A life without God?
Individuals who deliberately turn away from God open themselves to the influence of evil in their lives. As sin gradually infiltrates daily behavior, tolerance for wrongdoing increases, often accompanied by the pursuit of new forms of physical gratification and a neglect of the needs of others, as acts of charity may appear to offer no personal benefit. Over time, this can lead to a growing distance from God, accompanied by rationalizations—such as appeals to personal freedom or claims of outdated thinking in a modern context—that justify remaining separated from Him.
A life without God eventually leads to spiritual hell. Sister Josefa Menendez while physically experiencing hell for the purpose of reparation and conversion of sinners, observed that human souls there directed oaths and blasphemy against God—unlike demons, who, though fallen, retain knowledge of Him and therefore do not swear against Him. Likewise, the absence of God in human lives often gives rise to conflict and war, as love for one’s neighbor deteriorates into hatred.
Then, who can be saved in a world marked by hatred? One approach is to carefully examine history for insights. For example, the atomic bombing of Nagasaki resulted in the immediate deaths of approximately 50,000 people within nine seconds, with an additional 80,000 succumbing to radiation-related illnesses. In Hiroshima, casualties were roughly 30% higher. Even a single photograph from these events can convey the profound human cost, making the tragedy deeply personal and tangible.
Hope lies in recognizing those who were miraculously spared at Nagasaki, a testament to the protection of the One True God who cares for His chosen, and in striving to follow their example of faith and perseverance.
Jesuit Fathers were living in a presbytery near the parish church, which was situated less than a mile away from detonation point, well within the radius of total devastation... all eight members of this community escaped virtually unscathed from the effects of the bomb. Their presbytery remained standing, while the buildings all around, virtually as far as the eye could see, were flattened.
What about the recent Lahaina Maui fire of 2023?
Do you notice an unburned building?
Is that intact building a Catholic Church? You bet.
In the same way, the Notre Dame cross and altar remained standing following the 2019 fire, and the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe survived intact after the 1921 bombing, among numerous other remarkable instances. To further illustrate this point for skeptics, consider the image below: what remained unscathed?
Military base fire , Madrid 2015.
Mary always gives us hope in tragedy,
Hurricane Harvey, Texas fire in 2017.
Another reason to faithfully adhere to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church—without doubt or distrust—is for the benefit of our own spiritual well-being in this life and the life to come. Notably, Pope Gregory I (540-604), in his Dialogues, recorded over thirty additional miracles, further attesting to God’s providence and the sanctity of the Church’s witnesses.
Book: Dialogues by St Gregory the Great
In 1250, Saint Thomas Aquinas explained the consequences of original sin; since the Fall, the human soul has been in continual conflict with the body.
God bestowed this favor on man, in his primitive state, that as long as his mind was subject to God, the lower powers of his soul would be subject to his rational mind, and his body to his soul. But inasmuch as through sin man's mind withdrew from subjection to God, the result was that neither were his lower powers wholly subject to his reason, whence there followed so great a rebellion of the carnal appetite against the reason: nor was the body wholly subject to the soul; whence arose death and other bodily defects. For life and soundness of body depend on the body being subject to the soul, as the perfectible is subject to its perfection. Consequently, on the other hand, death, sickness, and all defects of the body are due to the lack of the body's subjection to the soul.
Since the Fall, humanity has been inclined toward evil, a tendency further intensified by personal sin and and desensitization to cruelty and suffering. The notion that one can overcome these spiritual failings—such as malice, anger, concupiscence, and ignorance—through self-discipline and meditation alone is overly optimistic. While human effort may temporarily restrain evil, only God can fully heal and eradicate these defects. Through prayer and the sacraments, one must actively labor to return to a state of innocence. As Jesus taught, "Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 18:3). Without deliberate effort to change, one has already surrendered to spiritual stagnation—a reality that even Israel recognized a century before Christ, in their awareness of the perils of pride,
Men are vain, in whom there is not the knowledge of God...neither by attending to the works have acknowledged who was the workman: But have imagined either the fire, or the wind, or the swift air, or the circle of the stars, or the great water, or the sun and moon, to be the gods that rule the world. With whose beauty, if they, being delighted, took them to be gods: let them know how much the Lord of them is more beautiful than they: for the first author of beauty made all those things... For they perhaps err, seeking God, and desirous to find him. For being conversant among his works, they search: and they are persuaded that the things are good which are seen. But then again they are not to be pardoned. For if they were able to know so much as to make a judgement of the world: how did they not more easily find out the Lord thereof? (Book of Wisdom, Chapter 13)
Book: The Holy Bible: Old Testament: Douay-Rheims Version by Catholic Way Publishing
Choosing to turn away from God in this life carries lasting consequences for the life to come. Let Jesus Himself convey the significance of this truth, as He did to a Benedictine monk on Monday, March 16, 2009:
For those who have closed their hearts to Me, rejected My intimate friendship, and withdrawn into the comfortable life they have organized for themselves-but that sort of life apart from Me is the beginning of damnation, the beginning of that hell that is not something I inflict on souls but, rather, the state in which they put themselves by withdrawing little by little from Me until, in the end, the separation is complete and there is no return.
Book: In Sinu Jesu: When Heart Speaks to Heart - The Journal of a Priest at Prayer by A Benedictine Monk
[Jesus speaks] See, daughter, how great the effects in the man are not only of the malice of the devil but also of a deformed conscience! And this comes about because he does not struggle against temptation as he ought... I, God, foreseeing the hardness of many hearts, spare my chosen ones the trouble, so that they need not work in vain. And because many, deliberately sinning with full knowledge, decide to persevere in sin rather than to be converted, they are not worthy to hear the messengers of salvation.[Saint Bridget,1360]