Heaven - Cardinal Bacci

Heaven

1. Faith teaches us that the soul which is in the state of grace and has expiated all the temporal punishments due to its sins, goes immedia...tely to Heaven when it is separated from the body. There the soul enjoys eternal happiness. It sees God face to face. It sees Him without any intervention of created things, but as He is in Himself in the Unity and Trinity of His infinite perfections.

In this beatific vision the intellect remains completely satisfied, because in God there is every truth, beauty and goodness. The will abandons itself entirely to the will of God, desiring nothing else and loving nothing else but God alone. There springs from this abandonment a love which satisfies every desire, an inexpressible joy and a boundless peace. The happy soul will see the Blessed Virgin, too, and she will smile upon it with maternal tenderness. It will see the Angels and Saints gathered around the King of Kings and the Queen of Heaven, singing their praises. St. Paul, who was taken up to the third Heaven, tells us that it is impossible to imagine or to describe the unknown joys which are experienced there. In comparison with the eternal happiness of Heaven, the poor pleasures of this world are empty shadows. We cannot imagine the happiness of those who have gained Heaven by their good lives upon earth. The concept of Heaven is so beautiful and immense that it caused the Saints to desire death as a means of going there. They welcomed suffering, too, because it brought them nearer to their goal.

2. Our souls have an innate desire to be happy. God Himself has placed this desire in our hearts. What else are we doing all our lives but trying by every possible means to be happy? Unfortunately, we seek happiness where it is not to be found. Some seek it in material gain, others in honours, others in pleasure. But our hearts are much wider than the riches and honours and pleasures of this world. In comparison with the riches of the human spirit, worldly wealth is a very insignificant thing. Worldly honours are shadows which pass. As the "Imitation of Christ" reminds us, we are what we are before God, not what we appear before men. (Bk. III, Chapter 50:8) Pleasure also passes quickly, and when it is immoderate it leaves in our hearts a sense of emptiness and disgust. St. Augustine had a good deal of experience of the deceptiveness and complexity of human happiness. He had reason to exclaim: “You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless except in You. (Confessions, II, 2:4) We should follow the example of the Saints and aim at Heaven in everything we do. This should be the goal of our earthly journey. We should make sure that all our actions are in conformity with the will of God and directed towards this end.

3. God desires our salvation. “God wishes all men to be saved.” (1 Tim. 2:4) We are all aspirants of Heaven. We shall not be denied the grace of God so long as we ask for it with confidence and perseverance. St. Augustine tells us that Paradise is ours if we wish: “You are not called to embrace the earth, but to prepare yourselves for Heaven; not to be the successes of this world nor to a short-lived and transient prosperity, but to eternal life together with the Angels.” (Serm. 296, 6:7)
Contemplate this true and everlasting happiness. Let us direct towards it our intentions and desires and all our work. Then the day will come when we shall be really happy for all eternity.

Hell - Cardinal Bacci

Hell

1. “In whatever you do, remember your last days, and you will never sin.” (Ecclus. 7:36)

The meditation considered by the masters of the spiritual life to be the most useful for rousing the soul from sin, or from a state of torpor, is that on the last things, in other words, on what will happen to us at the end of life. Amongst these last things, hell is the most terrifying. Yet, if the mercy of God did not sustain us, we could fall into hell at any moment. St. John Chrysostom meditated on hell every day. All the Saints have found in this meditation the first steps on the way to perfection. Remember that a single mortal sin would merit hell for us. In that moment the sinner could have been already hurled into that abyss of torments. Let us imagine that we are there... and that the goodness and mercy of God has released us from those everlasting, all-devouring flames. If this should happen, all the sacrifices which virtue demands would seem so easy and pleasant. How ready we should be to do anything sooner than return to that chasm of eternal sorrow!

2. In that place of never-ending suffering there will be three punishments to torture us. There will be the worm of conscience which does not die: “Their worm dies not.” (Mark 9:43) This is the awful realisation that we could have saved ourselves, but are lost for all eternity; that God gave us so many graces and we damned ourselves by abusing them. Now there is no longer any remedy, because the mercy of God has been succeeded once and for all by His justice.

