p to the Lord. But that is
just his torment, to rise up to the Lord without ever having loved, to be
brought close to those who have loved when he has despised their love. For
he sees clearly and says to himself, "Now I have understanding, and though
I now thirst to love, there will be nothing great, no sacrifice in my
love, for my earthly life is over, and Abraham will not come even with a
drop of living water (that is the gift of earthly active life) to cool the
fiery thirst of spiritual love which burns in me now, though I despised it
on earth; there is no more life for me and will be no more time! Even
though I would gladly give my life for others, it can never be, for that
life is passed which can be sacrificed for love, and now there is a gulf
fixed between that life and this existence."

They talk of hell fire in the material sense. I don't go into that mystery
and I shun it. But I think if there were fire in material sense, they
would be glad of it, for I imagine that in material agony, their still
greater spiritual agony would be forgotten for a moment. Moreover, that
spiritual agony cannot be taken from them, for that suffering is not
external but within them. And if it could be taken from them, I think it
would be bitterer still for the unhappy creatures. For even if the
righteous in Paradise forgave them, beholding their torments, and called
them up to heaven in their infinite love, they would only multiply their
torments, for they would arouse in them still more keenly a flaming thirst
for responsive, active and grateful love which is now impossible. In the
timidity of my heart I imagine, however, that the very recognition of this
impossibility would serve at last to console them. For accepting the love
of the righteous together with the impossibility of repaying it, by this
submissiveness and the effect of this humility, they will attain at last,
as it were, to a certain semblance of that active love which they scorned
in life, to something like its outward expression.... I am sorry, friends
and brothers, that I cannot express this clearly. But woe to those who
have slain themselves on earth, woe to the suicides! I believe that there
can be none more miserable then they. They tell us that it is a sin to
pray for them and outwardly the Church, as it were, renounces them, but in
my secret heart I believe that we may pray even for them. Love can never
be an offense to Christ. For such as those I have prayed inw