Good morning. I hope your week will go well.

I remember growing up as a Catholic, Hell was the place where “bad” people went and used a as means religious leaders used to you to keep others good, or at least, not caught. 

Down through the centuries, the Church, which was as much an earthly ruler as any king, preached about red demons with pointed tails and horns on their heads. It was the job of these creatures to rip people apart, only to have them come back together again to undergo the same torture. This was not for a day, week or year, but for all eternity. Now if that was not enough to make someone stay out of trouble . . . !

The Jesuit, John Gavin, SJ tells it this way. “C.S. Lewis wrote that Hell is ‘every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind’. that is, the rejection of others in favor of self-illusion. ‘I was hungry and you gave me no food . . . ‘ When we refuse to see our neighbor, we close our eyes to the presence of Christ and remain in the darkness of one shuttered hearts. Hell emerges when only the ‘I’ exits, when I am an ego incarcerated in a dying soul.”

And we thought it could not get any worse. 

A very Happy and blessed Rosh Hashanah to all our Jewish sisters and brothers.

Peace and All Good,

Fr. Vinnie, fcm and the

Bros and Srs of the 

Franciscan House of Prayer.