THE MAIN DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HELL

The main difference between Heaven and Hell isn’t the difference of place. There is both a difference in location and the existential response of an intelligent being – human or angel – to the same Uncreated Divine Energy which is much more intense than here on Earth, both in heaven and in hell.

If being in Heaven is a response of total acceptance, love, unity, peace, humbleness, then what happens in Hell is an eternal rejection of these values.

When one is there they are being tormented by the self-made cage of their own egotism. They are closed in the very narrow cage of their self-limitations in the eternal monotony of a singularity in which nothing new can exist.

That’s why in Hell the greatest torment is the wipe of God’s love – a perfect love which one cannot experience and respond to anymore because Hell is our own choice. It isn’t the result of an external cause like a law enforcement organization.

Based on father Dumitru Staniloae, Saint Isaac the Syrian