Jon,
Here is an explanation of the pains or punishment of purgatory that made sense to me. If I recall I read it in a work by Fr. Reginald Garrogou-Lagrange. He was a Dominican theologian who was John Paul II’s professor when studying for his doctorate.
When you think of punishment the image that comes to your mind is pain or discomfort being meted out. Purgatorial pain is not like that. Garrigou-Lagrange taught that the pain is caused by seeing the results and consequences of your sin. Imagine that you were driving your car and ran over a child and the child was crippled for life. You were not paying attention and could have avoided the accident if you were. How would you feel? The internal anguish of knowing you caused harm and pain to a child and made the child suffer and there was nothing you could do about it would cause you to suffer. Now imagine at judgement you see the consequneces of your sins, the harm you have caused by them as they echo across all time. Garrigou-Lagrange taught that these pains can be experienced in this life. They are accompanied with great remorse, self loathing, anguish. You know you are forgiven. You know God loves you. You are redeemed, pardoned, ransomed. You even forgive yourself, but coming face to face with the evil you have done and seeing the damage and pain it brings on others has to be suffered through.
Now imagine that when the moment of death comes you are attached to some sin. You are not yet perfected. I hope that does not happen to you, but suppose it does. Maybe you have not forgiven someone else who hurt you. There is some lingering resentment of some petty grudge. I knew a Baptist minister who I had a lot of respect for, knowing he helped many people. He had a tough life healthwise and died fairly young. He had narcolepsy for over twenty years and serious bouts with cancer, chemo, radiation, three of four times. He had a fungus that got into his brain or nervous system. A year or two before he died his wife left him for another man. In his last days she wanted to see him and say she was sorry. He was in a hosptial bed and was told she was in the building. He gave orders to not allow her in the room. She sat in the waiting room for days. She wanted to ask for forgiveness and he refused it. He made her suffer and then he died. He died with his soul clinging to bitterness and anger. He hoped for mercy and refused it to another sinful soul. I was praying that he would relent and some kind of reconciliation would happen. It did not. That was the condition and attitude he willed for his soul and it remained until his last breath. I hope he is heaven bound, but he could not enter heaven a place where there is no imperfection, in that state. It is not like souls undergoing purification long to be in heaven and are prevented from entering by armed guards. They do not want to be in a place while they remain unready. They want all the dross removed, burned off. The minister would not want to be in God’s presence full of the impurity of resentment and rancor, having withheld mercy. Seeing what he did will cause him pain, self inflicted pain. Call it torment. You can see why Catholics pray for a holy death.
**
:yawn:
affects your “theology?” :harp:
