Editor’s Note: Are you interested in finding a Christmas gift for someone who has everything, except a knowledge of the Catholic faith? Why not give this person one or more of our books? The books available are Catholic Replies and Catholic Replies 2, All Generations Will Call Me Blessed, Who Do You Say That I Am?, Catholicism & Reason (Apologetics), Catholicism & Scripture (Salvation History), Catholicism & Society (Marriage and Family), Catholicism & Ethics (Medical/Moral Issues), and Catholicism & Life (Commandments and Sacraments). They range in price from $10.95 to $17.95, but may be purchased at a special Christmas discount of $5 each, plus $10 shipping for up to five books and $15 for more than five books. All orders must be paid by check.
You can learn more about these books by visiting our website at www.crpublications.com. Don’t order from the website, however, since it automatically charges full price. Get your order in by December 15th, and you will have the books before Christmas.
Q. Can you offer any suggestions about praying the rosary with devotion? I know we are supposed to meditate on each mystery as we pray the decade, but I am often distracted and thinking about other things. — T.L.H., Massachusetts.
A. Welcome to the club. One suggestion we can offer is to say after the name of Jesus in each Hail Mary the name of the mystery being recalled. For example, when praying the Sorrowful Mysteries, you might say in the first decade, “Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus suffers His Agony in the Garden . . . Jesus is scourged at the pillar . . . Jesus is crowned with thorns . . . Jesus carries His Cross, [and] Jesus dies on the Cross.”
For the Joyful Mysteries, “Jesus is announced by an angel . . . Jesus visits His cousin John (or His aunt Elizabeth) . . . Jesus is born in Bethlehem . . . Jesus is presented in the Temple, [and] Jesus is found in the Temple.”
For the Glorious Mysteries, “Jesus rises from the Dead . . . Jesus ascends into Heaven . . . Jesus sends the Holy Spirit . . . Jesus takes His mother to Heaven, [and] Jesus crowns His mother Queen of Heaven and Earth.”
For the Luminous Mysteries, “Jesus is baptized in the River Jordan . . . Jesus changes water into wine . . . Jesus proclaims the Kingdom . . . Jesus is transfigured, [and] Jesus institutes the Holy Eucharist.”
Q. I fully expect to spend some time in Purgatory. Do we know what things will be like there? — S.C., via e-mail.
A. Well, the good news is that the souls of the just in Purgatory are destined for Heaven, even though they may not have been cleansed of all stain of sin when they underwent the Particular Judgment. What that means, said Fr. John Hardon, SJ, in his Catholic Catechism (pp. 275-280) is that “the souls have not yet paid the temporal penalty due, either for venial sins or for mortal sins whose guilt was forgiven before death. It may also mean the venial sins themselves, which were not forgiven either as to guilt or punishment before death. It is not certain whether the guilt of venial sins is strictly speaking remitted after death and, if so, how the remission takes place.”
Fr. Hardon said that “we are not certain whether Purgatory is a place or a space in which souls are cleansed. The Church has never given a definite answer to this question. The important thing to understand is that it is a state or condition in which souls undergo purification.”
He also discussed the biblical roots of Catholic belief in Purgatory, even though the word itself does not appear in Scripture. The classic biblical texts are 2 Macc. 12:42-46, Matt. 12:32, and 1 Cor. 3:13-15.
In the last reference, St. Paul expresses the bad news about the suffering in Purgatory when he says that “if someone’s work is burned up, that one will suffer loss; the person will be saved, but only as through fire.” The suffering is thought to be of two kinds: a pain of sense and a pain of loss.
According to Fr. Hardon, “Writers in the Latin tradition are quite unanimous that the fire of Purgatory is real and not metaphorical. They argue from the common teaching of the Latin Fathers, of some Greek Fathers, and of certain papal statements, like that of Pope Innocent IV, who spoke of ‘a transitory fire’ (DB 456).”
How intense these pains are, we don’t know, although St. Thomas Aquinas held that the least pain in Purgatory was greater than the worst on Earth. He was joined in this opinion by St. Bonaventure and St. Robert Bellarmine.
The other kind of suffering in Purgatory, said Fr. Hardon, is the pain of loss. He said that this suffering “is intense on two counts: (1) the more something is desired, the more painful its absence, and the faithful departed intensely desire to possess God now that they are freed from temporal cares and no longer held down by the spiritual inertia of the body; (2) they clearly see that their deprivation was personally blameworthy and might have been avoided if only they had prayed and done enough penance during life.”
He pointed out, however, that “parallel with their sufferings, the souls also experience intense spiritual joy. Among the mystics, St. Catherine of Genoa wrote: ‘It seems to me there is no joy comparable to that of the pure souls in Purgatory, except the joy of heavenly beatitude.’ There are many reasons for this happiness. They are absolutely sure of their salvation. They have faith, hope, and great charity. They know themselves to be in divine friendship, confirmed in grace, and no longer able to offend God.”
In his book Saintly Solutions to Life’s Common Problems, Fr. Joseph M. Esper wrote that St. Frances of Rome, after being given a vision of Purgatory, “said that it consists of three levels. The lowest level is like a vast burning sea, where the persons undergo various sufferings related to the sins they committed on Earth. The middle level is less rigorous, but still unpleasant. The highest level of Purgatory is populated by those who are closest to being released. These persons suffer mainly the pain of loss, that of yearning for God and of not yet truly possessing Him.”
Agreeing was the late Fr. Gabriele Amorth, who was the chief exorcist in Rome for many years. He said in his book An Exorcist Explains the Demonic that “there are gradations or diverse states in Purgatory; each one accommodates the situation of the soul that arrives there. There are the lower strata, more terrible because they are closer to Hell, and the more elevated that are less terrible because they are much closer to the happiness of Paradise. The level of purification is linked to this state. The souls in Purgatory are in a state of great suffering. We know, in fact, that they can pray for us and that they can obtain many graces for us, but they can no longer merit anything for themselves. The time for meriting graces finishes with death.
“Purged souls can, however, receive our help in order to abbreviate their period of purification. This occurs in a powerful way through our prayers, with the offering of our sufferings, paying attention at Mass, specifically at funerals or at Gregorian Masses, celebrated for thirty consecutive days.”
Fr. Amorth said that “this last practice was introduced by St. Gregory the Great in the sixth century, inspired by a vision he had of a confrere who died without confessing himself and, having gone to Purgatory, appeared to him, asking him to celebrate some Masses in his favor. The Pope celebrated them for thirty days. At that point, the deceased appeared to him again, happy for having been admitted to Paradise.
“One must take care: this does not mean that it will always work this way: that would be a magical attitude, unacceptable and erroneous toward a sacrament. In fact, it is solely God who decides these matters when He wills it through His divine mercy.”
In his 2007 encyclical on Christian Hope (Spe Salvi), Pope Benedict XVI said it is possible that “the fire which both burns and saves is Christ Himself, the Judge and Savior. The encounter with Him is the decisive act of judgment. Before His gaze all falsehood melts away. . . . In the pain of this encounter, when the impurity and sickness of our lives become evident to us, there lies salvation. His gaze, the touch of His heart, heals us through an undeniably painful transformation ‘as through fire’ [1 Cor. 3:15]. But it is a blessed pain, in which the holy power of His love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God” (n. 47).
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