ONE HOT BOOK

This is a guide book to a place where I hope never to go, but am painfully aware that I could. 

Dan Burke and my good friend, Patrick O'Hearn have written an excellent and extraordinary book. Excellent because it makes for riveting reading, and extraordinary because many books on this - the hottest of hot issues are written in so contemptuous a way as to make the reader hot-tempered and defensive to the point that they reject the message. But the opposite is true with The Truth about Hell. 

The authors do not take a holier-than-thou approach, as though they are separate from their audience: they state plainly that hell is "a place that could be our final destination if we do not repent". They do not base their thesis on their own authority; rather the book is firmly rooted in Sacred Scripture which is corroborated by the accounts from the lives of the saints, a synthesis of sizzling insights from the Doctors of the Church and the messages from Our Lady when she has visited earth with the express intention to warn us about Hell. 

The reference in Mark's Gospel is included, which causes many of my friends who struggle with porn to wince: "and if your eye causes you to sin pluck it out...it is better to enter life with one eye than with two eyes and to be thrown into the hell of fire." The one that causes me to wince is Luke 16, "The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died and was buried; and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes, and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus in his bosom. And he called out, "Father Abraham, have mercy upon me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue; "for I am in anguish in this flame."" Meditating on this makes my cheeks go red because while I have no wealth, had I been raised in affluence and had my purse continued to bulge with cash, I'd have not a crumb of empathy for anyone who had less or was even destitute. I'd have spent my life laying on a trapdoor over Hell. 

The authors point out that the story of Lazarus and the rich man follows the parable of the prodigal son; twinned parables because one speaks of the justice that met the wealthy man and one speaks of the mercy given the son who squandered his inheritance. They quote St Thomas Aquinas on "Justice and mercy are so united, that the one ought to be mingled with the other; justice without mercy is cruelty; mercy without justice, profusion." In opening up a discourse on the necessity of never separating justice and mercy, Dan and Patrick are tackling the elephant in the room and this might get them the most heat from Catholic circles where there is a move to make the conversation all about God's mercy and not His justice; but there can, ironically, be a lack of mercy in squashing the subject of Hell. 

It is with the same courage of presenting God's justice that the authors quote St. Alphonsus Liguori, "This fire shall torment the damned not only externally, but also internally. It will burn the bowels, the heart, the brains, the blood within the veins, and the marrow within the bones. The skin of the damned shall be like a caldron" and also St Anselm who asserted that the loss of the Lord is the most savage of all the torments in Hell, "the worst of all the multitude of the punishments and torments which shall afflict the condemned is the knowledge that they have been deprived, forever and definitively, of the glory of the vision of God."

Reading it is made easier, however, because throughout there are lines that are both witty and withering; "there is no get-out-of-hell card" and they invite readers to contemplate "a swim in the lake of eternal fire". How often can you say that a book about eternal damnation is funny?

Popular saints' insights into Hell make for compelling reading. There is the soul-searing case of St Therese of Lisieux's impassioned cries to Christ that the murderer Henri Pranzini not go to Hell. When Therese was 14, the murder case that had French society shaking it their chaussures concerned the stabbing of a prostitute, her servant and her 12 year old daughter. The motive was mercenary; Pranzini wanted the courtesan's jewels. Therese was only 2 years older than the murdered girl, but she gave all her strength to offering God the Father the infinite merits of His Son that Pranzini would repent. 

On the day of his execution, just before the sheet of metal sliced his neck and severed his head, Pranzini kissed the crucifix 3 times. Therese's personal certainty in the reality of Hell inspired her to intercede for his repentance. Ah, that we could be more like Therese, but if we want more of her sort, then that which she strove to save souls from, Hell, needs to be, at least better acknowledged.

Patrick and Dan also made use of some my research - the time Pio gently confronted a man who had left his wife and child - to live with his mistress. The man was befriended by Donal Enright who decades later gave me the story about how Pio interceded for the erring husband to be given an interior warning about Hell. I wrote about it here, but I did not go into more detail at the time I originally posted because I thought Donal was going to publish on it himself and I didn't want to steal his fire, if that's not too overt an expression for this topic. 

You may pre-order your copy from Sophia Press now, it will hit the shelves on the feast of St Agnes, January 21, 2025. Think seriously about buying 2 copies;  and give one to a loved one, they may spend eternity thanking you. I think it is best given as a gift by someone who takes the message to heart for themselves; so if you consider very seriously, to your marrow, that Hell is real, then give this book to as many people as possible because you will be doing so from a place of humility that will influence them all the more. 

Of your goodness, please pray much for Patrick and Dan; they have done a fantastic work of charity which will not make them popular with the denizens of hell who will rightly see them as the competition for eternal souls.