Description of Purgatory
PURGATORY: WHAT CAN I EXPECT THERE?
Who gets to skip purgatory and go straight to heaven?
God gave us a Law of Love, a Religion in every way to suit our human hearts, destined to make us holy and happy. His Commandments, counsels and promises all breathe peace, joy, mercy and love. Some luckiest people go straight to heaven without purgatory. They are saints who will achieve eternal life in heaven because they have already made reparation for the sins of their life. Their love for Christ is unconditional, and there is no doubt. So they will skip purgatory and directly to heaven. It is easy to make sin quickly, but reparation could take time and could involve severe pain. It is a blessing that souls can indeed be repaired and made beautiful, just as they were intended to be.
What happens when we get to purgatory?
Expect some sort of pain.
If you are going through severe physical or emotional pain and you come closer to God. During the period, you will understand the seriousness and depth of sin you had been committing and turned away from it. If you have ever experienced it, then you are got purified. Purgatory, the condition, process, or place of purification or temporary punishment. Purgatory can finish up the purification for the since that we have done on the earth.
If that happened, you experienced purification.
Purgatory is to get heal for the damage that we have made sins on earth. Don’t get perplexed on pain from the punishment outweighs the pleasure you derived from the sin.
Don’t be surprised if the pain from the punishment outweighs the pleasure you derived from the sin.
St. Augustine said: “Man is forced to suffer even after his sins are forgiven, though it was sin that brought down on him this penalty. For the punishment outlasts the guilt, lest the guilt should be thought slight if with its forgiveness the punishment also came to an end.”
God doesn’t simply desire to save us from hell — from a state of eternal separation from him. More fundamentally, he desires to save us from sin, from being anything less than the men and women he created us to be. The sufferings of purgatory have depicted men and women tormented by a burning fire. But those illustrations aren’t a literal representation of the goings-on in the purgative state. They can’t be. The soul remains separated from its body in purgatory, so it can only suffer spiritually, not physically.
That’s where purgatory comes in. That’s where final amends can be made.
When you do confess from here, it is not the end of the sin. So there purgatory comes, and final amends can be made. Purgatory has been made for our benefit, and it helps us to enjoy eternity to the fullest.
How painful is it?
Purgatory is the process after death through which someone who dies in friendship with God is purged of the consequences of sin. There are different opinions on the pain and punishment of purgatory from church fathers and theologists. Some say that purgatory has made of fires of hell. And the difference spotted is that purgatory was a temporary cleansing fire rather than a fire of eternal punishment. The common conclusion that purgatory involves suffering should not surprise us. God uses adversity in this life to purify us. Purgatory is simply a continuation of that painful trial, presumably more intense and “concentrated.”
St. Thomas Aquinas said the worst pain we feel on earth is not as painful as the least pain in purgatory.
Consider this analogy: The pains of a mother in labour can be excruciating. Along with pain, the mother has the joy of knowing that her new child is about to enter the world. Similarly, we can think of purgatory as the soul’s “birth canal” into the new life of heaven. While the process is painful, joy arises from the confidence that the soul is prepared for eternal happiness and glory with God.
Purgatory isn’t a place of pain and torment. Instead, it’s considered a place of expectant joy, although suffering occurs from a temporary distance. There is no idea how long people have to spend in purgatory. Purgatory is different for everyone. Being a just Judge, God deals out a “punishment” according to our attachment to sin. Each person will have a different attachment at the moment of death, and so each person’s experience of purgatory will be vastly different. Some people might spend “minutes” in purgatory, while others could be there for “years.” For this reason, there is no possible way to give a general “time” period to a person’s “residence” in purgatory.
