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Without having received a dogmatic definition, the theme of hell and its destiny is constantly present in the liturgy and is universal. Evil is not a substance. A perverted will, conscious and jealous of its autonomy, dynamic in its transgressions of rules, multiplies distances and absences. A wicked being lives as a parasite, forming excrescences and malignant tumors. What he takes from a being, he adds to it in the form of a disease. He can do this, for God has created “another freedom”, and the risk that God has taken already proclaims “the man of sorrows” and forecasts the shadow of the cross. According to a saying of the Fathers, God can do all things, except constrain man to love him... In the expectation of being loved, God renounces his all-powerfulness and assumes the kenosis11.1 under the figure of “the lamb who has been slain from the foundation of the world”.11.2 His destiny among men depends on the fiat of humanity. To assure the liberty of this fiat, Christ renounces even his “all-knowledge”. The apparent passivity of God hides, according to St. Gregory of Nazianzen, “the suffering of the impassible God”. God foresees the worst, and his love does not remain the less vigilant on this account, for man can refuse God and build his life on this refusal. Which one will win, love or freedom? Both are infinite, and hell asks this question.
The East remains foreign to every juridical or penitentiary principle; its conception of sin and its attitude toward the sinner is essentially therapeutic, referring not to a tribunal but to a clinic.
Without prejudging anything, the Church abandons herself to God, the lover of men, and redoubles her prayers for the living and the dead. Some, the greatest among the saints, have had the audacity and the charism to pray even for demons. Perhaps the most deadly weapon against the evil one is precisely the prayer of a saint, and perhaps the lot of hell depends also on the charity of the saints. Man himself prepares his own hell in closing himself against divine love that remains unchangeable. “It is not right to say that the sinners in hell are deprived of the love of God... But love acts in two different ways, it becomes suffering in the damned and joy in the blessed.”11.3
Every faithful member of the Orthodox Church, in approaching the holy table, confesses: “I am the first of sinners”, which means the greatest, or more exactly, without any possible measure or comparison, “the unique sinner”. St. Ambrose, as a pastor and a liturgist, explains it and gives it a concise and striking form: “The same man is at the same time condemned and saved.”11.4 St. Isaac, as an ascetic, gives another: “The one who sees his sin is greater than the one who raises the dead to life.” Such a vision of reality leads to a final and paradoxical conclusion. A very simple man confessed to St. Anthony: “In watching the passersby, I say to myself, `All will be saved, I alone shall be damned.”' St. Anthony concluded: “Hell really exists, but for me alone.” This love of men is answered by the magnificent words of a Mohammedan mystic: “If you place me among those in Gehenna, I shall pass my eternity in speaking to them of my love for you.”11.5
In repeating St. Ambrose's words, we can say that the world in its totality is “at the same time condemned and saved”. Even more, perhaps hell in its very condemnation finds its own transcendence. It seems that this is the meaning of the words Christ said to Silouan of Athos, a contemporary staretz, “Keep your spirit in hell but do not despair.”11.6
Peguy reproached Dante for having visited hell “as a tourist”. The great spiritual leaders have another way of descending there.11.7 “The light of Christ enlightens every man coming into the world,” says the prayer of Prime; even unconsciously, all bear its mysterious signs. It is not for Christians to despair then, but to hear Christ saying to the Church one of the gravest sentences that it is given her to hear for her apostolate: “He who receives you, receives me...” The fate of the world depends on our art of being witnesses to Pentecost; it depends also on our inventive charity in the face of the dimension of evil of the world.
All that theology teaches on the condemnation of the world is in the phrase: “Cain, where is your brother Abel?” In addition, there is the mystery of the Church in the light of the priestly prayer of Christ (John 17), in “Abel, where is your brother Cain?” The love of God was “in the beginning” (I John 4, 9-10) as an event transcending every response to it. The two paracletes come to save. Love, in its profoundest depths, appears disinterested, like the pure joy of the friend of the bridegroom, like the joy that subsists by itself, a joy a priori to everything.
In John 14, 28, Jesus asks us to rejoice with a great joy, the reason of which is beyond man, namely, the objective existence of God. In this radiant and royally free joy lies the salvation of the world. John 13, 20 invites us to discover the manner in which we can be accepted, “received” by the world. It is now the hour for the Church no longer to speak of Christ, but to become Christ. The heavenly mansion extends its walls even to the confines of the world, even though it is here a question of the world in revolt, in opposition to God. God loved the world even when it was in sin.11.8 The bride takes on the face of her spouse in the eucharistic bread, communion, friendship. Her light shines not merely to shine but to change the night into a day that never ends.
More than ever before, the world seeks for something that would unite men; it seeks for “the human brother”. It is here that Christian charity alone--the kind that does not calculate or measure or limit--can cause the light of the Christian world to shine in the direction of the one farthest from Christ, for it is in this one that Christ is waiting to be received. St. Symeon called himself “the poor brother of all men”, and he really was this. The new man is not being fabricated in the Marxist factories of social discipline. The “new creature” has his origin in the Holy Spirit, who forms apostolic souls; he takes his faith seriously and does things that are very simple when seen in the light of evangelical faith--raising the dead when the Lord tells him to do so. This critical hour is so fearful that it calls upon all the powers of faith, and that is why St. Peter quotes the prophecy of Joel and announces an abundance of gifts, with Pentecost redoubling its outpourings in pre-apocalyptic times.
Every baptized person is invisibly stigmatized since he bears within him the deep wound of the destiny of others, of all others; he adds something to the suffering of Christ who is in agony until the end of the world. “To imitate” Christ is to follow him in his descent to the bottom of the gulf of our world. “Imitation” is configuration to the total Christ; it is martyrdom, according to Origen,11.9 for “The love of God and the love of men are two aspects of a single total love”.11.10 My personal attitude, which is always unique, is to fight against my hell, which threatens me if I do not love enough to save others. Still, an almost imperceptible inclination toward activism leads me to say: “I love you in order to save you.” An apostolic soul says: “I save you because I love you...” During each liturgical service we sing: “We have seen the true light, we have received the heavenly Spirit.” Every Sunday is a renewal of Pentecost. This versicle expresses the truth, but in giving its gift, it makes an urgent appeal to spread this overwhelming experience of light into the hell of today's world.