FROM HERE ON NO ONE WILL EVER AGAIN HAVE A HELPFUL FRIEND, OR A LOVING HEART, OR A COMPASSIONATE GLANCE

As part of my Lenten penance, I forced myself to meditate on what it would be like for me to go to Hell. I relied on John Bosco's vision of Hell to inform myself as to the dire destination of the damned.

For the non-sadist, to consider the lot of a damned soul in Hell is penitential. It has been even more piercingly penitential for me to consider what it would be like were my soul to go there. I cannot very well ask others to think of the risk that they may go to Hell, when I have not thought of it for myself.

It is hypocritical for a Catholic to imagine the souls of others in Hell (those who are in Hell already and those on their way there) and to warn others of it, while excluding from their minds the mere thought that they may go to Hell. I have found few things as off-putting as when I have been close to someone who thinks of Hell as a danger for others, but not a danger for themselves.

I proffer that Lent is the time to enter into the penance of a two stage meditation: to meditate on the tortures of Hell and secondly to imagine what it is like to be subject to these tortures. We live in times when people are encouraged to abandon custody of the mind, and to indulge their fantasy lives in any way this wish, but so exceedingly few are ever spurred on to ponder perdition. I proffer that it is essential preparation for Holy Week to meditate on the real possibility of being in the eternal fire. Our Lord died on the Cross to save us from Hell, and to better appreciate His Passion, we need at least acquaint ourselves with the fate from which we were spared.

It is a most tough exercise to contemplate Hell. And even John Bosco, the sainted educator of boys in Italy of the 1800s, did not want to dream about Hell. He had been warned in advance that he was to have a mystical tour of Hell and he was filled with dread. On the night that John Bosco was to have his dream about Hell, he was loath to go to bed. He distracted himself with books, but when midnight came he buckled under exhaustion and fell asleep. The second he fell asleep "the man in the cap" (who was John Bosco's regular guide in his dreams) appeared and urged him to come with him.  John begged the guide not to take him, but undaunted the man in the cap rushed John Bosco, and informed him that there was no time to waste, and with that John Bosco allowed himself to be led to Hell.

They started out on a seemingly lovely broad road. Gorgeous flowers grew up around the road. John Bosco and his guide sauntered down the road that steeply inclined downwards. John Bosco was a tad anxious that he would not be to return to the Oratory where he lived with his students, but the man in the cap assured him this would not be a problem, and reminded him the Almighty wished to reveal the road to Hell to him.

To his surprise John Bosco saw some boys from the Oratory on this road, some were running, some walked with peers and some were alone. Traps which looked like spider's webs were strewn on the road and some of the boys were held captive in these netted devices. The traps had signs which read, Pride, Envy, Disobedience, 6th Commandment, Theft, Gluttony, Sloth and Anger. The nets which snared the most boys were Pride, Disobedience and Impurity, which symbolized that these sins shackled them the most. Only a few of the boys actively freed themselves from the strings of the traps with knives or swords - these blades represented the Blessed Virgin Mary and Holy Communion.  There was a hammer which was a symbol for confession, and other knives which were metaphors for devotion to the Saints. T'was a motif of the dreams of John Bosco that the hammer represented confession.

As he climbed down the road, the terrain became more barren; the roses were fewer. Hideous, spike-like thorns grew. The road became so steep that John Bosco and the man in the cap could scarcely stand up straight. All at once they reached the end, and before them lay a mansion that had a high gate. They were greeted by a heat so hot it harassed their lungs. Green smoke and scarlet flames danced from behind the high walls - walls which were as tall as mountains. They were on the threshold of Hell. John Bosco did not want to go any further, he wanted to beat a hasty retreat and go back to the Oratory but the man in the cap would not permit him to escape. They dallied by the imposing gate for a time, until John Bosco was horrified by the sight of one of his students, a young boy who came running down the road at top speed. John tried to prevent the boy from running headlong into Hell, but the man in the cap stopped John and even lectured him with, "Don't you know how terrible God's vengeance is? Do you think you can restrain one who is fleeing from His just wrath?" The gates opened with a nasty roar and the boy ran inside. Immediately, a thousand other gates opened with the nastiest clashing noise, and John saw to the end of this procession of gates: a furnace of fire from which erupted balls of flames.

