What purgatory means to all of us

It’s All Souls’ Day today and we should examine what this means to the Catholic faithful. My good friend, Dr. Rene Bullecer timely emailed me what Mr. Larami Hirsch wrote last October 30, 2018. I had to edit the article as it was a bit too long.

“The time from Michaelmas until the Hallowtide, for me, has always been a time to reflect upon Hell itself. After all, as fall settles on the Northern Hemisphere, people tend to reflect upon the afterlife as the days grow shorter and darker. And didn’t Christ talk about perdition quite a bit? It used to be said that you ought not eat blackberries after Michaelmas, for the Devil fell out of Heaven after that day, landing on the blackberry bush, cursing its thorns and defecating upon it.

“Now about Purgatory. It’s not an easy place. It is a place of purgation. Purgatory – that place between this world and Heaven – is a realm where you are purged of all your worldly evil so you are presentable to God. Everyone who goes to Purgatory eventually goes to Heaven. But once in Purgatory, you’re not waiting in a waiting room. You are on fire. You are burning. You are suffering. And most frustrating of all, none of your prayers will be effective. You cannot appeal to God’s mercy there. You are stuck there until you’ve been cleaned off by fire.

Many Catholics realize these facts. Yet what most Catholics don’t understand is that Purgatory shares the fires of Hell. Think on this. Hellfire is utilized to burn away your evil. Should you be wicked enough not to merit a direct route to Heaven when you die, you will have to be touched by Hell before you can ascend and be with your Lord.

There is in Purgatory, as in Hell, a double pain – the pain of loss and the pain of sense. The pain of loss consists in being deprived for a time of the sight of God, who is the Supreme Good, the beatific end for which our souls are made, as our eyes are for the light. It is a moral thirst, which torments the soul. The pain of sense, or sensible suffering, is the same as what we experience in our flesh. Its nature is not defined by faith, but it is the common opinion of the Doctors that it consists in fire and other species of suffering. The fire of Purgatory, say the Fathers, is that of Hell, of which the rich glutton speaks, Quia crucior in hac flamma, “I suffer,” he says, “cruelly in these flames.”

From Chapter IX of Purgatory: Explained by the Lives and Legends of the Saints by Reverend Father F.X. Schouppe, S.J. This opinion, says Schouppe, is shared by great theologians and even Church fathers, although he will admit that their teaching on this is not unanimous. Still, it’s a topic worthy to pursue. The following statements come from the saints of the Church, all who attest that the fire of purgatory is shared by hell itself.

The greatest punishment of purgatory is in the first level above the darkness. The demons can touch it there. There is heat and cold, darkness, and confusion, all coming from the punishment of hell. From Revelations to St. Bridget. The lowest region is filled with a fierce fire, but which is not dark like that of hell; it is a vast burning sea, throwing forth immense flames. This was taken from Revelations given to St. Frances of Rome. “The same fire torments the damned and purifies the elect.” From Pope St. Gregory the Great.

As to the suffering, it is equal to that of hell. Almost all theologians teach that the damned in hell and the souls in purgatory, suffer the action of the same fire. Taken from St. Robert Bellarmine who goes on to say there is no comparison between the sufferings of what you experience in this world and what you suffer in purgatory. St. Thomas Aquinas tells us the smallest pain of purgatory surpasses all the sufferings of this life, no matter how great they are. It is said that St. John Bosco severely burned his hand by merely touching the most outer wall of Hell itself. How much more dreadful, then, to be scorched by hell’s fires?” Thanks Doc Rene for sending me this article as it gives us ideas of what purgatory is all about!

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