From the Friars: A Blessed Pain

We have probably all heard it said about a deceased person at a wake or funeral that they are no longer suffering. With good intentions we want to console those who are mourning. But is it really true? Today we celebrate All Souls Day which is especially dedicated to prayer and penance for the Holy Souls in Purgatory. Looking at Church Teaching and approved private revelation, it is clear that most people do not go straight into heaven. Therefore, our desire to console may well have the effect of denying much needed prayers to a loved one who is indeed still suffering immensely.

The doctrine of Purgatory has always been something that strikes me as basic common sense. It is hard to believe that my saintly Irish Grandmother who lived a heroically virtuous life would need a whole lot of purification before entering Heaven. But it likewise hard to believe that most people are completely pure at the moment of their death. C. S. Lewis, who was not Catholic but believed in Purgatory, wrote that if our “breath smells” and our “rags drip with mud and slime” we would rather be cleansed before entering into the Kingdom.

St. Bonaventure wrote that the pain of Purgatory is just punishment, it makes reparation for harm done by sin, and it also purifies the soul of any selfishness. The newest Doctor of the Church, St. John Henry Newman, wrote the poem The Golden Prison in which he asks for prayers after his death and says of the soul in Purgatory: “But in the willing agony he plunges, and is blest.” It is a willing agony because the person realizes their need of purification. They are “Safe, and yet saved by fire.” (1Cor 3:10-15)

Pope Benedict XVI writes beautifully in Spes Salvi (Saved by Hope): “(Jesus’) gaze, the touch of His Heart heals us through an undeniably painful transformation ‘as through fire’. But it is a blessed pain, in which the holy power of His Love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God.” (No. 47)

We can help ease that pain. Let us never assume our deceased loved ones are not in need of our prayers.

Pax.
–Fr. Peter