Can you tell me something about the suffering of souls in hell? And how can a spiritual soul suffer from fire when it doesn’t have a body?
The two principal forms of punishment of souls in hell are eternal separation from God and eternal fire.
As regards the separation, the Catechism teaches: “The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs” (CCC 1035). This is easy to understand. We naturally desire happiness and we find the greatest happiness when we find the greatest good, who is God himself, the infinite good. For this reason St Augustine writes: “Lord, you made us for you and our heart is restless until it rests in you” (Confessions, 1, 1, 1). Even though many people do not believe in God, they naturally desire him because they want to be happy. To be eternally separated from the one Being who can make us truly happy is therefore the greatest of pains.
The other punishment is of course eternal fire. Jesus himself speaks of it numerous times. Describing the last judgment he says of those who have not loved him with deeds: “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels…” (Mt 25:41). If we consider the intensity of the pain of being burned by fire here on earth, we cannot begin to imagine the pain of the fire of hell. And it is forever.
If we ask how a spiritual soul can suffer from corporeal fire, we need only remind ourselves of Jesus’ words that the fire of hell was prepared for the devil and his angels. Devils are pure spirits and yet they can suffer from this fire. If they can, so can human souls.
St Thomas Aquinas explains why this punishment is fitting: “Further, punishment should correspond to sin. Now in sinning the soul subjected itself to the body by sinful concupiscence. Therefore, it is just that it should be punished by being made subject to a bodily thing by suffering therefrom” (STh Suppl., q. 70, art. 3). The “bodily thing” is, of course, the fire.
Although these are the two principal forms of suffering, there are others. St Catherine of Siena records these words from God in her Dialogue:
In hell the souls have four principal torments, out of which proceed all the other torments. The first is that they see themselves deprived of the vision of me, which is such pain to them that, were it possible, they would rather choose the fire, and the tortures and torments and to see me than to be without the torments and not to see me.
This first pain revives in them, then, the second, the worm of conscience, which gnaws unceasingly, seeing that the soul is deprived of me, and of the conversation of the angels, through her sin, made worthy of the conversation and sight of the devils, which vision of the devil is the third pain and redoubles to them their every toil… And the sight is more painful to them, because they see him in his own form, which is so horrible that the heart of man could not imagine it…
The fourth torment they have is the fire. This fire burns and does not consume, for the being of the soul cannot be consumed, because it is not a material thing that fire can consume. But I, by divine justice, have permitted the fire to burn them with torments, so that it torments them, without consuming them, with the greatest pains in diverse ways according to the diversity of their sins, to some more, and to some less, according to the gravity of their fault. Out of these four torments issue all the others, such as cold and heat and gnashing of the teeth and many others (Dialogue, Ch. 2).
Other pains of hell are the gnawing of conscience and complete loneliness. We must do everything we can to love God more and be sorry for our sins. Then we will avoid hell.