In the earliest monuments of the Church, the catacombs, we clearly find recorded the belief in a particular judgment. This, as we hold in common with all the ages of the Faith, precedes the last general judgment, in which God's dealings with the individual souls are justified before all the world. Constant reference is made in the inscriptions of the catacombs to intercession for the dead, and the passer-by is asked to pray for them. Such prayers can be founded only on the belief in a particular judgment, according to which the souls of the just are even now undergoing their purgation of whatever stains must still be cleansed away. But with the last judgment, Purgatory itself will cease to be. There is thenceforth to be only Heaven and Hell, since all temporal punishments will then have been paid. On this, too, the Scripture is clear. The same thought is plainly expressed by Saint Augustine in the twenty-first chapter of his "City of God":
But temporary punishments are suffered by some in this life only, by others after death, by others both now and then; but all of these temporal punishments are to be exacted before the last and strictest judgment.
While Purgatory itself is limited by the last judgment, we cannot speak with equal certainty of the length of time during which individuals souls may have to undergo their purification, that they be rendered fit to enter into the sight of the All-Holy God. The duration of Purgatory may extend for some over many years. Of this we are practically certain, since it is the custom of the Church herself to offer up anniversary Masses for individual souls during hundreds of years. Yet, foreseeing these, God might free the soul at once. Let us then help on our part that the day of their release may be hastened by us: "It is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosened from their sins.
But properly to understand the reason for coming to the aid of the dear departed who have died in the grace of God, we must understand also the nature of their sufferings. These will better make clear to us, moreover, how great a work of charity it is to exert ourselves for their release, and how dear such efforts are to Almighty God, who loves these souls with an inexpressible love and desires most earnestly that their time of agony may be shortened and they may fly to His embrace. So we shall best be moved to emulate the zeal of the early Christians in praying for their dead and offering up for them the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
The punishment of Purgatory is twofold: the pain of sense and the pain of loss. The latter, to be first considered here, consists in the fact that the soul is held back, through its own fault, from the Vision of God. The more eagerly an object is desired, Saint Thomas argues, the more keenly is its absence felt. Now the eagerness with which the holy souls desire to be forthwith united to God, the highest possible good, is most intense, because it is not retarded by the weight of the mortal body, and also because the time for the Vision of God would now be at hand, were the souls not delayed by the hindrance it has placed in its sins. We cannot possibly measure the distress which this delay now inflicts upon it. In life a soul may have minded little the fact that by a venial sin it was offending the infinite Love of God. But now that death has come the soul can comprehend the greatness of its folly. All earthly things, which once distracted it and withdrew it from the service and love of God above all things, have disappeared. It has God alone to rest in. It longs for God with an inexpressible desire, and yet is constantly held back by its own previous willfulness. Its prison door is locked, and it waits with unutterable yearning for the moment when it may look upon His Face in ecstasy, when its stains shall have been cleansed away and it will leap to the embrace of Him who from all eternity has loved it with a love beyond compare.
To make plain, however faintly, the desire to possess God, which now consumes the soul, we can find perhaps no better comparison than that of the bride who longs with passionate eagerness for her spouse, the best beloved. It is, after all, the comparison that Almighty God Himself makes in speaking of His relation to the souls of men.
So let us consider this bride in our similitude. It is the morning of her proposed marriage. The time has come when she is to go forth into the arms of her beloved. Instead she finds herself detained. She is cast into a distant prison. Her own folly has suddenly brought upon her the just sanction of the law, and she is left in loneliness to eat away her heart with unavailing grief. One consolation still remains to her, and that is that her beloved will remain constant to her. Yet what pain this separation causes her, which grows more terrible as it drags on slowly, month by month - perhaps, it may be, for years!
But this is not all the story. Glancing into her mirror she discovers with inexpressible horror the effects of a disease, not moral indeed, but dreadfully disfiguring all her comeliness. It had before appeared so insignificant that she gave it no thought. The venom was even then within her system; it has now merely broken out and become visible in its effects. Can anyone imagine her distress. To the longing for her beloved is added the pain which the knowledge of this loathsomeness must cause her, that now clouds all her beauty.
Who can fail to see the parallel between this earthly bride and the soul confined in the prison of God's holiness and justice, stained with the effects of her transgressions, yet yearning inexpressibly for the Vision of His glory. Freed from all earthliness she tends towards Him as the arrow to its mark, and yet for all her longing is unable to attain to Him. Keenly she feels those dreadful disfigurements which once passed unnoticed here below. But for her, too, one consolation remains, and that is that the severance is not eternal which now holds her afar from her supreme and only Good.
How easily she could have won God's pardon here on earth by contrition, confession and a sincere purpose of amendment! As Saint Basil says: "When through confession we make known our sins, we have caused the rankly growing weeds to wither which deserve to be harvested for Purgatory and consumed there." But now she can do nothing for herself. Who then can measure the gratitude of that soul towards those who remember her in the time of her great distress and both help to cleanse awav her stains and to hasten the hour of her blissful union with her Beloved! How earnestly she will remember them at the Throne of His Mercy!
Incomprehensible as the greatness of the punishment of loss must be to us here upon earth, the pain of sense, though less in itself, may often impress the imagination far more profoundly. What the nature of this punishment is has never been dogmatically affirmed by the Church. It is not a matter of Faith; but the main weight of tradition, and the universal belief of the Faithful can be said to be summed up in the belief that the souls in Purgatory are punished by fire. Saint Thomas thus expresses in brief his doctrine upon the subject of purgational punishments:
In Purgatory the suffering is two-fold: that of loss, inasmuch as the soul is kept back from the Vision of God; and that of sense, since they shall be punished with fire. Now in both respects, the least pain in Purgatory exceeds the greatest pain in this life.
