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“The kingdom of God is within you.” The beating of the heart of the Gospel can be heard in these words. The two worlds draw near each other, the frontiers are blurred, the beyond becomes the here and now. Every believer, taking part in the liturgy, has this experience: “Now all the heavenly powers invisibly concelebrate with us.” However, these eruptions of “the wholly other” mean that hell is also in the midst of us. In spite of the clearness of this idea,12.1 the same term is applied to many situations in life. We hear of the hell of an unhappy love affair, the hell of conjugal life, the hell of the presence of others, the hell of oneself. Hell in the guise of man forces its way into our intimacy, becomes a familiar element, well-known but terrifying. Certainly it is different from the image presented by the masters of the Middle Ages, of Bosch, Goya, or the danse macabre; it is nevertheless real. The devil sets aside his romantic mask and becomes as familiar as Ivan Karamazov's devil dressed in a business suit, or as anybody else, and as such we perhaps meet him every day. He is no longer disguised as an archangel with burnt wings. Truer, more human, and for that reason more to be feared, he resembles us. Marcel Jouhandeau has expressed the essential things: “By myself, I can set up in the face of God an empire over which he can do nothing; this is hell... man does not understand hell because he does not understand his own heart.”12.2
The titanic power of refusing God is the most advanced position of human freedom; liberty has been willed thus by God, that is, without limits. “God cannot force anyone to love him,” as the Fathers teach. This, one scarcely dares to say it, is the hell of his love, the heavenly dimension of hell, the desolate vision of man repeating to satiety the action of Adam or of Judas, fleeing into the darkness of solitude. Not all the wrong is on their side; they have acted thus because of their ignorance of the graces of Pentecost and because of the lamentable absence of true witnesses. An acid pessimism eats into the roots of their lives, making them indifferent and impermeable to grace. It is from the hell of their hearts that they hurl toward an empty heaven their despair and their blasphemies. The satanic paradise of the proletarian empire produces the poison of an enormous boredom. This empire, strong in all techniques, causes the abandonment of man to himself, an abandonment equal in vastness to the interplanetary spaces where rockets take the place of angels and where the thunder of God's wrath is beginning to rumble.
It is no longer possible to reduce faith or atheism to a “private affair”. Our time is indeed the age of universalism--the catholicity of the kingdom or of the anti-kingdom. The world beyond, whether sacred or secularized, is posited in the apocalyptic dimensions of our existence. It excludes any “between the two”, and implacably obliges us to choose between two totalitarianisms“God is all in all”, or “God is not anywhere”. The intermediate type, that of Max Stirner, for example, that Kleinburgerlich, that petty bourgeois Prometheus, who stole fire from heaven to heat his coffee and to light his pipe, is disappearing from the world scene. For the religious needs of the human spirit, the dominant new philosophies offer their own absolutes, their stimulants and their mystic intoxications. “Certainly,” wrote Simone Weil, “there is an intoxication in being a member of the mystical body of Christ. But today many mystical bodies, which do not have Christ as their head, procure for their members intoxications that are, in my opinion, of the same nature.”12.3
Present-day science is no longer a dream. As a dream, it has been realized magnificently and beyond all expectations. Its rapid progression is becoming unforeseeable; it is going beyond the laboratories of scientists, and it is indispensable in any meditation on being, the existence of man and his destiny. It is not theology nor philosophy that is changing the face of the world; it is science. Cybernetics and automation are providing the human brain with a marvelous complement; they permit very exact forecasts which concern all men. Power over biological processes and over the spaces around the earth places in human consciousness a new spirit of prophecy. By the solidarity that in fact exists, all men find that they have a common destiny that entails its own risks. Scientists cry out to us in their anxiety. “I am a man,” said Harold Urcy, “who is afraid and who wishes to share his fear.”12.4 This is because science and techniques intervene in a political context, bringing to it a power over men that is almost unlimited, as is shown in George Orwell's 1984.
Humanity is exposed to the risk of being reduced to rationally conditioned gestures, foreseen in advance, with its critical faculties controlled or inhibited. A balanced interaction between material progress and spiritual growth is seen to be more and more problematic, and the future that is opening up is in part darkened by shadows. An existence that has broken with God is built on this refusal of God. Science, good in itself, risks finding itself set up entirely against God. The Antichrist of the Legend by V. Soloviev presents himself as a great benefactor of humanity, as an accomplished scientist, offering as bread the miracles of techniques and peace.
