“What is worse than seeing bad people falling into hell?”

What’s worse than seeing bad people fall into hell?

Wrong question. First of all, it’s not a bad thing at all to see bad people falling into hell. It’s devastating, surely, for us here while we’re still on earth. I get it. The saints speak about being wrecked after having seen a vision of hell. Just look at the Fatima kids after they saw a vision of hell. They’re wiped out.

But remember what Jesus answered to Saint Teresa of Avila when she asked how she could be happy in heaven when she knew that her relatives were in hell: You will be happy to praise my justice. Yep. That’s right. Because those in hell want to be hell. They wouldn’t come out of hell if they had the chance to go to heaven. They are so filled with arrogance and hatred that they want to be in hell to spite God. So, good riddance. I want to go to heaven (and it’s a good and holy thing to rejoice in the hope we are given), and I don’t want all of hell torturing me in heaven. Nope. They can go to hell if that’s where they want to be. While they are here on earth I will pray that people convert and don’t go to hell. Great! But if they’re already in hell, well, I will respect God’s justice. The Fatima kids didn’t lament that people were in hell, but that there were so few to pray that the living don’t end up in hell, so much so that they were falling into hell like snowflakes in a blizzard.

So, what’s the worst thing ever?

In this world, there are terrible emotional sufferings, terrible physical sufferings, terrible spiritual sufferings as one is dragged through the dark nights as Saint John of the Cross describes them. But we can recognize that we’re with Jesus, that He has us, through all of that.

So, what’s the worst thing ever?

Could it be that I would think that if I myself went to hell that that would be the worst thing ever? No. That wouldn’t happen. Those in hell want to be there. And they would immediately start up to add to the aggression of what is actually the worst thing ever.

Do you want to know where the heart of a priest is concerning the worst possible thing? Let’s jack up the stakes here. Let’s talk about bad sins, really bad, say, of a Pope. That’s what my interrogator, a layman, did. Could it be sexual abuse? Could it be desecration of the Blessed Sacrament? Could it breaking the seal of Confession? Could it be idol worship? Could it be abortion, abortifacients, infanticide, euthanasia, promoting an abortion-tainted “vax”? Could it be leading others into sin on a world scale? Fill in the blank. He did, with many more entries.

If we want to know what the worst thing ever is, perhaps we should ask Jesus. What He thinks is important, right? He had a discussion about all this with His Heavenly Father in the Garden of Gethsemane. Remember that? When He was in His agony, when He was sweating great drops of blood, when His human nature was shaken, when the will of His human nature was tempted to be diverse from the will of His Heavenly Father, so much so that He had to insist, out loud: “Not my will, but Thine be done.”

Was His passion and death, being tortured to death, you know, the pain of it all, the worst thing ever? After all, this is God. He’s innocent. This is the sin, right? But that’s us proclaiming that, like an answer to an academic question. But, as I say, let’s go to the heart of a priest, the Sacred Heart of The High Priest, Christ Jesus, to find our answer.

For Himself, Jesus couldn’t care less about the pain and sufferings of such a death. He said He longed to be baptized with the baptism for which He came, that baptism in His own blood. He’s a man’s Man, Divine. He just want’s to get the job done, standing in our place, the Innocent for the guilty, having the right in His own justice to have mercy on us. He laid down His life for us with enthusiasm, while we were yet sinners. All sins will be forgiven against the Son of Man, he proclaimed.

But the sin against the Holy Spirit? No. For instance, if someone sins all the way to hell while arrogantly, blasphemously presumptuously despairingly mockingly shrieking that ♬ God forgives everything ♬ even the rejection of His forgiveness ♬ Ha ha ha ha hah. ♬, well, that person will not receive forgiveness because they don’t want that forgiveness. They just want to continue sinning with the purpose of not being forgiven. That’s a sin against the Holy Spirit.

But is the unforgivable sin the worst thing possible?

Perhaps the worst thing ever, unbearably too awful for mankind to bear, is the truth, what some have somehow started to call a manifestation of conscience. It’s too awful for mankind to witness their sins as they are. We would all be crushed by the truth of it.

But that’s not the worst thing ever.

Again, let’s ask Jesus what He really thinks is the absolute worst thing.

I think it’s His dearest Immaculate Virgin Mother having to see Him, her dearest Son, tortured to death right in front of her. Her Immaculate Conception (see Genesis 3:15 and Luke 1:28) gave her such agility of soul, such purity of heart, such clarity of vision, such profundity of understanding, such a super-abundance of love, that she would see such an offence for what it truly is, all of the sin from Adam until the last man is conceived vomited out on her Son, her Innocent Son. She would crushed more than any of us and all put together could possibly be crushed by knowing our sin. We are so obtuse.

To see His Mother suffer because of Him being tortured to death right in front her, that’s the worst possible thing.