Saints Who Saw Hell

And Other Catholic Witnesses to the Fate of the Damned

Paul Thispen

• Publisher: TAN Books
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781505112818
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Terrifying visions of hell

Gnawing worms, unquenchable fire, utter darkness, weeping and gnashing of teeth. With these fearful words, Jesus warned that hell is real … and that we could end up there.

Since the Early Church, Catholic saints and other visionaries have reported horrific scenes of eternal punishment. Dozens of saints throughout history have described the terrors of hell, and relayed horror of being separated from God for eternity so that we may see for ourselves and repent.

In Saints Who Saw Hell, you'll find …

• The scriptural witness to the reality of hell, including the warnings of Jesus, the prophets, and the Apostles;
• Scenes from the second-century Apocalypse of Peter, the oldest surviving Christian vision of hell;
• Ancient reports collected by Pope St. Gregory the Great;
• Medieval accounts from St. Bede, the voyage of St. Brendan, St. Hildegard of Bingen, St. Catherine of Siena, and St. Frances of Rome.
• Witnesses to hell from the time of the Catholic Reformation, such as St. Teresa of Ávila, Blessed Maria de Agreda, and Blessed Richard of St. Anne;
• Visions from later centuries, such as those of St. Veronica Giuliani, Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, St. John Bosco, the children of Fatima, and St. Faustina Kowalska;
• … and other accounts from those who insist they have witnessed the fate of the damned.

The scenes in these pages, varying in detail and source, all testify to one harrowing truth: Hell is the final guarantee that what we do really matters.

For us here on earth, a peek at the grisly tortures of hell is sometimes what we really need to redouble our efforts at achieving the glorious sweetness of heaven.

1

“REMEMBER THE END
OF YOUR LIFE”

What Are We to Make of These Visions?

Visions of hell have been reported since ancient times in cultures throughout the world. Even today, some of our contemporaries claim to have witnessed scenes from the realm of the damned.

The Catholic faithful can look back, not just to visions beginning with the earliest generations of the Church, but to prior references in the scriptural record. Both the Old Testament books they inherited from the Jewish people and the New Testament books of the Apostles and their associates provide glimpses of hell.

Beyond the biblical references, however, a number of Catholic sources have written about the reality of everlasting punishment for the wicked. Some of these reports come from canonized saints or are attributed to them. Some come from other explicitly Catholic witnesses, such as clergy and religious. Some are anonymous but reported in a Catholic setting.

Among these accounts are reports of visions in the strict sense: things heard and seen through the intervention of God, angels, or demons. Others report dreams; still others, what we would today call “near death experiences,” in which someone who was at the threshold of death returned to consciousness and reported what was experienced. A few are visions in the broader sense: a reasoned description, based on divine revelation, of the reality of hell; a legendary depiction; and a literary portrait.

Public versus Private Revelation

What are we to make of these visions? To interpret them wisely and discern their usefulness, we must first recognize the important distinction between public revelation and private revelation, and the claims of each with regard to our Catholic faith.

The supreme revelation of God to the world is Jesus Christ, his Son, his Word made flesh, who lived among us (Jn 1:14). In him, the Church received, through his words and deeds, a Divine Revelation, a deposit of faith (see 1 Tm 6:20; 2 Tm 1:12–14) that is unique, complete, definitive, intended for all people of all generations, and confirmed by God himself as worthy of faith. This public revelation, as it is called, has been preserved and transmitted to us in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, as authentically preached and interpreted by the Sacred Magisterium (teaching office) of the Church, beginning with the Apostles whom Jesus himself appointed. All faithful Catholics are bound to accept these revealed truths with a divine faith.

Though public revelation is complete, its meaning, mysteries, and implications continue to be understood more fully and deeply through the Holy Spirit’s enlightening work in the Church. Nevertheless, no new public revelation is possible until the return of our Lord Jesus Christ in glory. And certainly no change in the public revelation is possible that would contradict what has already been revealed by God.

With this understanding of public revelation, we can distinguish it from what is called private revelation. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, “Throughout the ages, there have been so-called ‘private’ revelations, some of which have been recognized by the authority of the Church. They do not belong, however, to the deposit of faith. It is not their role to improve or complete Christ’s definitive Revelation, but to help live more fully by it in a certain period of history…. Christian faith cannot accept ‘revelations’ that claim to surpass or correct the Revelation of which Christ is the fulfilment, as is the case in certain non-Christian religions and also in certain recent sects which base themselves on such ‘revelations’” (CCC 67).

Some individuals, then, have claimed to receive private revelations from God, such as visions, apparitions, dreams, or locutions (words heard interiorly). The Church warns us to examine carefully any claims to private revelation and to be cautious in accepting their validity. Some private revelations, such as the visions of the Portuguese children at Fátima in 1917, have been approved by the Church as worthy of belief. But most such claims over the centuries have not received such approval, and some have been explicitly rejected by the Church as inauthentic.

