phillyflyers
- Joined
- Aug 8, 2024
- Messages
- 10,391
Hell as described by various Catholic saints through the centuries:
- St. Faustina Kowalska: Saw hell as caverns and torture pits, with fire penetrating the soul, perpetual darkness, and unending despair, as described in her Diary.
- Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich: Described hell as a vast, dark structure with huge doors, containing prisons, deserts, and lakes of horror, a symbolic representation of spiritual agony.
- The Children of Fatima (Jacinta, Francisco, Lúcia): Witnessed a great sea of fire under the earth filled with demons and souls like burning embers, with terrifying shrieks, motivating Our Lady to promote devotion to Her Immaculate Heart.
- St. Catherine of Siena: God the Father revealed to her the four primary torments of hell, from which all other pains derive.
- St. John Bosco: Experienced a terrifying vision of hell's gates, with immense walls miles apart, illustrating the excruciating pain even at its distant rim.
- St. Frances of Rome: Saw specific punishments for different sins, symbolic of spiritual suffering.
- St. Veronica Giuliani: A Capuchin nun and mystic, she was shown the "seven sites" of hell in a vision. In the deepest, seventh site, she saw souls who committed "every sort of sin, especially carnal sins," burning in a "big black ditch" of slime and vermin, tormented yet never consumed. She stated that if sinners saw hell for even one second, "they would crawl on broken glass to Confession".
- St. Lidwina of Schiedam: During a vision of a place in purgatory "bordering upon hell," she saw what looked like an "immense prison" with a "confused noise of lamenting voices, cries of fury, chains, instruments of torture". She saw one soul as a "spirit all on fire, resembling incandescent metal," suffering a torment of fire so shocking that it caused her a physical reaction.
- St. Catherine of Genoa: Though her visions focused heavily on Purgatory, she stated that there is "as much pain as in hell" in Purgatory, but the souls in Purgatory accept it as a mercy because they are in a state of grace and are being purified. The pain of hell, by contrast, is the complete and eternal rejection of God's love.
- St. Anthony Mary Claret: He did not necessarily have a vision, but offered powerful descriptions: "The natural fire that we see during this life has great power to burn and torment. Yet this is not even a shadow of the fire of Hell".
- St. Padre Pio: While not providing extensive descriptions, he constantly warned his spiritual children about the reality of hell, stating that "many go to hell because they do not reflect" and that souls falling into hell are "like leaves in autumn".
