354. Purgatory’s pains
354. PURGATORY’S PAINS
If Limbo is painless, why isn’t Purgatory? What are its pains and why are they necessary?
Whether the pains of purgatory surpass all the temporal pains of this life?
Augustine says: This fire of Purgatory will be more severe than any pain that can be felt, seen or conceived in this world. . . .
In Purgatory there will be a twofold pain. One will be the pain of loss, namely the delay of the divine vision, and the pain of sense, namely punishment by . . . fire (of some kind). With regard to both, the least pain of Purgatory surpasses the greatest pain of this life. For the more a thing is desired, the more painful is its absence. And since after this life the holy souls desire the Sovereign Good with the most intense longing—both because their longing is not held back by the weight of the body, and because had there been no obstacle, they would already have gained the goal of enjoying the Sovereign Good—it follows that they grieve exceedingly for their delay. Again, since pain is not hurt, but the sense of hurt, the more sensitive a thing is, the greater the pain caused by that which hurts it; wherefore hurts inflicted on the more sensible parts cause the greatest pain. . . (Appendix I,2,1).
Unlike Limbo, Purgatory is painful, for its whole point is “purgation”, like an operation that has no mercy on the cancer (sinful habits of character) that infects the patient (the believer who has been fully justified but not yet fully sanctified).
Why do St. Augustine, St. Thomas, and many other Catholic theologians, as well as mystics who are given actual visions of Purgatory (especially St. Catherine of Genoa in her Dialogues on Purgatory) all say that the pains of Purgatory are more severe than any pain in this life?
For two reasons. One is that we will see and know with certainty, not just believe by faith, how utterly beautiful Heaven is, as the whole point of our existence; and the pain of our temporary loss of this infinite good will exceed anything comparable or imaginable on earth. “For the more a thing is desired, the more painful is its absence.” The very longed-for joy of Heaven’s distant vision, the joy of the Heaven we will see and long for, a joy that is incomparably greater than any we experience on earth, will be the cause of the pain that is incomparably greater than any we experience on earth.
A second reason is that even though the pains of Purgatory, unlike earthly pains and earthly fires, are never harmful to us but only good for us, yet they will feel more hurtful and “fiery” than earthly pains because we will be more conscious and sensitive. Earthly life is full of soporifics, anaesthetics, pain-dullers. In fact, compared with Purgatory our whole life on earth will appear to have been life only half awake. In Purgatory we will be fully awake, fully sensitive, and fully cognizant of the evil of all of our sins. Our clear knowledge of God’s brightness and beauty will make our clear knowledge of our own darkness and ugliness more painful than any similar light that shows up our most terrible defects here on earth. We will fully appreciate how we dishonored God’s honor, and we will fully fulfill our repentance. As St. Thomas says, “The more sensitive a thing is, the greater the pain.” Like Christ on the Cross, we will have perfected sensitivities.
But we will not regret it. We will want the purifying pains, like a filthy tramp taking a hot shower so that he can enter the banquet room of a mansion. Or like a snake shedding his old, dirty skin.