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Question

Dear Father Angelo,

I follow your articles with great passion, and it’s not by chance that I often have taken advantage of your special apostolate vocation to resolve some of my faith-related doubts.
An issue that has perplexed me lately is this: why are there people who by their own free will refuse God and go to hell?  I know that this happens because God loves our freedom more than anything else (please correct me if I am wrong or inexact), but how can this be reconciled with the fact that, given that Paradise is the fulfillment of all human desires, there are people that I wish were in Paradise with me after they die (despite all their mortal sins, or their enmity against me) but who may not be there because of their refusal of God?

Wouldn’t that be an unfulfilled desire of mine that is good and just? After all, who wouldn’t want to be friends with everyone, and be able to see every good thing come to fruition in every person?

I thank you and remember you in my prayers.

Gabriele

Priest’s answer

Dear Gabriele,

1. If we take your definition of Paradise (“Paradise is the fulfillment of all human desires”) as the correct one, we would have to conclude that, if we can’t get back the company of our friends on the other side, that will not be Paradise to us.
However ,Paradise is not simply the “fulfillment of all human desires”.  Paradise consists of our perfect union with God.

2. Moreover, God desires human company more than we do.  He desires it, not because he is missing something, but because he wants to fill the heart of every man with himself, the source and end of all good.
But if some men do not want to be with God and do not accept his friendship, that does not lessen God’s own perfection, that is infinite.

3. These two premises can help us resolve your question.
Eternal life consists essentially in the possession of God. This is accomplished through the beatific vision.
It’s the so-called essential beatitude.

4. Communion with friends, which will exist in Paradise, will constitute part of what theologians call accidental beatitude. Naturally, the Lord wants to fulfill our desire also through the company of our friends. But if some of our friends do not want to be with us, as in the case of the damned, our beatitude will not be diminished in any way.

5. Indeed, so long as we are here, the company of our friends is something we long for, because we have many material and spiritual things to exchange, and thus we help one another.  But on the other side those who are in hell do not want what we want to communicate to them, nor do they have anything to communicate to us. They lack all good and possess all evil. We may say that, from the moment they go to hell, they cease to be our friends and become our enemies, even though they cannot harm us in any way.

6. Besides, true friends in Paradise will enjoy “the happy society of all the blessed, and this society will be especially delightful. Since each one will possess all good together with the blessed, and they will love one another as themselves, and they will rejoice in the others’ good as their own” (St. Thomas Aquinas on the Apostles Creed).  What kind of communication could we have with the damned? Neither they want our beatitude, nor do they have anything to offer us. There is “a great chasm” between us and them, quoting the gospel parable of the poor man Lazarus (Lk 16,26).  Sadly, they will continue to stubbornly refuse our friendship. This too will be part of their hell.

7. I come now to the other questions. You write: “because God loves our freedom more than anything else (please correct me if I am wrong or inexact )”.
Yes, I do correct you.  More than loving our freedom above anything else, God respects it.

8. “… but who may not be there because of their refusal of God?”
They may also have refused him indirectly, as emerges from Mt 25,45-46: “He will answer them, ‘Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.’  And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” 

9. “Wouldn’t that be an unfulfilled desire of mine that is good and just? After all, who wouldn’t want to be friends with everyone, and be able to see every good thing come to fruition in every person?”

True, but they are the ones who do not want to be with you. In fact, they are obstinately full of hatred, for God and for you.

10. We can say that that desire of yours will not be fulfilled, not because God wants to deny it, but because the person we are concerned about does not want it.  And this is because who was once our friend has become our enemy.
But those who really are our friends, God will keep them forever with us. And our communion with them will infinitely surpass anything we can desire or even imagine.

Wishing you to bring them all with you into eternal life, I assure you of my prayer and I bless you.

Father Angelo