Lubich versus Dante - Jesus or Satan in Hell?

L'Enfer, Alberto Zardo

Eternal Crucifixion? But wasn't the crucifixion once and for all, while the Resurrection is eternal? According to Chiara Lubich, who, according her most fanatical followers including bishops, cardinals and theologians should be declared a Doctor of the Church, the answer is "No!" 

Without doubt, he most famous description of Hell is that of Dante in his Divine Comedy (the second, perhaps that of Milton in Paradise Lost). This how, in his Inferno, Dante describes Satan:

"The Emperor of the kingdom dolorous

  From his mid-breast forth issued from the ice;
  And better with a giant I compare

Than do the giants with those arms of his;
  Consider now how great must be that whole,
  Which unto such a part conforms itself.

Were he as fair once, as he now is foul,
  And lifted up his brow against his Maker,
  Well may proceed from him all tribulation."

From The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 
Therefore, according to Dante, Satan is a frozen giant, eternally imprisoned at the lowest point of Hell. But hang on a second, in her 'visions' she called 'Paradise of '49' the self-styled visionary Chiara Lubich claims to have seen in her 'Inferno', not Satan but Christ Crucified as a giant frozen and immobilized for all eternity:

"On this side of Paradise, Hell will remain. A great J.F. (Jesus Forsaken) suspended and dead and empty and cold and hard. It will remain like matter without life (…) even J.F., who became Hell to give us Paradise, believed himself at that moment to be without purpose in life and death, deluded, a failure”. (…) (p.18)

“Between heaven and hell there will be perfect unity and this through Jesus Forsaken. He made sin was made nothing. In Him nothing is so united with everything: God (…) that is, nothing becomes everything: Jesus Forsaken is God, Jesus-sin is God, Jesus-nothing is God, Jesus-Hell is God. Therefore the Father wherever he sees nothing sees J.F. : that is, he sees himself: God and therefore everywhere he sees Heaven (p.20)

If we see Hell with the eye of God we do not see it. God cannot see non-being, or rather he sees it in its nothingness, in its true being of non-being. He, God, sees Jesus Forsaken down there and that is Jesus-sin or Jesus-Hell. But Jesus Forsaken is always God. Therefore God in hell sees himself, the Word... 

Here is the unity of the Afterlife: All God, all Heaven, all Jesus. And Hell will be for God (listen how beautiful!) the perennial cry of Jesus Forsaken, the cry of Jesus Forsaken will be eternalized. And that is, for God, Hell will be the greatest love; the love of loves, unity, God, the new song”. (p.41)

[From 107 pages of  "Chiara Lubich's Comments on her pages of Paradiso 49" for the European Zone Leaders, 1974, translation by the author - numerical references to pages of 'Paradise '49']

For decades, the text of the 'Paradise of '49' was kept secret by the Focolare movement's leaders because it was feared that the Church would use it as a reason to suppress the entire movement. Now it seems that all they want to do is flaunt it as publicly as possible. Although in the perspective of the Catholic Church, Lubich's 'visions' are private revelations that can make no claim to being believed by anyone, even by the focolarini themselves, within the movement they are practically sacred scripture.  Since Lubich's death, her visions have been increasingly promoted by the Focolare Movement, in a flood of books, articles and videos, culminating in a recent (February 2021) statement by newly re-elected co-president Jesus Moran brazenly claining that Chiara Lubich's 'visions' are not private revelations:

"It must be said that Chiara has always thought and transmitted to us... that this mystical experience is the essence of the mentality of anyone who wants to be a source of unity today in the Church and in society - and also of those who accept the charism of the Movement. Therefore, Chiara's experience is not private or particular."

http://www.settimananews.it/ministeri-carismi/focolari-dopo-assemblea-gen



In Lubich's musings on Hell, we find a doctrine very distant from what already exists in scripture and the Fathers of the Church.

It must be remembered that Lubich was what we call in English 'a glutton for punishment', she had a taste for suffering that does not appear normal. Even Jesus prayed let this cup pass me by. But for Chiara Lubich, it is rather a case of 'It's never enough'; is it possible that her personal neuroses influenced her 'vision'?

The Creed includes the phrase 'He descended into hell', but this is interpreted in the New Testament and by the Fathers of the Church as a moment of passage. But how does one reconcile this idea of ​​a Christ who is eternally 'Sin' and 'Hell' with the words of St. Paul: 'Christ, once resurrected from the dead, can no longer die. Death no longer has dominion over him. By the death he suffered, he died to sin, and the life he lives, he lives in God.' (Rom., 6: 9-11)

According to a secret document of the movement, "From this interpretation, according to Chiara, will be born - a new doctrine, a new theology, a new philosophy." Of this there is no doubt. But the fundamental question is: can this new doctrine claim to be orthodox?'