The situation of the modern world calls upon the Christian conscience, questions it, accuses it. If Communism exists, it is because Christians, unfaithful to the Gospel, have not been able to bring about the kingdom of God on earth. If present-day thought has such an accent of despair and emptiness, it is because Christian hope has lost “the consolation afforded by the Scriptures”,12.5 and is no longer on the plane of the divine promise. If abstract art exists, it is because figurative art no longer represents anything, for it incarnates no spirit and radiates no light; surrealism arises only where men have lost the flame of things and the secret contents of the real. The prodigies of technology, according to Apocalypse 13, 13, only parody the fires of Pentecost. In the heart of an infernal existence, man feels himself abandoned to his total solitude. Sheol signifies a place of darkness, and hell in Greek, the place where one does not see, where no glance meets that of another; hell knows no vis-a-vis, no meeting face to face. It is a place where there are “the tears of the victims with none to comfort them”.12.6
Here the message of Pentecost is seen in all its breadth. Speaking for all men, Christ has uttered the cry: “Why hast thou abandoned me?” This cry has shaken the foundations of hell and moved the heart of the Father, but the Father who sent his Son knows that even hell is his domain and that “the door of death” is changed into “a door of life”. Even infernal despair is touched by a hope that it formerly contained, and it is not for Christians to despair. The hand extended toward Christ never remains empty. The fourth Gospel shows us Judas holding out his hand. In placing there the eucharistic bread,12.7 Christ made his last appeal to evil, to night at its darkest. Judas' fingers closed over the immolated lamb. Judas went out and “it was night”. St. Augustine has this word to say: “He who went out was himself night.”12.8 The night received him and hid his terrible communion with Satan. Satan is in Judas. Judas carries away in his hand, which is that of Satan, a fearful mystery. Hell keeps in its breast that morsel of bread. Is not this particle of light the faithful and exact expression of the words, “the light shines in darkness”? The gesture of Jesus designated the last mystery of the Church: she is the hand of Jesus offering the eucharistic bread, addressing her appeal to all, for all are in the power of the prince of this world. The light does not yet dissipate the darkness, but the darkness has no ascendancy over the invincible light.12.9 We are all in the final tension of divine love.
On this level we find not the denial but the exigency of hell, which comes from human freedom. Confronted with God, who forces no one, hell testifies to our freedom of loving God. This engenders hell, for man can always say: “May thy will not be done”, and even God has no control over this decision.
God is a mysterium fascinosum, absolutely and for all eternity. He is not a clever architect with perfectly balanced plans. There is the cross planted at the threshold of a new life. A folly and a scandal, it upsets every design that is too geometrical, or “Euclidian”, as Dostoievski would say. Through the reasoning of our heart, we feel that our image of God would become disturbing if God does not love his creature even to punishing him; it would also be disturbing if God does not save the loved one without touching or destroying his freedom.
“Hell is other people,” Sartre declares. A Christian can say: “The destiny of others is my hell.” The Father has given all judgment to the Son of Man, and it is “the judgment of the judgment”,12.10 the judgment crucified. “The Father is crucifying love, the Son is crucified love, the Holy Spirit is the invincible love of the cross.”12.11 This invincible power shines forth in the effusion of the Holy Spirit and every baptized person receives it. If the despairing explore the depths of Satan, the Gospel calls upon believers “to move mountains”. Perhaps this means for us to move the infernal mountain of the modern world and its nothingness toward the dazzling light of Pentecost and its new life: “I have today set before you life... and death.” The “night” of the Western mystics, and “the abandonment by God” of the Eastern spiritual leaders, speak of the descent into hell. For the one who is attentive to the world, the experience of hell is immediate.
In the Orthodox services of Matins on the night of Easter, in the silence of the end of Saturday, the priest and people leave the church. The procession stops at the exterior, before the closed door of the church. For a brief moment, this door symbolizes the Lord's tomb, death, hell. The priest makes the sign of the cross on the door, and under its irresistible force, the door opens wide and all enter the church, which is flooded with light, singing: “Christ has risen from the dead, he has vanquished death by death, and he has given life to all those who are in the tombs.” The gate of hell has become again the door of the church. One can go no further in the symbolism of the feast. Yes, the world in its totality is at the same time condemned and saved; it is at the same time hell and the kingdom of God.
When we confess in the Apostles' Creed that “I believe in the Holy Spirit, in
the Holy Catholic Church”, we mean “in the Holy Spirit that descended on the
Church on Pentecost”, and this is Pentecost perpetuated and the parousia begun
in action in history. This time does not withdraw man from the world but it
lightens the weight of the world, making man more joyous by the breath of the
Spirit. It is in our world of television, guided space craft, supersonics,
interplanetary journeys, in this world that is at the same time atheistic and
believing, paradisiacal and infernal, but always loved by God, that man is
called upon to live the miracle of his faith. Like Abraham in former times, he
starts out without knowing where he is going or why; but he knows that he bears
in his heart a flame of fire, and he can only repeat the winged words of St.
John Climacus: “I go forward singing to you...”