The greatest and essential pain of hell is for the damned to know that they have forever lost God who is the greatest Good. This is call the pain of loss.
We base this sermon largely on a homily by St Alphonsus Liguori (for the 19th Sunday after Pentecost)
Listen online [here]!
From St Alphonsus:
Thus the damned see that God deserves infinite love, and that they
cannot love him. St. Catherine of Genoa being one day assailed by the devil,
asked him. who he was. He answered with tears: I am that wicked one who
is deprived of the love of God. I am that miserable being that can never
more love God. They not only cannot love God, but, abandoned in their
sins, they are forced to hate him: their hell consists in hating God, whom
they at the same time know to be infinitely amiable. They love him
intensely as their sovereign good, and hate him as the avenger of their sins.
A learned author says, “A miserable thing, to love vehemently, and at the
same time to hate what is loved.” Their natural love draws them continually
to God; but their hatred drags them away from him. These two contrary
passions, like two ferocious wild beasts, incessantly tear in pieces the hearts
of the damned, and cause, and shall for all eternity cause, them to live in a
continual death.
