Read this Purgatory Part 03 after reading the first two parts linked below.
There is one more important thing. The fire that punishes or tortures the soul is created by the soul itself. The soul itself is responsible for its pains in this condition. Due to their selfish love for themselves, they created the hard crust on the surface of their love to God. In short, the awareness that it is not God, they themselves created this painful situation for them, tortures them more and more. They then understand that they reached purgatory as they offended God’s blessings when they were alive and engaged in various sinful acts. Thus they get purified by their intense desire to be with god.
God doesn’t want anyone to be in the purgatory. On the other hand, they understand that it’s due to God’s kindness and love that they are able to go through this state. They grasp how much God loved them when they were alive on earth. This intensifies their pain much more. The souls get this insight in varying degrees according to the type of sins they had committed when they were alive. Thus the soul understands how ungrateful he was to God and how much he neglected and misused God’s love.
In purgatory, the awareness and thoughts of the soul are all purified. The soul learns when and how it made those mistakes, through thoughts or deeds. By the virtue of these painful experiences in the purgatory, the soul gets removed from all the dirty affairs and begins to emit true love. Thus, by the time, it reaches heaven, the soul completely understands what God is and what His ways are. The soul which completely understands now all goodness and God’s love, begins to praise and thank God.
So the purgatory is not only a place to get rid of the punishments of sins, but also a school where we learn lessons about God, Almighty. While they are in purgatory, these souls have no time or chance to obtain more merits. They just need to undergo the purification created by themselves, which is according to the lifestyle they selected while on earth. But we people who now live on earth can obtain a lot of merits from God, by helping these souls. We can pray to Lord Jesus to lessen their sufferings and to quickly give those insights and knowledge about Him. The Holy Masses which we offer specially in their name, the prayers for their salvation, the merciful deeds we do etc will act as a tool which will break the ‘HARD CRUST’ formed in the surface of their love for God.
Offering these souls to the Holy Blood of Jesus Christ is a very good way to help them. When we offer these souls to God, by meditating Jesus, His sufferings and sacrifices for souls etc, then the HARD CRUST will break and will be destroyed to a great extent. If we are not doing the above said good deeds and prayers for these souls, then they will have to work really hard to destroy this hard crust. It’s easy for us to imagine how difficult that will prove to be for the souls.
Some souls stay in purgatory for quite a long time. Those, who had believed that they were very pious and god fearing during their life on earth will have to suffer very much in purgatory. The reason for this is their pride. The people on earth will never pray for these souls, as in their view, these souls were very much god-fearing and pious and wont be needing any prayers to reach heaven. And as these souls don’t get any prayers from people on earth, they have to suffer a longer time in purgatory. So it will be very nice if we pray and offer Holy Masses for this type of souls also. Even some saints are there in purgatory. They have revealed that the reason for them not being able to go to heaven was due to the selfish love they had for themselves.
Goto The Purgatory – Part 04
-When Jesus hung on the cross, just before he died, he said; “It is finished.” (John 19:30)
What did he mean?
He was fulfilling what had been spoken through Isaiah the prophet about the role of the coming Messiah.
-“But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.” (Isaiah 53:4-6)