November 18

If there existed a loneliness that no word of another could pierce and change, if there existed an isolation so deep that a you could no longer reach it, then there would exist that authentic total loneliness and terror that theology calls “hell”. From this standpoint, we can define the word exactly: it means a loneliness into which the word of love no longer penetrates and which is, consequently, the true risk of existence. Which of us is not reminded, in this context, of the belief of poets and philosophers of our time that all contacts among men are basically superficial; no one has admittance to the real depth of another. Consequently no one can penetrate the real depth of that other; every encounter, however beautiful it may be, can do no more than anesthetize the unhealable wound of loneliness. In that case, hell, despair—a loneliness as undefinable as it is dreadful—would dwell in the deepest core of our existence. As we know, it was from this standpoint that Sartre developed his anthropology. But even a poet as conciliatory and apparently as serenely unruffled as Hermann Hesse seems to express fundamentally the same thought: “Strange to wander in the mist. Life is loneliness. No one knows the other. Each is alone!” One thing is, in fact, certain: there is a night whose isolation is penetrated by no voice; there is a door through which we must pass alone: the door of death. All the fear in the world is ultimately the fear of this loneliness. From this, we can understand why the Old Testament has only one word for hell and death: the word sheol. In the last analysis, the two are identical. Death is loneliness par excellence. But a loneliness that love can no longer penetrate is—hell.

From: Veraltetes Glaubensbekenntnis? pp. 105–6

 Ratzinger, J., Co-Workers of the Truth: Meditations for Every Day of the Year (ed. I. Grassl) (San Francisco 1992) 364-365.