Whether this contrast of the least pain of Purgatory with the greatest pain of this life holds absolutely true or not, we have no reason to doubt the conclusion of various authorities that these sufferings, in general, are far more severe than any endured upon earth. Referring particularly to the pain of fire Saint Augustine says, in commenting on Psalm xxxvii, that it "is more severe than any that man can suffer in this life." The very same statement is made by Saint Gregory the Great.
That there is question here of real fire seems evidently to have been the belief of the very earliest Christians. Going back to the inscriptions contained in the catacombs we find constant allusion made to procuring refreshment for the souls of the departed. This would seem to imply the giving of relief or release from the heat of those fiercely burning flames. Thus Saint Ambrose, in the early centuries of the Church, interpreted the Pauline text, I Corinthians 3:15, which we have already quoted; and Theodoret wrote upon the same passage: "We believe that is that cleansing fire in which the souls are purified as gold in the furnace." The same interpretation is given to this text by Saint Jerome and various Fathers, while others interpret it figuratively.
Both Greek and Latin Fathers speak of the flames of Purgatory. Saint Basil and Saint Gregory of Nyssa already definitely refer to it as "purgatorial fire." Owing to the opposition of Greek theologians the question whether the souls in Purgatory are punished by fire was left undecided at the Council of Florence. Yet several Greek Fathers had been clear in their affirmation that the souls of the just are cleansed by fire. In modern times Suarez was able to state that such is the common teaching of all theologians and that they agree in admitting a true and real fire. Saint Thomas and Saint Bonaventure alike held that: "It is one and the same fire which torments the lost in Hell and cleanses the just in Purgatory."
Catholics in general are accustomed to speak without any hesitation of the fire of Purgatory, and in doing so are in conformity with many of the great Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and with the classic opinion of theologians. That the pains inflicted are certainly more terrible than any suffered upon earth we can have no difficulty in believing, if we have any understanding of the meaning of sin, on the one hand, and the nature of the attributes of an infinite God on the other, a God who is no less infinitely just, infinitely pure, and infinitely holy; that He is infinitely merciful, and infinitely loving. It is to these last attributes that we ascribe the blessed opportunity granted us of extending a helping hand to the sufferers in those purgatorial flames, and of even releasing them entirely in return for our offerings and supplications accepted in their regard.
How happy then to know that we are part of a mighty fellowship, of a glorious company, united by ties of affection that reach beyond the grave into eternity! Through the Communion of Saints we are joined by links of intimate relationship in Christ with the Blessed in Heaven and with the souls of all the Faithful departed in Purgatory.
Deep and true is the affection that the Saints in glory have for us, and great is their willingness to come to our aid; but we in our turn must be equally alert to succor and relieve those who may depend upon us, whether in this life or in the next. What thought, especially, can be more consoling than to know that we can still bring comfort, and perhaps quick release from pain, to those whom on earth we once loved so dearly; that we can hasten to their help and reach out to their parched lips, at any moment, the blessed cup of cooling water.
But not only are we to remember our own dear departed. Our love should seek to come to the assistance of all detained in that prison house of God, that place of expiation and purification where so many of His dearest friends are imploring our pity in accents of deepest yearning and distress.
Never, to our own knowledge, was the pleading of the souls in those cleansing fires expressed in a strain more appealing and in words more tuneful and compelling, outside of the Holy Books, than in that "Appeal of the Suffering Souls" which was found among the papers of an Irish Jesuit Father, the Rev. James Murphy. Here are his verses in full as they appeared in the Irish Messenger of the Sacred Heart. Yet in their simplicity they are nothing more than a varied application of that verse of Job: "Have pity on me, have pity on me, at least you, my friends, because the hand of the Lord hath touched me." Ceaselessly they re-echo all the plaintiveness of those mighty syllables of sorrow, like a seashell still reverberating with the rhythm of the long-resounding ocean surf.
In the Morning
When the pure air comes unbreathed and the fresh fields lie untrod,
When the lark's song rises upward and the wet flowers deck the sod;
In the time of early praying, in the hushed and holy morn,
Hear those voices softly pleading, hear those low words interceding,
From the green graves lonesome lying,
Ever more in sad tones crying:
"Have pity! you at least have pity, you, my friends."
In the Noontide
When the hot earth also slumbers and the treetop scarcely stirs,
When the bee sleeps in the lily and the hare pants by the furze,
When the stream breeze softly cools you and the grateful shade invites,
While the hot skies far are glowing, think of pain, no respite knowing,
And those prison fires appalling,
And those piteous voices calling:
"Have pity! you at least have pity, you, my friends."
In the Evening
When the long day's cares are ended and the house group soon shall meet,
When the silent twilight deepens and comes rest for weary feet,
In the time of sad remembrance give a prayer to old friends gone.
Some regret, some feelings tender, to past days and scenes surrender,
Let your heart with mournful greeting
Hear the sad refrain repeating:
"Have pity! you at least have pity, you, my friends."
In the Nighttime
When the stars are set in ether and the white moon in a cloud,
When the children's hands are folded and the golden heads are bowed,
Tell them of that fearful burning, of those souls in torture dire,
Expiating pride and folly in the purifying fire.
Let their sinless hearts adoring reach Christ's throne in sweet imploring:
By those faces lost forever,
By those smiles to greet thee never,
By the memories of past days,
And the kindness of old ways,
By the love in life you bore them,
And the tears in death shed o'er them,
By their words and looks in dying,
Hear their plaintive voices crying:
"Have pity! you at least have pity, you, my friends."
- taken from the book The Souls in Purgatory, by Father Joseph Husslein, S.J.