St. Veronica Giuliani's Trip to Hell

One day the devil showed her a vision of hell. “It seems that the tempter showed my soul hell being opened, and that in fact he had placed it (her soul) in it, and that only a small push was needed to cast it inside. It seemed then that I heard screams and voices of lamentation from the damned. I only saw infernal monsters, many serpents, many ferocious animals, and an infernal stench and extremely hot flames, which were so big that their height could not be measured. I could only compare it to the distance between heaven and earth. As far as the size of the place, one could not see the beginning or the end. You could hear many blasphemies and curses against God. How sad. What torment this caused my soul.”
She was shown hell once more: “At that moment I was once again shown hell opened; and it seemed many souls descended there, they were so ugly and black that they struck terror in me. They all dropped down in a rush, one after the other, and once they had entered those chasms there was nothing to be seen but fire and flames.” This vision led Veronica to offer herself as a victim of Divine Justice: “My Lord, I offer myself to stand here as a doorway, so that no one may enter down there and lose You.” Then she stretched out her arms and said, “As long as I stand in this doorway, no one shall enter. O souls, go back! My God, I ask nothing else of You but the salvation of sinners. Send me more pains, more torments, more crosses!”

The Blessed Virgin Mary speaking to Veronica about her trips to hell told her, “When you were going around hell, you came across torments and tormentors at every step; but that time when you went by the seat of Lucifer, you were terrified at seeing so many souls were on the seat of Lucifer himself. This is in the center of hell and is seen by all the damned, by all the devils, and this sight causes all of them great suffering. I also let you know that, in the same way that the sight of God in Paradise constitutes Paradise itself; down there in hell, the sight of Lucifer is what constitutes hell.”

The Blessed Virgin Mary also told her, “Many do not believe that hell exists, and I tell you yourself, who have been there, have understood nothing of what hell is.”

- See more at: http://www.mysticsofthechurch.com/2015/07/st-veronica-giuliani-extraordinary.html#sthash.KomNEvn2.dpuf

Three Definitions from The Maritains

Silent Prayer: "...not meditation in which the soul is occupied in considering ideas, concepts and images, but a wordless, intuitive, and quite simple prayer, a loving attention to God in which the soul is primarily occupied in letting God having His way with it and which, as St. Thomas expresses it, it suffers divine things in a silence void of words, concepts and images." 

Recueillement: "an inner state which, far from being ‘concentration’ due to voluntary effort, is rather a gift received, a quiet absorption of the soul which, far from being inertia, is a secret and unifying activity too deep to be perceived."

Contemplation: "Christian contemplation is the fruit of the gift of Wisdom; and this gift, although a habitus of the intelligence… depends essentially on charity, and consequently on sanctifying grace, and causes us to know God by a sort of connaturality – in an affective, experimental and obscure manner, because superior to every concept and image."

More on this later today....

Framing Prayer 19 The Jesuits--Paying Attention

Starting now... perhaps the most useful approach to prayer for the laity--the Jesuit method. I want to begin with a basic idea that the Jesuits absolutely believe that God is always active and active now. This idea forms the foundation for our responses to God daily.

Remember when I wrote of active contemplation in the perfection series? The key is to still our hearts and minds so that we can be attentive. Attentiveness underlines the Jesuit way of prayer.

Do you pay attention to signs in your life regarding God's Presence?

Do you pay attention to the Word of God, in Scripture, as Mass, in the homily, in discussions with your friends?

Do you pay attention to excellent spiritual leaders?

Do you pay attention to movements of the Holy Spirit in your life, the ebb and flow of grace?

Attentiveness, of course, means that you cannot pay attention to trivia, to entertainment, to gossip, etc.?

Recently, someone told me that the good emphasis on excellence and individuality in the Jesuit order is connected to attentiveness. What talents has God given the priest to use in the world? What gifts are for the building up of the Kingdom? What does the Church need now?


God does not want to grab us by the face with His "two hands" and say "pay attention". He wants to meet us in the attentive time of prayer, in the silence of our hearts and minds.

Number one lesson today from the Jesuits--be attentive to God.