What is the nature of purgatory?

[AitchB]

What do souls do while they are there? Do they pray all the time? Is that all they are allowed to do?
Is there any pain or suffering involved?
Do you still have free will?
Can you communicate with the other souls that are there? Would you be able to recognize others from earthly life?

If you die soon after making a good confession and have no other sins on your conscience would you have to spend any time there at all?

Typically how long do souls spend there?

I know these are a lot questions. I would just like to understand this concept better.

 

[TeenageConvert]

What do souls do while they are there? Do they pray all the time? Is that all they are allowed to do?
Is there any pain or suffering involved?
Do you still have free will?
Can you communicate with the other souls that are there? Would you be able to recognize others from earthly life?

If you die soon after making a good confession and have no other sins on your conscience would you have to spend any time there at all?

Typically how long do souls spend there?

I know these are a lot questions. I would just like to understand this concept better.

I can’t answer those questions with full certainty, but I would google saint Catherine of Genoa, she had visions of purgatory and perhaps that could help you with your questions. But of course there’s no garantee that those visions were authentic.

 

[tonyrey]

A warm welcome to the forum!

What do souls do while they are there? Do they pray all the time? Is that all they are allowed to do? Is there any pain or suffering involved?

All that we know for certain is that sincere repentance entails voluntary penance and restitution as far as that is possible.

Do you still have free will?

If we didn’t have free will we wouldn’t be able to choose to repent and make amends!

Can you communicate with the other souls that are there? Would you be able to recognize others from earthly life?

We don’t know for certain but I believe purification is a process of catharsis which results from compassion for those we have harmed and made to suffer unnecessarily either deliberately or through indifference. We can imagine the deep feeling of shame and guilt we will feel on being brought face to face with the victims of our selfishness. And the sense of impotence on realising we can never fully make amends or rectify the injustice we have caused. Even more painful will be the knowledge that we are loved by those we have failed to love. We’ll be acutely aware we don’t deserve to be loved and tempted to despair of ever going to heaven. The most excruciating suffering will be caused by the presence of our Lord who chose to be crucified to deliver us from evil. Yet it is His love that gives us hope and the determination to do our utmost to make ourselves worthy of Him. Amen!

If you die soon after making a good confession and have no other sins on your conscience would you have to spend any time there at all?

Typically how long do souls spend there?

Purgatory is a spiritual state which transcends time and space. Indulgences really concern the degree of purification needed to atone for the consequences of sin rather than a temporal measurement of remission! We suffer to the precise extent that we have failed to love and forgive others.

 

[Jim_Dandy]

Read John Paul II’s teaching on Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell.

ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/JP2HEAVN.HTM

Jim Dandy

 

[StrawberryJam]

It’s a theological thing.

 

[Jim_Dandy]

It’s a theological thing.

Meaning what, please?

 

[GEddie]

What do souls do while they are there? Do they pray all the time? Is that all they are allowed to do?

Good question. Really, we don’t know enough about the mechanics of the afterlife to say all that might be going on there.

Is there any pain or suffering involved?

There probably is. But it is the suffering of remorse for one’s actions.

Do you still have free will?

Yes, but differently to what we know now. You will be in Eternity, and unable to “want” anything other than you have already chosen.

Can you communicate with the other souls that are there? Would you be able to recognize others from earthly life?

Good question. This has to do with the “pneumatikon soma,” the body we will have in the next life.

While there is no description in Scripture of our future being, in Luke 16:19ff Lazarus and Abraham knew each other, even though they had presumably not known each other in human life. Lazarus was also able to be comforted by Abraham. His nemesis in Hades also knew him, although the association provided him no consolation.

In Rv 6:9ff, the martyrs remember their life and how they died; they are also aware of events on the earth since they ask for justice.

Since our human mind is a faculty of the spiritual soul, it is expected to survive, or be restored after death.

If you die soon after making a good confession and have no other sins on your conscience would you have to spend any time there at all?

Typically how long do souls spend there?

Purgatory, like Heaven and Hell, exists in Eternity. As such, it cannot be mapped onto time durations such as we can understand.

In the realm of mind, as when we are dreaming, an intensity of experience can be compressed into what seems to be “instantaneous.”

All we know about it is that penance in life, and prayers of others afterward, can mitigate whatever post-mortem adjustment is needed for us to fully enter Life Everlasting.

ICXC NIKA.