Q. Every year during Holy Week, we read about the betrayal of Judas and his suicide. But he seemed to repent when he tried to give the 30 pieces of silver back to the high priests and said, “I have sinned in betraying innocent blood” (Matt. 27:4). Do we know if Judas is in Hell? — M.E.W., via e-mail.
A. While the Church has given us the names of many saints who are in Heaven, she has never stated who is in Hell, so we don’t know if Judas is undergoing eternal punishment. However, there are many Scripture passages that would seem to indicate that he is not in Heaven. For example, at the Last Supper, when Jesus identified Judas as His betrayer, He said, “Woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed. It would be better for that man if he had never been born” (Matt. 26:24).
Then there is a verse in John where Jesus says that He guarded the Apostles the Father had given Him, and “none of them was lost except the son of destruction, in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled” (17:12). And when it came time to choose a successor to Judas, the Apostles prayed that God would show them whether to choose Joseph or Matthias “to take the place in this apostolic ministry from which Judas turned away to go to his own place” (Acts 1:25). His own place doesn’t sound like Heaven.
We don’t know what prompted Judas to return the money and express regret over the execution of an innocent man. Did he expect that the plot against Jesus would not go as far as putting Him to death? Or did he think that Christ, who had performed so many miracles, would perform still another one and prevail over His enemies? Or was there still some spark of love for Jesus that, for the moment at least, outweighed Judas’ greed? We won’t know until the next life the answers to these questions about the ultimate fate of the man whose name is synonymous with treachery.
Q. At a recent Confirmation in our area, the retiring archbishop of Dubuque, Michael Jackels, told the students that “everyone is called to Heaven: that’s our destination, right?…Everyone is called there. God wants everyone there. In fact, in my opinion — and I’ll tell you if you promise not to tell anyone else — I don’t think there’s anybody in Hell.”
Anticipating perhaps questions about how someone like Hitler or Osama Bin Laden could have avoided Hell, Jackels said: “Okay, they did bad things, but what’s the thing bigger than the baddest thing? God and His mercy, God and His love. God says to Hitler, ‘Oh you old fool, what were you thinking? Your mother drop you on your head when you were a kid? Come on in, although you gotta stop at Purgatory and get cleaned up first, but come on in. Come home, come home’.” Maybe the archbishop’s mother dropped him on his head. What do you think? — M.J., Iowa.
A. Having just prepared 20 tenth-graders for Confirmation, a preparation that included the reality of Hell as the destination for unrepentant sinners, we shudder to think what we might have yelled at any bishop who said at our Confirmation what Archbishop Jackels said. His remarks not only contradict long-held Catholic teaching, they also defy common sense. How many of the millions of victims of Hitler’s genocide would think of him as an “old fool” whose mother dropped him on his head as a child?
Hitler was no fool; he knew exactly what he was doing up until the moment he committed suicide in the bunker in Berlin. To suggest jokingly that God would invite this mass murderer to “come on in” to Heaven is a grotesque misuse of an opportunity to catechize high schoolers about having the courage to live their faith in a hostile world.
Hitler was one of those persons, like Herod and Nero and Stalin and Mao, probably guilty of final impenitence or what the Church calls “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.” In his encyclical Dominum et Vivificantem, Pope St. John Paul II explained it this way:
“Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit…is the sin committed by the person who claims to have a ‘right’ to persist in evil — in any sin at all — and who thus rejects Redemption. One closes oneself up in sin, thus making impossible one’s conversion, and consequently the remission of sins, which one considers not essential or not important for one’s life. This is a state of spiritual ruin because blasphemy against the Holy Spirit does not allow one to escape from one’s self-imposed imprisonment and open oneself to the divine sources of the purification of consciences and of the remission of sins” (n. 46).
To find out what the Church teaches about Hell and its occupants, read nn. 1033 to 1037 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. For example, it recalls Jesus’ frequent warnings about “the unquenchable fire” (Mark 9:43) reserved for those who refuse until the end of their lives to repent of their sins. Or His statement that “the Son of Man will send His angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all who cause others to sin and all evildoers. They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth” (Matt. 13:41-42). Or His words to those who failed to help their brothers and sisters in need: “Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt. 25:41).
The Catechism says that “we cannot be united with God unless we freely choose to love him. But we cannot love God if we sin gravely against him, against our neighbor, or against ourselves….To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God’s merciful love means being separated from him forever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called ‘hell’.”
Q. The readings at Mass during the Easter season show that Jesus was seen alive by many witnesses. Why didn’t more people believe in Him then, or now? — M.C., via e-mail.
A. As St. Paul told us, in the forty days after Easter, Jesus “appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at once, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. After that he appeared to James, then to all the Apostles. Last of all, as to one born abnormally, He appeared to me” (1 Cor. 15:5-8). But despite these repeated appearances, there were some Apostles who still doubted up to the Lord’s Ascension into Heaven (cf. Matt. 28:17).
Why the doubt? Perhaps because resurrection of the body was a concept foreign to them. They had seen Jesus resuscitate people who later died, but they had no experience of resurrection of the body. Even though Jesus had predicted His own Resurrection six times, some of His closest followers were still skeptical. Remember that they thought He was a ghost when He came through the locked doors on that first Easter night.
Others had been given false information. The soldiers guarding the tomb reported seeing the risen Christ, but were paid a large sum of money to say, instead, that while they were sleeping, the disciples of Jesus came and stole His dead body. Writing years later, Matthew said that “this story has circulated among the Jews to the present” (28:15).
Still others have hardened their hearts and minds to anything miraculous. Like Emile Zola, the French novelist and atheist who went to Lourdes in 1892 determined to discredit reports of numerous miracles at the shrine. He was actually given the privilege of witnessing the amazing cure of a woman from terminal tuberculosis. But when he published his novel Lourdes in 1894, he not only denied the miracle but lied in saying that the woman cured had suffered a relapse at the end of the pilgrimage and had died.
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress