Third Meditation: What Is a Person? 157
This passage reminds me, as it happens, of certain of the teach-
ings of Isaac of Nineveh, especially those regarding the na-
ture of a truly merciful heart illuminated by God's love, which
is unable to contemplate even the sufferings of devils with-
out tears of compassion. It reminds me as well of Silouan of
Athos's counsel to one of his brothers that true spiritual love
could never abide the sight of souls suffering in hell. It is quite
the opposite-the morally sane and spiritually enlightened
opposite, that is- of the degrading and barbaric nonsense that
the felicity of heaven could be increased by the saints' knowl-
edge of the torments of the damned. MacDonald's words,
I think, indicate the only true sense in which the sufferings
of the damned could contribute to the beatitude of the saved:
by awakening again and yet again a truly substitutionary love
within souls whose whole being and delight consists precisely
in such love. And, really, if there is any true continuity between
the charity we are called to cultivate in this life and the trans-
figuring love that supposedly unites us to God, then surely
there can be no brake upon our desire to include those still
outside the company of the redeemed. Such love could find
its complete joy only in the joy of completion. Such love, in
fact, would not even be able to distinguish between this cor-
porate desire for the salvation of all and the individual soul's
longing for its own salvation. I am not I in myself alone, but
only in all others. If, then, anyone is in hell, I too am partly in
hell. Happily, however, if the Christian story is true, that love
cannot now end in failure or tragedy. The descent into those
depths-where we seek out and find those who are lost, and
find our own salvation in so doing- is not a lonely act of spiri-
tual heroism, or a futile rebellion of our finite wills against a
merciless eternity. For the whole substance of Christian faith
is the conviction that another has already and decisively gone