bad things that were happening to those you loved. I can only imagine what that would feel like, seeing the pain and suffering of those that you cared about forever. St. Theresa of Avila once spent some time in hell and she said that if anyone could see what she saw, they would never want to sin again. In the New Testament, Jesus himself gives us a couple of images of hell and it is equated to the Valley of Gahanna, which is the place where they threw the trash and burned it. He says that hell is a place “where the worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.” Jesus is hinting that the people who end up there are thrown out like refuse and burned.

In one of my favorite passages, Mt: 25, Jesus discusses the way to get to heaven or hell and that is up to us, but it was not originally created for us, it is “the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” In essence, hell was not created specifically for us, but he does let us make the choice. Most of us would not consciously choose to go to hell, but Jesus does state that we will be judged for our actions. He is telling us that in the end, it is our own choices in life that determine where we will end up for eternity, hopefully it will not be there, but in the kingdom of heaven with him. As the Act of Contrition states, we should really fear the loss of heaven and the pains of hell.

God bless,
Fr. Ken