Page:AceticLibraryV2PreparationForDeath.djvu/222

This page needs to be proofread.

who are lost, but it will even enter within them to torment them. The body will become all fire, so that the bowels within will burn; the heart within the breast will burn; the brain within the head will burn; the blood within the veins; even the marrow within the bone every lost one will become in himself a furnace of fire. "Thou shalt make them like a fiery oven." (Ps. xxi. 9.)

There are some who cannot endure to walk along a road dried up by the sun, or to remain in a close room with a brasier, neither can they endure a spark that may chance to fly from a candle; and yet they do not fear that fire which devours, as Isaiah inquires, " Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire?" (Isa. xxxiii. 14.) As a wild beast devours a young kid, even so does the fire of hell devour the lost; it devours them, but without causing them to die. S. Peter Damian, speaking to the incontinent, observes, Continue to please thy flesh, for a day will come, when thy lewdness will become as pitch within thy bowels, which will cause the flame which will burn thee in hell to be more great and more tormenting. S. Jerome adds, that this fire will bring with it all the torments and pains which are suffered in this life pains in the side, in the head, in the bowels, in the nerves. The pain of cold will also be felt in this fire. " Drought and heat consume the snow waters." (Job xxiv. 19.) But let it be ever understood, that all the pains which are endured in this life are but as a shadow, as S. Chrysostom remarks, when compared to the pains of hell, " Imagine fire, imagine the knife; what are these things but shadows compared with these torments? "

The powers belonging to the mind will also bring their own torment. The lost one will be tormented by memory, in remembering the time which he once had during this life in order to become saved, but which he has spent in causing his soul to be lost, and in remembering the graces which he received from God, but which he has never been willing to make use of. He will also be tormented by the intellect, in thinking of the great good which he has lost paradise and God; and that for this loss there is no longer any remedy. He will be tormented by the will, by seeing that every thing which he may ask for, will be