Our Lady of Fatima showed the three children hell and told them that in our age souls where falling into it like snowflakes.

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time. January 16th, 2011.

Last week we celebrated the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. We recalled that Baptism is one of God's most beautiful and magnificent gifts because it is the basis of the whole Christian life, the gateway to life in the Spirit and the door which gives us access to the other sacraments. This is why baptism is necessary for salvation.

Today we begin ordinary time with the same event, but this time from the Gospel of St. John. The Church has done this quite deliberately—to get our attention on how important Baptism really is. Through Baptism we are freed from sin and reborn as sons and daughters of the all mighty and every living God. By our baptismal grace we become members of the family of the Most Blessed Trinity; and we become members of Christ, are incorporated into His Mystical body the Church, are made sharers in the Church’s mission of the salvation of souls, and we incredibly actually become partakers of the Divine Nature of God.

With the joy of Christmas still fresh in our minds and hearts, last week we also spoke about being faithful to our baptismal graces. The eternal life we all received at our baptism will remain ours only if are faithful and obedient to these graces by being faithful to the Catholic Church and her teachings. God’s promise to us will remain valid for us, in other words, if we bring the purity of our baptismal souls, unstained to that day when we stand face to face with Jesus our redeemer--the day of our judgment, the most important day of our life.

If this is all so, and it is, then we should often reflect on our own faithfulness to our baptism. This week let us take a deeper look at our faithfulness by asking ourselves some very important questions. First, have we been faithful to the graces we have received at our baptism? In what ways have we not been faithful? Have we in the sacrament of confession frequently asked our God for forgiveness for these sins and with the help of His grace repented of them and struggled to amend, that is change our lives for the better?

These questions remind us that losing the gift of our eternal life is really the only thing in this life that we should ever fear because it is to be separated from God forever in the pains of hell. Yes, to live out or not to live out our Baptismal graces each and every day has major consequences, even eternal ones. We cannot be lulled into thinking that once we are baptized, we are automatically going to enjoy heaven for eternity. For by being unfaithful we show our rejection of God, we make our choice against Him and He will not interfere with our free choice.

I recently read an article in Homiletic and Pastoral review, a very reputable Catholic magazine. The article spoke about the denial of many of the possibility of ever losing the gift of eternal life. This article pointed out that there are many Catholics that don’t so much deny the existence of hell, but they deny that there are any human beings there or that any human beings can go there. To put the matter in another way, many Catholics now believe that every one is saved, that all go to heaven. This belief is often referred to as “universalism”; perhaps we could call it “salvation universalism.” Either way the Church from the beginning has condemned it.

This article went on to point out that ideas have consequences in peoples lives and in our world. Catholics who think that no one will go to hell will ultimately have a lax view of morality. As a result they will not work out their salvation with fear and trembling and they will definitely not be concerned about converting non-believers to the Catholic faith. For if all are saved, what does it matter what you do, why confess your sins, do penance and amend your life--why pray, do penance and sacrifice for those who are apart from God and His Church. The truth is however that this is not being faithful to our baptismal graces, and it is not fulfilling our part in the Mission of the Church to cooperate in the salvation of souls.

If a Catholic, or anyone else for that matter, thinks that no one is in hell and that no one will go there, it will have a profound effect on his view of morality and the Ten Commandments and so will effect how he lives his life. All of us are subject to temptations, and a strong and good motive for resisting temptations to lust, envy, revenge, theft, etc is the fear of going to hell. Our blessed Lord actually mentions Hell in the Gospels at least 30 times; there are only a few things he mentions more often. St Ignatius of Loyola in his Spiritual Exercises recommends the fear of hell as a good motive for avoiding sin, if one’s love for God is not strong enough to resist temptation. Also the existence of Hell is a unanimous teaching of all the early Church Fathers. While the Church has never definitively said that a certain person is in hell, she as definitively stated that are souls right now in hell. The Church teaches infallibly, that is with the authority of God Himself, that the souls of those who die in personal grievous sin descend immediately into hell, where they will be tormented by the pains of hell—that is the pain caused by eternal separation from our all loving God.”

