What are the torments that the damned will suffer always?
They are twofold: the pain of loss and the pain of sense (XCVII. 1, 2).
What is the pain of loss?
It is the privation of the infinite good which is the beatific vision in heaven.
Whence is it that this punishment will be cruelly felt by the damned?
It arises from this, that having arrived at the term of their life they see the nothingness of all the things they sought in life to the prejudice of the infinite good; they will then appreciate the greatness of the good they have lost, and they will realize that they lost it through their own fault entirely.
Is not this perpetual consciousness of having lost so great a good as the vision of God called by the Gospel "the worm that never dies"?
Yes; and this will be the most terrible punishment of their guilty conscience (XCVII. 2).
Next - The Catechism of the Summa - Tertia Pars - XLVI. OF HELL (C)
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