More boys followed the first boy, running their legs off as they sped from God and hurried to Hell. The gates opened and they were swallowed into the halls of Hell, and as they ran from gate to gate, the gates clanged closed behind them and the long series of gates trapped them.

The man in the cap told Don Bosco that bad books, bad friends and bad habits were responsible for the loss of many souls. As for "bad books", the guide may have been referring to early pornography and pornographic literature. We may think of this time, the 1860s as a purer time, but we ought remember that the saintly, Dominic Savio was invited by some of his classmates to look at porn, but he refused. Dominic and the others were all the wards of John Bosco and yet somehow a few of them had gotten their hands on a pornographic magazine.

The guide then led John Bosco into Hell itself, they walked into the first corridor which the boys had just entered. The walls were covered in inscriptions, one from Sacred Scripture read, "There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matt, 8:12). The man in the cap lamented, "From here on no one will ever again have a helpful friend, or a loving heart, or a compassionate glance." The man in the cap took John Bosco to a type of balcony where he could see the outer maze of Hell but not experience it, and John Bosco saw that the walls glowed with a white heat of thousands of degrees. To his horror John Bosco witnessed three of his boys rush into the maze and they burned but the fire did not consume them. They cowered in great fear.  John Bosco was seeing the fate of certain boys who were still living but already deserving of Hell.

John Bosco asked the man in the cap if these same boys could repent and avoid eternal damnation, but the man in the cap was doubtful and said they did not detest sin and did not wish to give it up, that they rejected the invitations from Our Lord to do penance, and that Divine Justice was pursuing them. Then the roof of the cave opened and they could see Heaven above where the Saints were happy for all eternity. The faces of the boys who were damned were consumed with jealousy and fury, and they let rip screams, blasphemies and sobs. The man reiterated to John Bosco that if these same group of boys were to die now, they would be lost to Hell for all eternity.

The boys were tortured with regret; they rued the days that they had neglected to grow in virtue, scorned the favors given them by Our Lady and had jeered at good people. And most tellingly, they had to confront themselves for the good intentions they had had, which had not translated into good actions. As John Bosco learned, those in Hell had had only good intentions while alive, while those in Heaven had had good intentions which had been put into action when they committed good works.

The man in the cap led John Bosco down a corridor to a lower cave. Beyond the stone ledge where he stood, he saw an incinerator which burned many of the boys from his oratory, and they were also being eaten by worms and rats, like their bodies were rotten fruit that had maggots crawling all over them.

The man in the cap chivied John Bosco onto a wall covered with a curtain. When he lifted the curtain there was a sign that read, "THOSE WHO LONG TO BE RICH, FALL PREY TO TEMPTATION AND THE SNARES OF THE DEVIL." This sign did not concern the rich, rather the love of riches, because the overweening desire for wealth perverts the heart.

John was instructed by the man in the cap that the combination of greed and idleness harm the soul, and that he was to tell the boys in his care to be busy at all times because the devil will not find an opening to tempt them.

Eventually, the man in the cap led John out of Hell, and they lingered outside the wall of Hell. John was relieved, but the worst for him was to come. The man in the cap said that John had to experience Hell for himself, and had to have the contact with the searing heat, so that he could say he had seen and touched Hell. But John could not bring himself to touch the outermost wall. The man in the cap said explained that contact with the outermost wall was the faintest experience of Hell, that there were a thousand other walls between this first wall and the last wall that housed the real fire of Hell. Yet the walls were so thick, that the man in the cap said that they were actually at least a million miles from the actual fire of Hell. When this did not move John to place his hand on the wall in front of him, the man in the cap seized John's hand and planted it on the wall. Pain shot through John's hand and with a scream he awoke in his bed.  His hand was in excruciating pain and the burnt skin peeled off, to reveal the pink flesh of his palm. Such an injury was proof of the fires of Hell.

The last step in John's ordeal was to tell the boys in his care of his vision of Hell. He was heavy with reluctance to recount this most repellent reverie, but because Our Lord desired he do so, he forced himself to tell the boys in his care of his dream on the day of May 3rd, 1868, the feast of St Joseph's patronage. John made it clear to the boys that he edited his account because his intention was not to scare them, rather he wanted to instill in them that Hell is real.

If this post has whetted your appetite to read more of John Bosco's dreams, you may wish to get 40 Dreams of John Bosco, which you may purchase at The Spirit Daily bookstore. Here I am with my own copy.