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  • #2011
    Anonymous
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    In my honors history class we have read the Divine Comedy by Dante. What our teacher did was, since Dante created different levels for Hell, he told us to write a 9 page essay by in a way creating our own hell. We can name all the different levels (for example one level for murerers, one level for liars, etc.) But for those of you who have read, you will know that Dante wrote the book in the form that HE was getting a tour of hell. Thats how we need to write it. Dantes tour guide was Virgil.

    I wanted to make my tour guide Mother Mary. I thought it would be interesting if in my story/essay, while i was on my tour with my tour guide Mother Mary, all the people in hell would constantly tug at her gown and beg for her to interceded to Jesus for them, to beg Jesus for them to let them out.

    Is this a sin? is it wrong? I know im not putting Mother Mary in the unspeakable place, that shes just a tour guide, but something just does not feel right about allowing her to be in such a place.

    please help

    #9749
    Anonymous
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    If you want my opinion, I don’t believe that’s a sin. Dante Alighieri himself had to rearrange Hell to fit his poetic needs. His favorite poets (Virgil is one of them) belonged to a time long before Christianity came to Europe. According to Medieval Catholicism, those that didn’t belong to the Christian Church were…well, to put it simply, damned. Dante rearranged Hell so that poets and men like Virgil would be placed in the First Ring of Hell: Limbo. Again, this is a place were those who haven’t belonged to the Church would be saved. The Inferno, as you might be referring to, is for poetic use. It doesn’t depict a theological explanation for were the unrepentant sinners and the damned go, but rather a beautiful depiction of allegory use in poetry. So again, I would say No, your use of Mary as a guide is not sinful

    #9897
    Anonymous
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    who knows….because you used a HUGE figure in the Catholic church perhaps you could be at jeopardy of sinning against God’s word of using the name of mary in vain *rolls eyes*

    #10273
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    St.Teresa of Avila’s description of Hell.

    “A long time after the Lord had already granted me many of the favors I’ve mentioned and other very lofty ones, while I was in prayer one day, I suddenly found that, without knowing how, I had seemingly been put in hell. I understood that the Lord wanted me to see the place the devils had prepared there for me and which I merited because of my sins. This experience took place within the shortest space of time, but even were I to live for many years I think it would be impossible for me to forget it. The entrance it seems to me was similar to a very long and narrow alleyway, like an oven, low and dark and confined; the floor seemed to me to consist of dirty, muddy water emitting foul stench and swarming with putrid vermin. At the end of the alleyway a hole that looked like a small cupboard was hollowed out in the wall; there I found I was placed in a cramped condition. All of this was delightful to see in comparison with what I felt there. What I have described can hardly be exaggerated.

    “What I felt, it seems to me, cannot even begin to be exaggerated; nor can it be understood. I experienced a fire in the soul that I don’t know how I could describe. The bodily pains were so unbearable that though I had suffered excruciating ones in this life and according to what doctors say, the worst that can be suffered on earth for all my nerves were shrunken when I was paralyzed, plus many other sufferings of many kinds that I endured and even some as I said, caused by the devil, these were all nothing in comparison with the ones I experienced there. I saw furthermore that they would go on without end and without ever ceasing. This, however, was nothing next to the soul’s agonizing: a constriction, a suffocation, an affliction so keenly felt and with such a despairing and tormenting unhappiness that I don’t know how to word it strongly enough. To say the experience is as though the soul were continually being wrested from the body would be insufficient, for it would make you think somebody else is taking away the life, whereas here it is the soul itself that tears itself in pieces. The fact is that I don’t know how to give a sufficiently powerful description of that interior fire and that despair, coming in addition to such extreme torments and pains. I didn’t see who inflicted them on me, but, as it seemed to me, I felt myself burning and crumbling; and I repeat the worst was that interior fire and despair.

    “Being in such an unwholesome place, so unable to hope for any consolation, I found it impossible either to sit down or to lie down, nor was there any room, even though they put me in this kind of hole made in the wall. Those walls, which were terrifying to see, closed in on themselves and suffocated everything. There was no light, but all was enveloped in the blackest darkness. I don’t understand how this could be, that everything painful to see was visible.”

    [Source: The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, Volume 1, Chapter 32: paragraphs: 1,2,3. Published by Institute of Carmelite Studies Publications, Washington, D.C.]

    Sister Faustina’s Vision of Hell

    “I, Sister Faustina Kowalska, by the order of God, have visited the Abysses of Hell so that I might tell souls about it and testify to its existence…the devils were full of hatred for me, but they had to obey me at the command of God, What I have written is but a pale shadow of the things I saw. But I noticed one thing: That most of the souls there are those who disbelieved that there is a hell.” (Diary 741)

    The Apostle of Divine Mercy
    St. Maria Faustina Kowalska
    of the
    Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy

    “Today, I was led by an angel to the Chasms of Hell. It is a place of great torture; how awesomely large and extensive it is! The kinds of tortures I saw:
    The First Torture that constitutes hell is:
    The loss of God.
    The Second is:
    Perpetual remorse of conscience.
    The Third is
    That one’s condition will never change.
    The Fourth is:
    The fire that will penetrate the soul without destroying it. A terrible suffering since it is a purely spiritual fire, lit by God’s anger.
    The Fifth Torture is:
    Continual darkness and a terrible suffocating smell, and despite the darkness, the devils and the souls of the damned see each other and all the evil, both of others and their own.
    The Sixth Torture is:
    The constant company of Satan.
    The Seventh Torture is:
    Horrible despair, hatred of God, vile words, curses and blasphemies.
    These are the Tortures suffered by all the damned together, but that is not the end of the sufferings.

    Indescribable Sufferings
    There are special Tortures destined for particular souls. These are the torments of the senses. Each soul undergoes terrible and indescribable sufferings related to the manner in which it has sinned.

    I would have died
    There are caverns and pits of torture where one form of agony differs from another. I would have died at the very sight of these tortures if the omnipotence of God had not supported me.

    No One Can Say There is No Hell
    Let the sinner know that he will be tortured throughout all eternity, in those senses which he made use of to sin. I am writing this at the command of God, so that no soul may find an excuse by saying there is no hell, or that nobody has ever been there, and so no one can say what it is like…how terribly souls suffer there! Consequently, I pray even more fervently for the conversion of sinners. I incessantly plead God’s mercy upon them. O My Jesus, I would rather be in agony until the end of the world, amidst the greatest sufferings, than offend you by the least sin.” (Diary 741)

    St.Teresa of Avila and St.Faustina Kowalski’s description of Hell is similar to that of Dante. Also read Sr.Josepha Meneddez. Then there is the description of Hell given to Lucia at Fatima.
    There are people alive today who have seen Hell and returned. There description is similar to that of Dante.

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