The main difference between heaven and hell isn’t the difference of place. There is also a place difference but the main difference is the difference in the existential response of an intelligent being – human or angel – to the same uncreated divine energy which is much more intense than here on earth, both in heaven and in hell.
If in heaven is a response of total acceptance of love, unity, peace, humbleness while in hell is a eternal rejection of these values. The one which is there is being tormented by the self-made cage of his own egotism, closed in the very narrow cage of self-limitations in the eternal monotony of a singularity in which nothing new can exist.
That’s why in hell the greatest torment is the wipe of God’s love – a perfect love to which one cannot experience and respond anymore because the hell is our own choice, it isn’t the result of an external cause like a law enforcement organization.
Based on father Dumitru Staniloae, Saint Isaac the Syrian
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