About the Judgment and How Sinners are Punished

The following is from the Imitation of Christ by Thomas A Kempis. I thought this was a good time to post this as we should all be purging our sins through the Sacrament of Confession prior to Christmas.

"...Much better to get rid of your sins now, prune away your bad habits here, than keep them to be paid for hereafter...

The more you spare yourself, and take corrupt nature for your guide, the heavier price you will pay later on...

The pattern of a man's sins will be the pattern of his punishment:

-red-hot goads to spur on the idle

-cruel hunger and thirst to torment the glutton

-see where the dissipated souls, that so loved their own pleasures, are bathed in hot pitch and reeking sulfur

-where the envious souls go howling like mad dogs, for very grief!

Each darling sin will find its appropriate reward:

-for the proud, every kind of humiliation

-for the covetous, the pinch of grinding poverty

Spend a hundred years of penance here on earth, it would be no match for one hour of that punishment. Here we have intervals of rest, and our friends can comfort us; there is no respite for the damned, no consolation for the damned.

Take your sins seriously NOW, be sorry for them NOW, and at the Day of Judgment you will have confidence, the confidence of blessed souls.

We shall see...what the true wisdom was:

- learning how to be a fool, and despised, for the love of Christ

-troubles endured with patience will be a grateful memory to us

-it will be the turn of the wicked to look foolish.

-See how all pious souls make merry, and the scoffers go sad

-how the body that was mortified shews fairer, now than if it had been continually pampered

-how rags are all the wear and fine clothes look shabby

-how the gilded palace shrinks into insignificance beside the poor man's cottage!

-the dogged patience you shewed here will do you more good than all earth's crowns

-you will get more credit for unthinking obedience than for any worldly wisdom...

-The devout prayers you offered, not the good meals you ate, will be your comfort then.

-The silence you kept, not the long chats you had, will be pleasant to think of then

-Saintly deeds done, not phrases neatly turned, will avail you then.

-A well-disciplined life of hard penitential exercise, not a good time here on earth, will be your choice then.

You have go to realize that all your sufferings here are slight ones, and will get off much worse sufferings hereafter...

Love God with all your heart, and you've nothing to fear; death or punishment, judgment or hell; love, when it reaches its full growth, is an unfailing passport to God's presence...Only, if a man doesn't make the fear of God his final consideration, his good resolutions won't last; he will walk into some trap of the devil's before long."