Dear Mary:

Hell will have a "place" in the same sense that heaven has a "place." At the end of the world, our physical bodies will be resurrected and reunited with our bodies. Those bodies will then be transformed in a way that we do not understand, but we know that, at least those who go to heaven, our bodies will be like that of Christ's after His resurrection. St. Paul tells us this (1 Cor. 15:48-49; 1) and St.John (1 John 3:2).

The characteristics of Jesus' body after the resurrection was such that he could be physically touched, he could eat food, but he could also appear in a closed and locked room without going through the door or any window. Thus, he seemed to have characteristic both of physical and ethereal reality.

Whatever this physicality will be like, it will be different that we know now in our earthly life.

Thus, in the end, our souls and bodies will spend eternity in the heavenly reality of the presence of God or in the hellish reality of separation from God.

Until the resurrection, our souls remain separated from our bodies when we die. That soul is either with God or separated from God until the Great White Throne Judgment and Resurrection and the end of the world.

The bliss of heaven and the torment of hell are not things of which we can understand or imagine. Thus, the Bible uses analogy to illustrate that bliss or torment. Hell is then illustrated as fire and brimstone, torture, and physical pain. That is the only way we can conceive of this reality -- in material terms.

But, we really have no idea of the real nature of heaven or hell might be other than one is eternal bliss in the presence of God and the other is eternal separation from God. That separation, however, is self-imposed and freely chosen. No one goes to hell by accident.

We may also logically conclude that as our entire beings will be in bliss in heaven, so our entire being will be in torment in hell. Because we are beings with psychology, spirit, and bodies, the torment will be psychological, spiritual, and physical (according to whatever physical will be after the resurrection).

With this as a background, certainly part of the experience of hell is a state of mind. That state of mind, in one level, is a state of refusal, obstinacy, and rebellion that refuses to see God. Another part of that state may be the torment that is created from our minds that is perverted and transformed by our sin without the grace of God. This is a frightful thing.

I have worked in three mental hospitals and worked with hundreds of psychotic people. The experience these people tell me, particularly those who have recovered to some degree, is that the state of mind of psychosis is like a "hell" -- a frightening place of hallucinations, imaginary monsters and demons, loss of control, imaginary tortures to their bodies.

In almost all things spiritual, we can find some analogy on earth, some vignette, some small and imperfect picture in the natural world. For example, the human father is vignette of the Heavenly Father. God, who is a God of order, is seen in the orderly universe. St. Paul teaches us that God can be seen in His creation (Romans 1:20).

If this is true about God, the opposite is true too. We can see images in the natural world that give us a vignette of evil nature. 

I believe some forms of psychosis may be a vignette of what hell may be like in terms of "state of mind." Hell will be much more than that and may indeed include some para-physical aspect after the Resurrection.

In any event, we know that hell will be a self-chosen eternity without the vision and friendship of God. that will be a torture beyond any physical torture we can imagine.

As for the story of the nun and my opinion about Jesus coming to a lost soul in the last nanosecond, I have made no contradiction. If my opinion is correct, and it is only an opinion, that Jesus will come to a lost person in the last nanosecond of life to give the person one last chance before death, then obviously the nun refused that offer. Obviously, this being the case, if she was too embarrassed to confess that sin to Christ in the Sacrament of Confession to the alter Christos, she was also too embarrassed to confess it to Christ when she met Him face-to-face.

If she had truly lived her piety she would not have withheld the sin from Confession in the first place. Many people will do that. Sad, but true. People do that in this life -- refuse Jesus even in the face of overwhelming invitation and miracle. We can never underestimate the human capacity to reject truth no matter how illogical or stupid it may be.

The point of these stories, however, is not to pick them apart, but to take the message of the story to heart and get yourself right with God.

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary