This weekend I attended Mass at a beautiful little church with a very traditional approach to liturgy and preaching. The priest gave a fine homily on the “last things” including hell, which is pretty rare these days. After saying that the secular world doesn’t believe in the existence of hell, he said, quite innocently, “we have to come to church to find out what hell is like.”
No one seemed to notice the humor embedded in that line.
But I was in the back row and so I smiled quietly, thinking all sorts of things. Like “in most parishes all you have to do is listen to the music to learn what hell is like” and more.
It still makes me smile just thinking about it.