On Inferno and Sin:
A Warning and a Lesson Learned
(one serious entry)
Everyone has been given by God the power of the will and the intellect. The will has a tendency toward the good while the intellect moves towards the truth. These two form the rationality of a person: it makes a person a human being. Most likely, these are the two faculties of the person that the damned sinners in hell has misused or disregarded that is why they are in there.
Happiness would be the self-realization of a person. But for a person to attain this, he must use his or her will and intellect. This is because it is only through good and the truth that we discover what would truly make one happy. However, these sinful people have a different perception of happiness. They have lost the good of the intellect, and have become miserable, because the failed to realize what true and real happiness. Is.
Emotions and passions are the ones that usually take over in the sins of incontinence. They hinder the use of the intellect because they can be overpowering to a person. A person has his affective side, which makes him vulnerable to fall into these sins.
One of the sins of incontinence is lust. Lust is the inordinate or unreasonable desire for the flesh. In the lustful’s place in hell, every light is muted. This means that their intellect is uneducated. If one’s intellect is muted, it would be hard to see the ends to which the person should move towards. In the end, the truth could not be discerned. When a person cannot discern what is true, he would never be truly happy because he would revolve in a world of make-believe. It would be a world where he defies everything, even the truth.
Those who commit the sin of lust go down to the level or degree of animal life. As human beings, we are the highest form of life there is. Our potencies are made up of what animals could do plus God-given intelligence, will, appetites and intellect. However, in lust, man fails to use his reason and intellect and basically depends on what his senses tell him. Sex is seen as something self-fulfilling and man is seen as a means to attain pleasure. People in the lustful zone are degraded, and their concept of happiness is perverted.
The problem with lust is that it may be hard to distinguish whether its plain lust or really love. Emotions are really strong, for they can overpower one’s reason. A person who thinks that lust is love succumbs to his feelings too much and never thinks of the consequences of his actions. But whatever his sense are telling him, he can never be truly happy because he fails to see the body as a temple of the Holy Spirit and sticks to the pleasure that sex gives to him for self-fulfillment. The lustful fails to develop the virtue of chastity.
Going down Hell as little more, in the fourth circle, the avaricious and the prodigal could be found. These two sins are quite the opposite of one another. The avaricious have this inordinate desire for material goods. On the other hand, the prodigal are the ones reckless or wasteful of their resources. In these sins, the intellect is very much perverted because the notion of their “wants” is already too much or less.
Supposedly, with the God-given intellect and will, people would always work towards the good and shun away from evil. It should not be confused with sensations and impulses because one should always work towards the good and the truth to achieve happiness. However, the avaricious and prodigal misuse their intellect and will, which lead them to follow their instincts and emotions. They overuse their freedom to decide for themselves, and they work towards that which would make them happy without the intention of doing good.
With all the material foods these sinners had in their lifetime, how can they be not happy? This is because of the fact that riches can never ever bring one to heaven. The satisfaction from material goods would not last and it can never offer one salvation. The happiness that one could derive from them could never be permanent. Once one reaches damnation, he would then realize that the happiness he got from material goods could never offer him redemption.
The virtue that the avaricious and the prodigal needs is moderation or temperance. They fail to balance their wills and desires, because they neglect what their intellect tells them. One could only ask for and have so much. One should always be contented with what he has at the moment. Life is unpredictable and it would be hard to determine when fortune would deprive us of our worldly needs. God recognizes and provides for man’s worldly needs. But man must remember to value their importance and use them for the good, in order to be truly happy. Obviously, those found in the fourth circle failed to use their intellect to realize the value of what God gave them in their lifetime in order to be happy.
In conclusion, those found in the miserable place who have lost the good of the intellect are there because they have never achieved true happiness true happiness through the good and truth. Although there was still the presence of the intellect, it was misused and moved towards a different end. Man has a nature to seek the good, through which happiness and contentment can be found, and without the intellect, he can never be able to attain the state of being truly happy and good.
************
Earlier today, Pope John Paul II passed away. One would already know that its kinda inevitable, knowing that he's in a bad condition for the last week. But when I heard about it, I felt really sad, but sad in an unexplainable way. Pope John Paul II was the Pontiff of the Church na kinagisnan ko na. It would be hard to replace him in the hearts of those who love him.
I was moved by some of his last words before he died. He was told by the people around him that there were a lot of young people who came to St. Peter's Square to pray in a vigil for the Pope. He said "I have looked for you. Now you have come to me. And I thank you.". Even in the last minutes of his life, he paid attention to the youth of today, and wished for them to be walking or directing their lives toward God. Hay. I wish people have learned a lot from him. Last Friday, we had a privilege to watch for our Family class, "The Jeweller's Shop", a love story he made a few years back. It was really nice and interesting, and it was as if I saw a different side of the Pope. Right now, people feel that the Church lost its sight now that he's gone. I hope that people would carry on with the missions that the Pope has started on, and live lives of holiness and faith.
+In memory of Pope John Paul II, Karol Josef Wojtyla. (1920-2005)+