In the second place, there is fire. This is a real fire, but altogether different from the material fire we know in this world, which was created by God for our benefit and service. The fire of hell, on the other hand, was created by Divine Justice purely to punish us. It is a special kind of fire which tortures body and soul, and the rebel angels as well as damned human beings. It could be called discerning in so far as it torments more or less mercilessly according to the gravity of the sin. These flames embrace every evil and exclude every good. They are flames which will never be extinguished, flames which burn, but do not consume, flames without light, dark and accompanied by the shrieking of eternal despair. The very thought of this horrible dungeon of torments should spur us on to begin immediately a life of virtue and Christian perfection.

3. The greatest punishment, however, will be that of loss. This is the knowledge that we have lost forever our one, true, and highest good, God Himself. The soul will now understand fully what it means to have lost God forever. It will feel irresistibly the need to be united with Him, and to see, enjoy and love Him. But at the same time it will know that God has cast it away from Himself for all eternity. "Go, accursed soul, into everlasting fire!" Then the irresistible need for God will turn to hate and eternal malediction.

The terrifying reality of hell should not leave us amazed, as if it were an act of implacable severity. Rather should it be a warning to us. God should not seem to us to be a pitiless judge, but a judge who is infinitely just and infinitely good. Rather than send us to hell, God gave us His only-begotten Son, Who died on the cross for our sins. Just as the Redemption is a work of infinite love and goodness, so hell is a work of infinite justice.

If we reflect on the mystery of the Incarnation, on the Redemption and on the death of the Son of God, it will appear that, omnipotent though He is, He could not have done more to save us. The divine work of Redemption explains the mystery of the eternity of hell. It is not God Who is relentless. It is the damned soul which was relentlessly ungrateful towards the infinitely good and merciful God.

Venial Sin - Cardinal Bacci

Venial Sin

1. Next to mortal sin, the greatest of all evils is venial sin. Sin is always an offence against the God of goodness. When we sin, we place our own will above His and put Him in a position secondary to ourselves. If mortal sin is spiritual suicide because it extinguishes in us the divine life of grace, venial sin is an injury, more or less grave, to the soul. The former completely separates us from God; the latter moves us farther away from Him. Mortal sin means the death of the soul. Venial sin is a disease of the soul which reduces its supernatural powers and leaves it more open to the ever-increasing attractions of evil.

We cannot speak of small sins, as if sin could be a triviality. Sin is always something great and terrible, because it is an offence against our Creator and Redeemer, whom we should love, honour and serve with every impulse of our heart and with the whole strength of our will. It is the height of ingratitude, because in order to offend God we make use of the gifts He has given us -- our eyes, ears, speech and all our powers of soul and body.

Let us think seriously about this. We must firmly resolve to be more vigilant so that with the grace of God we may avoid ever committing a deliberate venial sin.

2. There is another motive which obliges us carefully to avoid ever committing a venial sin. The path of sin leads us down a smooth and slippery incline towards destruction. Once we begin to descend it is difficult to stop. Even to begin is a disaster:

“He who wastes the little he has will be stripped bare.” (Eccles. 19:1)
“He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much;
and he who is unjust in a very little thing is unjust also in much.” (Luke 16:10)

Whoever is faithful to God in little things, will receive from Him the grace to remain faithful also in greater things, but a man who despises the lesser falls rejects the divine assistance and so exposes himself to the danger of falling more seriously. If we reflect on such dangers, we shall have a real fear of venial sin and shall be always on our guard against it.

3. The Gospel tells us that we must render an account of every idle word, and that nothing tarnished can be admitted into the splendour of Paradise. In the terrible torments of Purgatory we must pay the full price for all our faults, even the slightest. The thought of such fearful punishment should frighten us, but the love of God should keep us far from all shadow of sin. We read of some of the saints that throughout their lives they wept at the mere remembrance of their slightest negligence. If we loved God truly, we should shun the least suggestion of sin.

Sin - Cardinal Bacci

Sin
1. In that we prefer our own wayward whims to the law of God, sin is an abuse of liberty. It is a revolt against right reason, the dictates of which we refuse to obey. It is an offence against our Creator and Redeemer, whose commandments we despise and whose redeeming grace we reject by our actions. It is, moreover, an act of supreme folly, for it extinguishes not only the supern...atural splendour of grace, but also the natural light of reason. Through sin man is brutalised, and experiences in himself as his first punishment the confusion of his whole being.

