Every so often I get a question about hell, and the topic comes up about how one ends up there. Often, it seems, people have an idea that the matter of going to hell is about sin, and that the nature of one's sins determines whether or not one is condemned to hell. It is a concept that seems very medieval, like something out of Dante. Sin has something to do with hell, I suppose, in that sin is a choice and one's choices impact one's relationships. The reality, as we see in today's Gospel (Mt 22: 1-14), is that hell is a choice, too. It is a choice not to accept God's invitation to be with God for eternity. It is a choice to be separated from the Divine. We see that in the parable about the Kingdom of heaven that Jesus tells His followers today. The parable is the story of a king who gives a wedding feast, and the invited guests refused to come, so he eventually sends his servants out into the streets to invite passers-by into the feast. Even there, an issue arises in that one of the guests invited in that fashion isn't properly dressed and gets tossed out. The point to note is that all of the people who are not in the feast are not there because they decided not to be there. Some ignored the invitation. Some had things to do that they thought were better. Some were offended by the invitation to the point that they killed the servant who delivered the invitation. Even the man who arrived without the proper garment had almost-certainly made a choice that caused him to get excluded. It must be the case that the servants who went out into the roadways to invite people had with them the proper wedding garments for the newly-invited to wear. How else could they be properly dressed, since they would not have left their homes expecting a wedding invitation? The man who gets tossed must have been given the opportunity to dress correctly and, for a reason known only to him, declined the opportunity and suffered the consequences. In none of these cases does the king (ie, God) want to have people left out of the feast. He seems to do all he can and more to accommodate the guests. They elect to be left out. That's how it works for us too. We have to choose hell-- God doesn't choose it for us. But, that said, the choice is one we can make over time, in increments. We stop going to Mass. We decide we don't need to pray. We spend our time in spaces that are "less than holy," shall we say. We get to the point where we can conclude we don't need God, don't really care about God, wouldn't mind being seperated from God. That's probably what happened to the invited guests in the parable. Over time, they got so disconnected from the king that they didn't want to spend time with him, didn't even care to attend his son's wedding. So we need to watch our habits, and resist the temptations to small actions of disconnection from the Divine. Those are the things with which the road to hell is paved.