by Rev. John G. Hibbard

As human beings we live in two world at the same time. We live in the physical world of the universe with its days and nights and laws of gravity and physics. We also live in an interior, spiritual world of our thoughts, feelings and impressions. Both are real worlds, both are rich and rewarding worlds. While we live on earth, both are important and necessary. We cannot escape one or the other, and both intertwined that one affects the other.

In the words of the gospel (Mt. 22.21), one is the world of the emperor and other is the kingdom of God. Jesus refused to pit one world against the other. In fact he tells us that we live in both and have obligations to both.

Each of these two worlds also has its own language. We are at least bilingual, and I am not referring to English and French, but two other kinds of languages. One is the scientific, historical language that we use to describe the physical universe. This is a language of logic that speaks to the mind.

The second is a different kind of language, but one that is equally real. It is the language of poetry and imagery. It is the language that speaks to the heart. This is a highly symbolic language that expresses reality in a different way than scientific language. It is not the language of proofs, but it is a language that is true because it speaks to the reality of our experience. This language is also the language of religion and the Bible.

It is important to understand the reality and existence of these two ways of speaking in order to understand the truth of Christianity. For if we read the Bible as a scientist, then we cannot understand the truth of Christianity. The language of poetry and imagination speaks of reality in very different ways than a scientific, empirical language. Yet they both describe the same reality.

An example: You are with a group of people watching a sur rise or sunset. The sun is beautiful, perfectly round and red. The sky is illuminated with a crimson tinge that radiates through the sky. A scientist would tell us that the angle of the sun's rays as it hits the earth's atmosphere refracts and causes the red of the light's spectrum to be seen by the eye. The sun, he would tell us, is not red at all. On the other hand, the poet in the group would describe the red sun that floods the sky and the bathes the earth with it crimson radiance.

Who is right? They both are. From a scientific point of view the sun is not red. It is refraction that causes the red hue. The poet is also right. One speaks to the mind; the other speaks to experience. We need both languages in order to live. In addition one type of language may be more appropriate, depending on the context or setting. The scientist describing a sunset sounds like a party-pooper, a person without a romantic bone in his body. If the poet were in science class, the poet would flung.

When we talk theology we use a scientific

approach to God, but when we are talking

religion, we are using a more romantic and poetic form of language.

When we think of God, it is in terms of a picture or image. This is poetic or symbolic language. When we say "the Lord is my shepherd," we do not for minute believe that God is really a shepherd. God, after all does not have a body. God is a pure spirit. Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, became a man, and he alone is both human and divine.

The language of the Bible also uses images or metaphors to describe God. Why? Because we cannot properly think of God except in pictures or images or feelings or experiences. These we can describe, but we cannot describe God as God really is. It is impossible--God is infinite! And so when we human beings try to describe the indescribable, we use imagery. This is true when we talk to our children about birth or death or life. Some things are so deep that only a story or picture can capture the reality of the mystery that confronts us.

I say all this because recently the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, talked about the reality of heaven and hell in a series of his Wednesday talks to pilgrims this summer. He had some important things to say about life and death, heaven and hell. In order to understand them we have to know the two ways that we human beings speak.

Like God, heaven and hell are spiritual realities. God created time and space, but God does not live in them. Therefore, heaven and hell are not places but states of being. Heaven is not up there and hell is not down there. We use this language because it is all we have. What other language can we use to describe a spirit or a spiritual place. So we paint a picture; we speak of them as places. We picture God as a human person. That is we speak of spiritual realities and give them earthly or human characteristics. Thus angels look like human beings with wings. God looks like a wise judge with a long beard seated on a gold throne.

We often use human characteristics to describe heaven and hell. Thus heaven is a land flowing with milk and honey, or where the streets are paved with gold, or a place with many rooms. Hell becomes a place of fire and torture. A lot of people have no trouble realizing that milk and honey and streets of gold are figurative ways to describe heaven, but the same people are disturbed when someone says that the fire of hell is also figurative language. How can earthly fire burn a spirit?

What the Pope was suggesting is that the pictures we paint of hell and the way we describe it can often paint a bleak or distorted picture of God. How can a loving God want to torture people forever in hell? I am sure that many people reject the idea of hell because it denies the image of a loving God who wants all people to be saved. How do we reconcile the two?

Before talking about hell, there are three truths that we must reaffirm. The first is that God is infinitely good and merciful. The second is that God has given all human beings the gift of freedom. The third is that human beings, who are called to love, can choose evil and reject love and goodness.