In practice, the sinner denies God who has created and redeemed him. He upsets the natural order of things and is violently separated from the source of all truth, beauty and goodness. As a result he experiences in himself the hell which he has constructed with his own hands -- a hell of emptiness, disgust and remorse. Unless the helping hand of God reaches out to rescue him from the abyss, all this is simply a bitter foretaste of eternal despair. God, as St. Augustine has written, has ordained from all eternity that every dissolute soul will be its own punishment. For the sinner hell begins on this earth. There can be no peace for the wicked.

When we realise the gravity, stupidity and dire consequences of sin, it seems impossible that a rational being, enlightened and enriched by divine grace, should continue to sin. Nevertheless sad experience teaches us that the lives of individuals, families and human society in general are often distorted by this evil, which is the root of all other evils.

2. In order to understand more clearly the gravity of sin, it is helpful at this stage to consider three things: --

(a) The world with all its evils -- sorrows, diseases, wars, plagues and death. All these things do not come directly from the will of God, Who is the highest good, but happen with His permission. They are the effect of original sin and of the continuing transgressions of men.

(b) Hell, which is the handiwork of sin. God, infinitely good but also infinitely just, has ordained this terrible and everlasting punishment for the rebellious sinner.

(c) The Crucifix. To save us from sin the God-Man has suffered the cruelest of torments and death, but men go on offending Him with unbelievable ingratitude.

3. Now let us turn the spotlight on ourselves and think of our past lives. So many sins and abuses of God's grace! Such coldness and ingratitude! Where has all this brought us? Spiritually, sin has deprived us of God and of the supernatural life which His grace gives us. Intellectually, it is an absurdity, a dishonour and a degradation. Physically, it is an inversion of the right order and often means total ruin. Let us humbly repent, therefore, and make resolutions so firm that we shall be ready to face any sacrifice, even death, in order to put them into practice.

St Philip Neri's maxim for 1st January

WELL! when shall we have a mind to begin to do good?

The New Year - Cardinal Bacci

Happy New Year!

The New Year

1. This is a new gift which God in His infinite goodness gives to us. But every gift of God demands on our part a generous expression of gratitude, which should result in positive acts of virtue. Gratitude is an empty and short-lived sentiment unless it is accompanied by a sincere intention of performing good works.

Time is the price of eternity, because with time we can purchase an eternity of happiness or misery.
Consider this great truth. Every year is like a ladder in our lives. Now, it is necessary that this ladder should lead us, not perilously downwards towards evil, but upwards towards Heaven, even if with faltering footsteps.

The New Year opens today as a blank page in the diary of our lives. What do we intend to write there? The usual inanities and sins, perhaps? Let us reflect before God and in the light of the eternity which awaits us. This is the time for great decisions. It is necessary that we should offer our resolutions to God along with a humble and fervent prayer that He will strengthen us to comply faithfully with His grace.

2. During these days it is customary to exchange, verbally or in writing, good wishes for the New Year. But these poor greetings are often nothing more than conventional phrases. Men lack the power to transmute such good wishes into reality. God alone is the source of every material and spiritual good; therefore He alone can ensure that these benevolent expressions are translated into deeds of Christian renovation. Since today is the beginning of the New Year, it is especially important for us to ask God more fervently and insistently to bless the resolutions which we are making for ourselves and the good wishes which we are showering on our friends.

These wishes have no meaning, and these resolutions have no force, if they are not accompanied by fervent and persevering prayer.

3. It is suggested in “The Imitation of Christ” that if we were to get rid of at least one habit of sin every year, we should soon be holy. If we have not tried to do this in the past, let us propose to do it in the future. This year let us select the principal defect which we possess, the sin into which we are most accustomed to fall. Let us seek to eradicate it with all the strength of our soul, assisted by the grace of God which will certainly not be denied us. Let us request for this purpose the most powerful patronage of Mary Most Holy. Let us pass this day in close union with God and under the maternal mantle of our Heavenly Mother. Finally, let us promise earnestly that all the days of the New Year will follow the same pattern.