Today’s Reading from Genesis 18:20-32 begins with God saying, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great, and their sin is so grave, that I must go down and see whether or not their actions fully correspond to the cry against them that comes to me.”
Catholics ask: “Who made that ‘outcry against their actions’ to God? Did some of them want God to stop their sinning before they sank farther into sins they could not escape?” Dante’s Inferno teaches that similar sinners in the upper circle of hell are punished by “running forever through burning rain”, while the worst among them suffer far more in the lower circles of hell.
“Then Abraham drew nearer and asked God: ‘Will You sweep away the innocent with the guilty?'” God agreed with Abraham: “If there are 50, 45, 30, 20, or 10 innocent people there, I will not destroy it.”
The “fire and brimstone” that came down in Genesis 19:24 shows there were not even “ten innocent people”. The next verse explains: “Thus He overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those living in the cities; and also the vegetation in the land.” God turned the sinners’ cities, villages, and farms into an unfruitful desert.
Does Today’s Second Reading give hope in Colossians 2:12-14 to sinners in Sodom and Gomorrah who lived 2,000 years before God’s Solution to sins? “And even when you were dead in transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He brought you to life along with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions; obliterating the bond against us, with its legal claims, which was opposed to us, He also removed it from our midst, nailing it to the cross.”
1485 in The Diary of St. Faustina gives us this insight into The Power of Jesus, Who did “descend into hell”: “My mercy is greater than your sins and those of the entire world.”
The Catholic Church teaches that Jesus “descended into Hell” in both The Apostles’ Creed and The Athanasian Creed. We know that is true because Jesus said this about all Catholic Teaching in His Church-Creating Word to His First Catholic Pope: “And I say unto you thou art Peter and on this rock I build My Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I give you the keys to The Kingdom of Heaven.”
Rejecting any Catholic Teaching is denying The Perfect Truth in every Word of He Who Fulfilled the Prophecies. Many let anti-Catholic Marketing Plans lead them to believe, “I know more than Jesus about that!”. The vanity of believing “the gates of hell do prevail” over any Catholic Teaching leads many to willfully reject “the keys to The Kingdom of Heaven” (which include The Seven Catholic Sacraments) for their immortal soul by leading themselves, and, worse, other “little ones of Mine astray” (Mt. 18:6).
Rejecting God’s Mercy leaves one horrifying alternative: “He who refuses to pass through the door of My mercy must pass through the door of My justice . . .” “The Diary of St. Faustina”, 1146.
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Today’s Simple Rhyme: “Using time on earth to repent our sins / Unlocks the ‘gates of Heaven’ and lets us in.”
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