It is a sad reality as witnessed in Genesis, the first book of the Bible, that we often choose the wrong things. Sometimes we outwit ourselves when we think that we are choosing something which is good or will help us get ahead, but sadly discover later that it did not. There are other times, however, when we reject love and goodness. Thus it is true that as human beings we have the capacity to create our own hell. With great pain parents see this many times in the wrong decisions their children make.

If we are capable of rejecting love and goodness, why would we do so? Sometimes the answer is unclear; other times it is because we have other priorities. Some time we deliberately want to hurt another person, not realizing the harm that it does to ourselves as well.

Hell is a tragic situation because it is something we choose. God does not send us to hell. We send ourselves. How can we deny the existence of hell when we know we have the power to create hell on earth? How can we deny hell when we know we have the power to make our own decisions? The power of choosing means that we also bear the responsibility and consequences of those decisions. For this reason the church proclaims the existence of hell as the ultimate consequence of sin, that is the rejection of what is good and loving.

Hell is a place not of punishment, but a place of emptiness, which of course is painful in itself. It is the state of those persons who definitely reject the Father's mercy, even at the last moment of their life. If heaven is the fulfillment of love, then hell is the absence of love.

Is there anyone who would be so foolish or so full of pride to reject God's mercy at the last moment of their breath? We do not know. Is it unlikely? Is it possible? Because it is unlikely does not mean that it is impossible. A life of selfishness can so blind a person in this life and harden their heart that they would not even know or think to ask for God's love and mercy. We all know some stubborn people who seem incapable of changing their mind or admitting that they have hurt others. They are unwilling to change. There is also a spiritual pride or self-sufficiency that will not let us acknowledge our dependency on God or our need for help or salvation.

The Bible uses symbolic language to describe hell. In the Old Testament, people were not sure what happened after death. The Jews used several terms to describe where the soul went. They spoke of the "Pit" or "Sheol." You sometimes see these terms used especially in the psalms. The "Pit" or "Sheol" was a land of shadows where the person existed but was not fully alive. It was not a place of suffering, but of half-existence. It is only in the New Testament from the insight that Jesus gives us that we realize and know the fullness of life promised by the resurrection. Jesus spoke of the salvation that God promised to us-of the eternal life that God gives, and the life we can accept or reject.

By using images or symbolic language in order to describe hell, Jesus used terms that were familiar to his listeners. One of these was "Gehenna," the garbage dump of ancient Jerusalem. Here was a place of constant burning. The smell of rotting garbage, complete with worms and insects made it a foul place to every human sense. At other times Jesus used phrases like a place of "weeping and gnashing of teeth."

Every age has interpreted hell in terms of what it fears the most. If Jesus lived in our day, he would talk about hell in contemporary terms. What is it that we most fear? Is it not loneliness and isolation? If we reject God and love and others, are we not alone? Doesn't sin isolate us as we push others away over the course of years to pursue our own narrow interests? The picture of hell which we might paint for ourselves would be a place of darkness, isolation and loneliness. Alone with the riches we spend so much time seeking! Alone with the power we fought so hard for! Alone with our worst enemy-ourselves-the one person we never learnt to love because we did not have time to discover God's love for us and respond to God and our neighbour! This is the present-day-image of hell that we might paint, because sometimes this is the reality we live with now.

The Pope states that "the images of hell that sacred Scripture presents to us must be correctly interpreted. They show us the complete frustration and emptiness of life without God. Rather than a place." he says, "hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitely separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy."

"'Eternal damnation,' therefore, is not attributed to God's initiative because in his merciful love he can only desire the salvation of the beings he created. In reality, it is the creature who closes himself [or herself] to [God's] love." Hell is a real possibility, says the Pope, but we cannot know whether there are any people in hell or who might be there.

The concept of hell must not create anxiety or despair, but it is a healthy reminder of the freedom we have and the responsibility we share for our own destiny. Moreover, God shows us the way to heaven. It is the voice of Jesus that guides us to our merciful and loving Father who desires our happiness. This is the good news of Jesus Christ that we proclaim and celebrate. Christ has conquered sin and evil and is the Way, the Truth and the Life.

The importance of Jesus' revelation is that we can know the truth about the great command to love, and we can also know the evil that we human beings are capable of. As we gather to celebrate the Eucharist, we thank God for the gift of love, and we pray in the Eucharistic Prayer: "Father accept this offering from your whole family..., save us from final damnation, and count us among those you have chosen" (Eucharistic Prayer I).