By the way, Our Lady of Fatima showed the three children hell and told them that in our age souls where falling into it like snowflakes. She said that many souls go to hell because there is no one to pray for them. She then told the children to pray much for sinners, to fast and do penance for the conversion of poor sinners. She also pointed out that sin, that turning away from God has dire consequences for our whole world. She said, “If mankind does not turn away from its sin and stop offending God who is already grievously offended, the world would descend more and more into hell. Isn’t this happening to our world troubled by so many problems- abortion, promiscuity, divorce, all kinds of discrimination, social injustices, great violence (a member of congress shot in the head, along with ten other injured and six killed including a nine year old girl) terrorism, war and general unhappiness and despair. This is not an accident-the world is more and more rejecting God and it is slowly is being transformed into a “hell”. In the end our Blessed Mother said God would intervene and would if necessary purify the world by fire. In in the end, she said, her Immaculate Heart would triumph, but not before much suffering and misery and loss of life, both physical and eternal.

Let’s look at the issue of Hell practically. If heaven is to spend all eternity in an intimate embrace with the object of our faith, Jesus Christ and through Him with the Father and the Holy Spirit (to be wedded to God), how can anyone expect to enter into this embrace when they have not cultivated an intimate friendship throughout their lives with Jesus by doing what Jesus Himself said one must do be his disciple, his beloved friend? Some believe that they will just repent at the end of their lives and choose Jesus then. But how can one chose Christ at the end of his life, if he has never chosen him throughout His life? This would be like a man saying to a woman, “I never talked to you; I treated you poorly when I spent time with you; I messed around with other women all the time. In my actions I never showed you I loved you, now let’s get married.” Love just doesn’t work that way.

The article in Homiletic and Pastoral review goes on to mention that the notion of universal salvation has invaded the Catholic Church on all levels and that maybe this is one of the main reasons the Church is in such a state of crisis at the present time. It reminded that it is a constant teaching of the Church that Hell exists and that those who die in the state of mortal sin will condemn themselves to hell for all eternity, whether they are catholic or non-catholic.

It is interesting that in many countries, including our own, Catholics are leaving the Church in droves to join Evangelical Churches, which preach regularly about the existence of hell, demons, & Satan. While it is true that many times these Churches don’t speak enough about the mercy of God, is it not also true that maybe these people are leaving because they don’t hear enough about the justice of God in our Catholic Churches and that there are consequences to ourselves, others and our world because of our sins.

By the way, speaking of evangelicals, I once heard an Evangelical preacher on the radio that was reminding his congregation that all of us like to come to church to feel good, to listen and sing to the music, to meet our brother and sister, to embrace them and pray with them. However, He said that sometimes we need to be reminded about things we don’t like to think about or talk about. And then he told them that a fireman would not be much of fireman if he didn’t warn people about fire, or a doctor would not be much of a doctor if he didn’t warn people about disease, and that he as a preacher sure wouldn’t be much of preacher if he didn’t warn his people about hell; nor by the way, would he, would I, be loving them the way we should.

How many loves have been lost because the lover became careless and he neglected and ill treated the one he loved because of complacency, never believing he could ever lose the love of his life? It is not true that we can only realize the great gift of our baptism, if we believe that it is possible for us to lose it if we neglect it? Let us not make that mistake; let us never be complacent in our love for the greatest Lover the world has ever seen, Jesus Christ, who wills all men be saved. Let us beg Him at this Holy Mass for his grace to not only remain faithful, but to become more faithful to the grace of our baptism. Let us beg Him in the Holy Eucharist for his help to believe, adore, hope and love Him more.
God doesn’t want us to love Him just because we fear hell; He wants us to love Him because He is worthy of all our love; He wants us to be saved and spend and eternity of loving bliss within His eternal embrace, a joyful bliss which can begin on this earth; this is why He sent His only Son to die for us in order to be able give us Himself in the Holy Eucharist. But we for our part must chose Him, and we do that by being faithful to Him and to His Holy Catholic Church.

Let us trust in His mercy and His love, by leaving sin behind and turning to Him completely, so that on the day of judgment we may hear those most blessed of all words, “Well done my Good and faithful servant enter now into the joy of your master house.”