With regard to all claims to private revelation, we must always keep in mind that they do not and cannot have the same status as public revelation. We are not bound to accept them as a part of the deposit of faith, on the same level as Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, even if they have the Church’s approval. And if they claim, even implicitly, to surpass or correct the definitive Revelation given to us in Christ, then we must firmly reject them.

Visions of Hell

The descriptions of hell in Scripture, offered by Our Lord and by biblical writers, fall of course into the category of public revelation. These will be presented in the next chapter. We are bound to accept such biblical passages as a part of Divine Revelation. This is the case even if we don’t fully understand them, and even if the Holy Spirit has not revealed through Sacred Tradition and the Sacred Magisterium the answers to all the questions we might have about their interpretation.

On the other hand, the visions and descriptions of hell reported in the subsequent chapters of this book are clearly claims to private revelations (or else privately reasoned or creatively depicted interpretations of Divine Revelation). We must treat them accordingly. Even when the claim is made by a canonized saint, we cannot for that reason assume that the revelation is authentic or approved by the Church. Canonization does not imply the authentication of someone’s claims to private revelation. And even when such a private revelation has in fact been approved by the Church as worthy of belief, we still must not place it on the same level as the scriptural accounts of hell.

So what is the value of such claims to private revelation? Why should we pay them any attention? Are we interested in them simply because of a morbid curiosity? Or can we learn profound lessons from them because they illuminate, in certain ways, the perennial teaching of the Church, the deposit of faith?

First, we are reminded by these texts in a vivid and compelling way that, as Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI once noted, “Human life is fully serious. The irrevocable takes place, and that includes irrevocable destruction.”¹⁴ God “will render to every man according to his works,” either “eternal life” or “wrath and fury” (Rom 2:6–8).

Second, through these texts, we are pressed to take seriously the biblical language that presents hell not simply as a sorrowful tragedy but as an overwhelming horror to be avoided at all costs. Like the relevant biblical passages, these visions speak of damnation in the most gruesome and terrifying terms, with everlasting darkness, fire, and worms (Mt 8:12; Mk 9:47)—and much more as well.

If we should conclude that such language is figurative rather than literal, we should find no comfort in such a conclusion. These figurative descriptions stretch the limits of human language in trying to convey an indescribable nightmare. The reality of hell surpasses such figurative language in horror. Just as heaven is beyond our dreams, so is hell worse than we can imagine.

Third, these visions can help us see how our disordered actions in this life could find their culmination in the next life. In many of these depictions, the punishments are profoundly (and sometimes ironically) related to the sins and vices they punish. When we observe here the final ripened, rotten fruit of wicked behavior, we can more clearly identify the evil root from which it grows—and labor even now to eradicate it. “I the LORD search the mind and test the heart, to give to every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings” (Jer 17:10).

Fourth, these accounts sometimes remind us that human appearances can be deceiving. Those who seem righteous to everyone around (and even to themselves) may actually be hell-bound if they fail to repent. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt; who can understand it?” (Jer 17:9). “The LORD sees not as man sees; man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart” (1 Sm 16:7).

Why Read About Visions of Hell?

Finally, some of these visions tell of the wicked receiving one last chance to repent. While one soul may take advantage of the opportunity, another may not. They should remind us that God is merciful, but we should not presume upon his mercy.

We read these stories, then, for the same reason we read biblical accounts of those who failed to embrace God’s mercy: “Now these things are warnings for us, not to desire evil as they did…. They were written down for our instruction…. Therefore let anyone who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor 10:6, 11–12).

It’s the principle of the memento mori, which in Latin means “remembrance of death.” The most succinct statement of that principle is found in Scripture: “In all you do, remember the end of your life, and then you will never sin” (Sir 7:36).

Memento mori takes its place in the liturgy as well, most notably in the Ash Wednesday imposition of ashes: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gn 3:19).

Anyone familiar with the history of Christian art knows that memento mori is also found there. Consider the medieval and Renaissance paintings of saints with a skull beside them. The skull serves as a reminder of death and what waits for us beyond.

Yet memento mori, and thoughts about hell in particular, shouldn’t have us thinking of ourselves alone. Just consider that all the people we meet throughout our day are on their way to either heaven or hell—and how we treat them could help them move in one direction or the other. So we read visions of hell not just to avoid it ourselves but to help others avoid it. The house of the world is on fire, and somebody had best be shouting, “Run for your life!”

A Final Note on Interpretation

One final note: If we find a particular vision convincing, should we receive it as a literal description of hell?

