“A place Prepared for us”

  

                                                                                                                                                

Statistics can be deceptive. There are now more than 1.4 Billion Catholics on the planet. Some is the result of evangelisation and much due to cultural inheritance as infants are baptised soon after birth. So whilst the picture may look rosy at first sight the reality may be quite different. 

The advantage of infant Baptism is that the new born receives grace immediately and therefore has some measure of protection from the enemy of our souls; but it must be built upon. Ultimately each person must make a conscious decision for God, to be a follower of Jesus. Many seem to think that after Baptism and perhaps participation in sacramental programmes that salvation is a ‘done deal’ with little or no requirement to live differently from the rest of humanity.

Recently, I read of the experience of St Teresa of Avilla where she was shown an unusual vision. We may be familiar with the message from scripture that Jesus is preparing a place for us in His kingdom, which He has of course, but what she saw was the alternative… Satan imitates what God does and she was shown the place prepared for her in hell that her sins merited. She described it, “The entrance seemed to be by a long narrow pass, like a furnace, very low, dark, and close. The ground seemed to be saturated with water, mere mud, exceedingly foul, sending forth pestilential odours, and covered with loathsome vermin. At the end was a hollow place in the wall, like a closet, and in that I saw myself confined. All this was even pleasant to behold in comparison with what I felt there. There is no exaggeration in what I am saying.  I felt a fire in my soul. I cannot see how it is possible to describe it. My bodily sufferings were unendurable....especially when I saw that there would be no intermission, nor any end to them. These sufferings were nothing in comparison with the anguish of my soul, a sense of oppression, of stifling, and of pain so keen, accompanied by so hopeless and cruel an infliction, that I know not how to speak of it. If I said that the soul is continually being torn from the body, it would be nothing, for that implies the destruction of life by the hands of another but here it is the soul itself that is tearing itself in pieces. I cannot describe that inward fire or that despair, surpassing all torments and all pain. I did not see who it was that tormented me, but I felt myself on fire, and torn to pieces, as it seemed to me; and, I repeat it, this inward fire and despair are the greatest torments of all. Left in that pestilential place, and utterly without the power to hope for comfort, I could neither sit nor lie down: there was no room. I was placed as it were in a hole in the wall; and those walls, terrible to look on of themselves, hemmed me in on every side. I could not breathe. There was no light, but all was thick darkness. I do not understand how it is; though there was no light, yet everything that can give pain by being seen was visible” (Teresa of Ávila, 2007, Chapter 32, Section 2).

I imagine she was quite motivated to become a saint following such a harrowing vision.  And we too must take our commitment to God seriously, to choose our eternal destination carefully. “To not decide is to decide”.

Reference: Teresa of Ávila. (2007). The life of St. Teresa of Jesus (D. Lewis, Trans.). [Cosimo Classics]. (Original work published 1565)