The Priest at Prayer, May 19

The Priest and the Eternal Truths

PURGATORY

Existence and Nature of Purgatory

I. Existence

"If anyone shall assert that every sinner who has received the grace of justification has his guilt forgiven and the debt of eternal punishment cancelled in such a manner that there remains no debt of temporal punishment to be paid either in this world or in Purgatory in the next, before he can enter the Kingdom of Heaven, let him be anathema." (Council of Trent, Session vi, canon 30)

I have sinned and sinned again. God, I trust, has deleted the stains from my soul through the Sacrament of Penance, and has condoned me the eternal punish­ment. But do I qualify for the ranks of those penitents whose sorrow for sin was so deep and intense that it cancelled all debt towards God, down to the last farthing? Does not the very facility with which I have relapsed testify to the contrary? Every grave sin of mine, therefore, has deposited a sediment which only suffering will wash away. And if to forgiven mortal sins I add my routine venial faults, surely there must needs await me, either in this life or in the next, a full flood of cleansing grief.

And yet, dear Lord, no sooner did real or imaginary suffering begin to afHict me than I asked in my own mind whether God was not lacking in justice, or excessive in chastising.

II. Duration
If I enter Purgatory I shall not leave it until all scores have been paid off, down to the last farthing; until Purgatory's fires and torments have cleansed me from every' stain of rust adhering to the chains of my mortality, and effaced the ignoble imprint of creatures, which undue attachment left upon me.

How long will that total purification take? Surely very long indeed, if I consider, on the one hand, God's astounding readiness in forgiving me my innumerable and detestable sins; and, on the other hand, the meager penance I have done and my trivial sorrow for having sinned.

The fact is that the Church holds Requiems for souls departed from this world centuries ago, and admits Foundation Masses in perpetuity. She therefore believes it possible that there are souls submerged within those expiatory flames for a duration that we on earth might measure in terms of hundreds of years.

Just try to think of it! After this life of sorrows there may be a still longer one in store for me - twenty, fifty, a hundred or more years of intense suffering! The mere possibility should fill me with dread. And during all this time I shall be prevented from reaching eternal bliss by the fetters of past forgiven but unatoned-for sin, because of my indolence, or on account of those venial short­comings which I now make so light of or even brazenly despise.

III. Pain of Loss
If the pain of loss is Hell's direst afftiction, much more is it Purgatory's.

In Purgatory God will be my sole attraction. Lit up already by rays of the Divine Love, I shall know, with a clarity surpassing any previous realisation I had in this vale of cloud and mirage, how immense, how ineffable the happiness is which awaits me, and which is already mine by right of conquest - the crown of justice which the Lord the just judge will render to me.

Happiness, eternal happiness, glorious goal of all my endeavors, of all my yearnings; ever-flowing fountain, City of God, enriched with flowing waters - fluminis impetus qui laetificat civitatem Dei (Ps. xlv, 5) - where my thirst for happiness will be slaked; ah! but the Hand of Divine Justice will keep those waters from reaching my lips for twenty, fifty, or more years! What a terrible torture! Tantalus is child's play, in comparison. I see the beckoning shores, the long-desired harbor of the Fatherland; I almost touch them; but the boat, dressed and triumphant from the storms of earthly life, is held at anchor: the child is withheld from its Father's and Mother's fond embrace; the invalid, infected and unclean, is kept in isolation until the immortal vesture of the spirit is rid of every stain and germ of disease by the consuming flames.

What agony, to spend years and years with eternal bliss in sight, with an ever-burning thirst for it, and yet to be hindered from its possession!

IV. Pains of sense
What are they? What names shall we give them? Will there be fire? With all our discus­sions, there is nothing we know for a certainty. Of course the body will not go to Purgatory, because, as St. Thomas points out, its supreme expiation consists in its falling a prey to corruption and returning to its parent dust. But the disembodied soul has its faculties very wide awake in the next life, and is therefore capable of intense agony and frustration.

If the reason for these mysterious penalties is to be found in my undue attachment to creatures: taking them as the final purpose of my striving, when I sinned mortally; stopping on my flight to God to relish their sweetness, when I sinned venially; have I not every motive to fear they will be long and terrible, knowing as I do the drunken fury and delight with which I have sought after sense-gratification, as though I were afraid lest the opportunity of pleasure might never return, or imagining, like the crafty woman in the Book of Pro­verbs, that "stolen waters are the sweetest"? (Prov. ix, 17)

Resolutions
1. To bear in a spirit of penance the pains of life I cannot avoid, welcoming them from the merciful Hand of God who thereby, perhaps, wishes to lessen my Purgatory.

2. To steer clear of venial faults, that could well be piling up for me in the next life a Purgatory of exceed­ing duration.

3. To be devoted to the Holy Souls, going to their rescue with suffrages; if only so that one day I myself may not be left without assistance.

4. By my preaching, Masses, and funeral services, to foster the well-rooted devotion of my people towards the souls in Purgatory, and even to avail myself of this particular devotion in order to bring strayed sheep back to God. It is often one of the last resources.
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Adapted from The Priest at Prayer
by Fr. Eugenio Escribano, C.M. (© 1954)
Translated by B.T. Buckley, C.M.

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