O Most High, the All-King of the ages, Who has, as Thou Thyself says, the keys of hell, give them to me now, in order to open this gloomy prison, where transgressors of Thy commandments are doomed to eternal death. I do not intend to pour balm on their wounds or water on the flames. No. I only want to ask one of those sinful souls and say to her: Tormented soul, tell me what you have done? Why are you so terribly tormented? What are you guilty of? And you suffer like this forever? What brought you to this prison? What threw you into this furnace? What did you do? Nothing else, except for a little honey. One moment of tasting is all my guilt, this is the whole cause of my torment. How great was that intoxication with satanic lust, because of which I carried away so many pure girls, disgraced honest wives, gave all my possessions, soul, and heart to a lewd harlot! All this is just a drop of honey! Was it great that I received in drinking and drinking from feasts and dances, from festivities and weddings, from games and spectacles? Only a drop of honey! How great was the joy I experienced when I satiated my vengeance, saw the misfortunes of my neighbor, disgraced his honor for the sake of my passion, for the sake of envy? A drop of honey! And was the wealth that awaited my money-loving passion, for the sake of which I burdened my conscience with countless untruths and lawless deeds? A drop of honey! And the glory, honor, and peace which I enjoyed in my power, dignity, and wealth, with such pride, haughtiness, and so little fear of God, what were they? A drop of honey! Everything, absolutely everything, is but a drop of honey, and that poisoned by so many cares, fears, labors, illnesses! But even if the whole path of my life were a continuous series of happy days, my whole life, even the longest and most prosperous, what is all this in comparison with the painful eternity? A drop of honey, nothing, the day of yesterday, which passed by (Psalm 89:5). Woe is me! I remember and feel a flame that gnaws at my memory more than the one that burns my body. I have sinned for a minute and am tormented forever. Oh, the accursed honey of temporary pleasures! You have become the poison of eternal torment for me. Past fleeting life, you have become the fault of endless torment! Oh, the shortest life! But why do I call it the shortest? It was long for me, and very long in order to receive salvation. I had lived so many years on earth and had the keys of paradise in my hands, I knew that torment was intended for sinners like me, I knew how to avoid it, I could have easily done it and I did not. I was a free man, gifted with intelligence. Who blinded me, who carried me away?

Oh, past life, whether I imagine your brevity, whether I imagine your duration, you are an equally bitter memory for me. Oh, golden years, precious days, past and lost, forever lost to me!

Who will now give me one of those watches that seemed so long to me then? Who will now give me even a little of the time that I have squandered on sins or spent in vanity? Who will give me one single moment to repent? But there is no more time, it has already passed, and only in vain do I desire it and will forever desire it. Oh, the arrow that strikes my memory! My guilt is a drop of honey, and my punishment is eternal torment. Oh, bitter remembrance, useless repentance!

These, brethren, are words that strike the heart of those who hear, much less the one who speaks them. And imagine: then he will curse the womb that bore him, and the breast that nursed him, and the parents, children and friends he knew, and most of all the drop of honey that became so bitter. Think about it, he, like today's possessed man, will foam with rage, he will boil with anger like a furious animal, he will rush at himself to tear himself to pieces, to devour his entrails, if possible. He is guilty of himself and tortures himself; He is both a victim and a weapon of eternal torment.

And when he passes from the remembrance of his past life to the consciousness of the present situation, how great will be his suffering! This is the second arrow that strikes his mind. Holy Soul, grant me now of Thy Divine power, that I may explain to my hearers what pain this arrow causes! The state of sinners in hell is an eternal life of torment, just as the state of the righteous in heaven is an eternal life of bliss. But what does "eternal life" mean in general? Theologians give us a material image and explain it in the following way. A large iron ball on a stand, according to the property of spherical bodies, touches it only at one point. All the weight of the ball is concentrated in it alone; As much as the whole ball weighs, it weighs the same at each separate point when it rests on it.

In the same way, eternal life, as it is in its entirety, is the same at every single moment, for it is inseparable.

That is why the Apostle calls eternal blessed life "the burden of immortal glory" (cf. 2 Corinthians 4:17), and learned theologians say that it is a perfect delight for a full, endless life in one moment. "Instantaneous and perfect" means that the righteous man at every indivisible moment of eternal life rejoices in all the instant, and all in perfection, in that joy which he ought to enjoy during the whole of that blissful, infinite eternal life. He enjoys all the glory all the age, and in every moment of eternity. This eternity in its fullness is revealed before the blessed mind of the righteous and always makes his blessedness boundless.

What Divine mercy does to the righteous in paradise, so does Divine justice to sinners in hell. The severity of immortal punishment is eternal torment, complete and perfect at every moment. As heavy as it is in all eternity, so heavy is it at every moment, i.e. the sinner at every inseparable moment of eternal torment, suffers all together and completely the punishment that he must bear throughout the entire infinity of a painful life. He endures all punishment during all eternity and at every moment, so that it is at one and the same time extended to the entire length of infinity and concentrated in every moment. Eternity at every moment appears to him as a whole, and the past, and the future, and therefore always makes all torment present; and the torment, furthermore, is infinite in all its continuation, so is it immense at every moment. Who is all-wise and will keep this? (Psalm 106:43) This is what eternity consists of, in contrast to time, which is divided into parts, into the first and the previous, into the beginning and the end. And this is what God threatens in Deuteronomy, saying: "I will gather evil against them, and I will put my arrows to death in them" (32:23). Gather... The evil state of sinners is a gathering, a union of all evils. All the bitterness of sorrow is gathered in one chalice, all the flames of the inextinguishable fire are united in one flame in eternal torment.

