What are the penalties of Purgatory?
The Fathers tell us in general:
St. Cyril: «If all the pains, all the crosses, all the afflictions of the world could be represented and compared with the sufferings of Purgatory, they would become sweetness by comparison. In order to avoid Purgatory, all the evils suffered by Adam until today would gladly be endured. The pains of Purgatory are so painful that they equate the same pains as hell in acerbity: they are the same size. Only one difference passes between them: that those of hell are eternal, those of Purgatory will end. " The pains of present life are permitted by God in his mercy to increase merits; the penalties of Purgatory are created by the offended Divine Justice.
San Beda Venerabile, one of the most learned Fathers of the Western Church, writes: «Let us take sides with all the cruel torments that the tyrants invented to torture the martyrs: the cleavers and the crosses, the wheels and the saws, the grills and boiling pitch and lead boilers, iron hooks and hot pincers, etc. etc.; with all this we will not yet have the idea of the penalties of Purgatory ». Martyrs were the elect that God felt in the fire; purging souls suffer only to serve penalties.
St. Augustine and St. Thomas say that the minimum penalty of Purgatory surpasses all the maximum penalties that we can suffer from on earth. Now imagine what is the most severe pain we have experienced: for example, in the teeth; or the strongest moral or physical pain experienced by others, even the pain that is capable of giving death. Well: the penalties of Purgatory are much more immature. And therefore St. Catherine of Genoa writes: "Purging souls experience such torments that human language cannot describe, nor any intelligence to understand, except that God makes it known by special grace". That if on the one hand they experience the sweet certainty of being safe, on the other "their inexpressible consolation does not diminish their torment at all".
In particular:
The main penalty is that of damage. S. Giovanni Gris. he says: "Put the penalty of harm on one side, put a hundred fires of hell on the other; and know that the one alone is greater than these hundred. " In fact, souls are far from God and feel an inexpressible love for such a good father!
An unceasing impetus towards Him, God of consolation! a sting of love that inflames all for his heart. They crave his face more than Absalom wanted the appearance of the father who had condemned him to never appear before him again. And yet they feel rejected by the Lord, by divine justice, by the purity and holiness of God. And they crave the company of dear Mother Maria, of relatives already in heaven, of the blessed, of the Angels: and they remain outside, in sadness, before the closed doors of that paradise where joy and joy are!
Once the soul has left the body, it remains only one desire and sigh: to unite with God, the only object worthy of love, from which it is attracted like iron by the most powerful magnet. And this is because he knew what good the Lord is, what happiness to be with him. And he cannot!
St. Catherine of Genoa uses this beautiful similitude: "If in the whole world there was only one bread, which would make all creatures hungry, and that they would be satisfied with just seeing it: what desire to see it in everyone!" Yet God will be the heavenly bread capable of satisfying all souls after the present life.
Now if this bread were denied; and every time the soul, tormented by painful hunger, approached it to taste it, was removed from it, what would happen? That their torment will continue as long as they will be late to see their God. " They yearn to sit at that Eternal Table, promised by the Savior to the righteous, but they suffer an unspeakable hunger.
You can understand something of the pains of Purgatory by thinking of the pain of a delicate soul who remembers his sins, his ingratitudes to the Lord.
St. Louis who faints before the confessor and certain sweet, but burning tears, squeezed by the love and pain at the foot of the Crucifix, give us the idea of the penalty of harm. The soul is so afflicted with its sins that it feels a pain capable of making the heart burst and of dying, if it could die. Yet she is very resigned prisoner in that prison, she would not want to leave it as long as there was a grain left to serve, that being the divine will and by now loving the Lord with perfection. But he suffers, he suffers unspeakably.
Yet certain Christians, when a person has expired, almost exclaim with relief: "He has finished suffering!". Well just at that moment, in that place, the judgment is taking place. And who knows that that soul doesn't begin to suffer ?! And what do we know about divine judgments? That if he didn't deserve hell, how are you sure he didn't deserve Purgatory? Before that corpse, in that moment in which eternity is decided, let us bow meditate bondi and praying.
In the story of the Dominican Father Stanislao Kostka, we read the following fact, which we refer to because it seems suitable to inspire us a just terror of the sufferings of Purgatory. «One day, while this religious saint prayed for the dead, he saw a soul, completely devoured by the flames, to which, having asked if that fire was more penetrating than that of the earth: Alas! replied shouting the poor, all the fire of the earth, compared to that of Purgatory, is like a breath of fresh air: - And why is this possible? added the religious; I would like to try it, on condition that it helped to make me pay part of the penalties that one day I will have to suffer in Purgatory. - No mortal, then replied that soul, could bear the least part of it, without dying instantly; however, if you want to be convinced, stretch out your hand. - On it the deceased dropped a drop of his sweat, or at least of a liquid, which had the appearance of sweat, and suddenly the religious emitted very high-pitched cries and fell to the ground stunned, so great was the spasm that felt. His confreres came running, who, lavishing all the care on him, got him back to himself. Then he, full of terror, recounted the terrifying event, of which he had been witness and victim, and concluded his speech with these words: Ah! my brothers, if each of us knew the rigor of divine punishment, he would never sin; we do penance in this life in order not to do it in the other, because those penalties are terrible; fight our flaws and correct them, (especially beware of small fouls); the eternal Judge takes everything into account. Divine majesty is so holy that it cannot suffer the slightest stain in its elect.
After which he went to bed where he lived for a year in the midst of incredible sufferings, produced by the ardor of the wound that had formed on his hand. Before expiring he again exhorted his confreres to remember the rigors of divine justice, after which he died in the kiss of the Lord ».
The historian adds that this terrible example revived the fervor in all the monasteries and that the religious excited each other in the service of God, in order to be saved from such atrocious tortures.