November 26

In the history of the saints, especially in recent centuries but also in that of Saint John of the Cross, in the piety of the Carmelites, and particularly in that of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, the word “hell” has acquired an entirely new meaning, an entirely new form. For the saints, it is not so much a threat to be flung at other people as it is a challenge to oneself to experience oneness with Christ in the dark night of the soul as oneness with the darkness of his descent into the night; to draw close to the Lord’s light by sharing his darkness; and to serve the salvation of the world by placing our concern for the salvation of others before our concern for our own salvation. Such piety deprives hell of none of its dreadful reality; it is so real to the saints that it reaches into their very existence. Hope can counteract its horror only for those who share in the suffering of hell’s night at the side of him who came to transform our night by his suffering. Hope does not have its source in the neutral logic of a system, in the debasement of humanity. It derives, rather, from the surrender of our instinctive tendency to relegate hell to the realm of the innocuous and our insistence, at the side of Jesus Christ, on its reality. Such hope cannot be a self-willed declaration; it places its petition into the Lord’s hands and leaves it there. The dogma retains its real content; the concept of mercy, which has accompanied it throughout its long history, becomes, not a theory, but the prayer of a faith that suffers and hopes.

From: Eschatologie—Tod und ewiges Leben, pp. 178–79

 Ratzinger, J., Co-Workers of the Truth: Meditations for Every Day of the Year (ed. I. Grassl) (San Francisco 1992) 373.