That approach presents certain problems. For one, the various visions differ considerably in their depictions of hell. We could perhaps account for those variations by arguing that hell is a vast place, and various visionaries might have seen different regions of it, and reported accordingly. Even so, some of the details would be difficult to reconcile if we interpreted them all literally.

Perhaps a better approach is suggested by the sixth-century pope St. Gregory the Great (c. AD 540–604). In his Dialogues, he reports (approvingly) several visions of hell experienced by his contemporaries (see Book IV, 35–36). Peter, the man engaging him in dialogue, complains that some of the details of a particular vision are difficult to accept if taken literally.

St. Gregory clearly assumes that the man’s vision was real and the result of an actual intervention by God. But he explains to Peter that the language describing what was seen should be interpreted symbolically, not literally. With regard to the vision’s details of a ship, a river, a bridge, bricks, and more, “the representation of these things express the causes which they signify.” God uses the vision, the saint insists, to teach us spiritual truths about our behavior in this life and its potential consequences in hell.

With fear and trembling, then, and with open minds and hearts, we turn now to visions of hell.

_____________

¹⁴ Cited in Regis Martin, The Last Things: Death, Judgment, Hell, and Heaven (Charlotte, N.C.: TAN Books, 2014), 120.

2

“WEEPING AND
GNASHING OF TEETH”

Glimpses of Hell in Scripture

For several generations, our Western civilization has largely refused to hear anything of hell. How ignorant and uncivilized to speak of such things! So those portions of Scripture affirming its existence, and warning that we could end up there, are overlooked or dismissed. Fr. Frederick Faber (1814–1863) once wrote about his contemporaries’ attitude toward the biblical witness to hell: “Each age has some portion of divine truth toward which it is specially impatient. God knew all this when he gave revelation to us…. [Yet] he does not give each generation a Bible of its own, he does not condescend so far to the noisy trivialities which strut across history, and call themselves the spirit of the age.”¹⁵

In our day, the spirit of the age conspires with the Evil Spirit, the “father of lies” (Jn 8:44), to obscure the reality of hell. Satan once told Eve in the Garden that if she disobeyed God, she would not die, though God himself had warned her it would happen. The Devil has been deceiving the world ever since with the claim that in the end, we can choose against God without suffering evil and eternal consequences. But Scripture exposes that comfortable deception, if we will listen to what it says even when it makes us uncomfortable.

Biblical Words Translated as “Hell”

To understand what the Bible says about hell, we need first to clarify terms. One Hebrew word in the Old Testament, and three Greek words in the New Testament, have sometimes been translated in various Bible versions with our English word “hell.” But their meanings are not all the same.

Sheol is the Hebrew term that refers in general to the grave or the realm of the dead, not specifically to a place of eternal punishment. God’s revelation to the Jewish people about life after death developed only gradually, over centuries. In the beginning, little if any distinction was recognized between the fate of the righteous and the fate of the wicked. But the Old Testament does speak threateningly of the wicked descending to Sheol, hinting at a judgment that involves more than mere death (Ps 9:17).

By the time of Christ, God had revealed that the righteous and the wicked had separate destinations in the life to come, a truth found most notably in the Book of Daniel (12:2). But even then, Jewish religious sects disagreed about the matter. The Pharisees believed in the resurrection and judgment of the dead, while the Sadducees denied it (Acts 23:8).

In the New Testament, the term Hades (borrowed from pagan Greek thought), also refers to the realm of the dead in general, and has essentially the same meaning as Sheol. The Gospel passages where Jesus and others speak of Hades in this general sense are not our concern here. (See Mt 11:23; 16:18; Lk 10:15; 16:23; Rv 1:18; 6:8; 20:13–14.)

We should note that in Our Lord’s story about the rich man and Lazarus, both descend to Hades, the realm of the dead. (Bible scholars have debated whether Jesus is talking here about real historical figures or simply telling a parable.) The rich man, however, is apparently in the place of torment (Lk 16:23), while the righteous beggar is in “Abraham’s bosom” (16:22), a place of bliss. No one can cross from one of those places to the other (16:26).

A second Greek word translated as “hell,” Tartarus, was a term from ancient Greek belief and originally referred to a realm of punishment below Hades. The ancient Jews made use of this term to describe the place of divine punishment after death. It occurs, with that meaning, only once in the New Testament, not in the Gospels but in 2 Peter 2:4, which tells us that “God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into Tartarus and committed them to pits of deepest darkness to be kept unt...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction: Hell Matters
• 1. “Remember the end of Your Life”: What Are We to Make of These Visions?
• 2. “Weeping and Gnashing of Teeth”: Glimpses of Hell in Scripture
• I. Visions of Saints
• II. Visions Reported by Saints
• III. Visions Attributed to Saints
• IV. Other Catholic Visionaries
• V. Legendary and Literary Visions
• Sources and Acknowledgments