At every moment it is all in its entirety. And I will put my arrows to death. What a poisonous arrow, what a heavy spear for the torn mind of a sinner. All his torment is before his eyes, and it does not diminish in the least, since it is inseparable, it is always before his eyes, and never ends, since it is eternal. This means boundless torment, hopeless and endless. If the torment were endless, but there was hope for at least temporary relief, then it would be unbearable. But without relief and infinite, it is unbearable and incomprehensible. Who is all-wise and will keep this? What mind can comprehend this extreme misfortune?

Without relief? Yes! In hell there is the deepest sorrow, but there is no sleep to soothe it. The wounds are fatal, but there is no balm to heal them. The sickness is incurable, but there is no oil to calm it. The flames are unbearable, and there is not a drop of water to extinguish them. Listen to the rich sinner about whom Luke speaks. What does he want? Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and wet my tongue, for I suffer in this flame (Luke 16:24). Father Abraham, you are the father of mercy, show me mercy. I am engulfed in flames, I burn and am tormented in the furnace of unquenchable fire. Oh, send happy Lazarus to dip only the tip of his finger in that drop of water and come to irrigate my inflamed tongue... But what does Abraham answer him? No, no, my son, thou hast sufficiently enjoyed thy good in thy past life, thou hast received thy good in thy belly (Luke 16:25), hope for nothing more. Oh, great calamity! He asks so little, and finds nothing decisively. He resorts to Abraham himself, the father of compassion, the sea of mercy, only for a drop of water to cool his flame, and does not receive it. So, his request was not heard? "No," says Chrysostom, "for a sinner there is no water even in the sea, i.e. God has mercy." Therefore, as I said, the fire of hell is only fire, but without dew, only torment, but without relief.

In the present life there is no such great evil that, even if incurable, would have no end. And in general, endless evil would be the most terrible evil. No matter how miserable we may be when we die, if this is unavoidable, we are nevertheless freed from all torments, and death is our last physician, along with life, robbing us of our illnesses. Not such is the state of sinners in hell, where the torment is extreme and has no relief, and what is worse is eternal and has no end, never ends, never! Thousands of years, millions of years will pass, and the flour will still be at its beginning. If a sinner sheds one tear every year, and sheds so many tears that rivers flow out of them, then not a single minute of this painful eternity will have passed. There, in the other world, there is no death that would put an end to the torment of the sinner, taking away his life. No, there death is immortal, there life itself is constant death! There sinners will ask for death every hour, but they will not find it, as the Holy Spirit says in the Apocalypse, they will seek it... death, and they shall not find it (9:6). How long is this torment? It is always and will never end, never!

Zeno was the most unworthy and unfortunate Byzantine emperor. For his violent and depraved life, the people, the nobles and the troops, but especially the Empress Ariadne herself, his wife, began to be burdened by him; And this is what she did to him. Once, as often happened, from strong intoxication, he fell into an insensible state, like a dead man. The Empress ordered him to be lowered into a deep grave and covered with it, and also ordered that no one should dare to take him out of it, and that in this way the Tsar should be buried alive, unworthy of either the throne or life. All this was done. At last the emperor awoke from his intoxication, and seeing himself in darkness and stench, he began to cry out, to call for help, to wail, but there was no one who, hearing his cries, would sympathize with him, opened the grave and rescued him from there. A heavy stone is placed on it. He is buried once and for all, buried forever.

From the grave of the unfortunate Zeno, I turn my mental gaze to the utter darkness of hell, where it is as if I see a miserable sinner, buried there by Divine justice. The Gospel says of a sinful rich man: "Die... and buried him (Luke 16:22). I hear his weeping, his pitiful cries: "Father Abraham, have mercy on me!" but, alas, no one hears him, for "the abyss is deep, and the darkness is hopeless," says Basil the Great. God holds the keys to this underground prison in His hands, and no one will open it. The heaviest stone of eternity covers the unfortunate, and on the stone the Holy Spirit inscribed the inscription: "And their time shall be for ever" (Psalm 80:16). He is buried once and for all, forever. He will never get out of there. You will tell me: for one temporal sin and such eternal torment is punishment? Can there be any correspondence between guilt and punishment? I answer you, if there is a comparison between temporal sin and eternal torment, it is by no means possible between a man like you, a useless man of the earth, and the Most High God, whom you have offended by your sin. If you lived forever, you would sin forever. That is why eternal torment has befallen you. A furnace of inextinguishable fire is before your eyes, and yet you sin? It means that you are worthy of eternal fire. You should be infinitely grateful to Divine justice, which has opened a whole abyss of endless torment to cut off the path of your crimes. If the punishment of hell were not eternal, what would the life of Christians be like? Righteous is the judgment of God! And their time will be for ever. Flour for ever, and there will never be an end to relief! This second arrow, which strikes the mind of the sinner, seems to be in itself the whole torment.

But there is a third arrow, perhaps sharper than the first two. That which strikes the will of the sinner and plunges it into the despair of a blessed life; it is an extreme desire, but without hope. Here again I reveal the depth of the abyss: desire without hope, and desire for God without hope in God. This arrow is, among other things, the flour itself. In this life, desire is like a fire that burns in our hearts and strives for the good that we hope to receive. If this good is easily attainable, our hope tempers the flame; and if it is impossible, despair completely extinguishes it. Thus, if we desire anything on earth, we are comforted by hope; but if we do not hope for anything, the desire itself disappears completely; and therefore either there is no illness in us at all, or, if there is, there is also a cure for it. But desire without hope is a flame without dew, desire alone is pure fire, and such is the desire of sinners.