Will Purgatory Be Painful?

“The purifying fires draw them ever upward and closer to God.” - St. Catherine of Genoa

I do not doubt that purgatory will be painful. After all, it is a very painful thing for our love to be refined.

For though we know how to love, there is so much weakness within us that makes our love impure.

We love, but we find it hard to love amid dryness.

We claim to love, but we fail to persist in difficult times.

We cannot love without forgiving, and yet we all know how hard it is to forgive.

Pride gets in the way of love, but it is also very painful to let go of our pride.

Indeed, even here below, we know how relationships have failed, all because people felt too tired to go through so much pain.

Many times, we feel that our relationships are filled more and more with hurt rather than joy.

And if that joy is the one thing we sought when we fell in love, we wonder if love is still there or if love is still worth keeping when all that we can feel is so much sadness.

God created us for heaven. But to enter heaven and to see God, we must be pure in love. To be pure in love, we must be refined, and to be refined, we must go through many seasons of pain.

Perhaps that’s the kind of purgatory that we can go through on earth. A place of purification that can help us to one day reach that place of the blessed.

Life may be painful now, but if we do not lose heart, we can be purified enough so that after our very last breath, we can finally love with a pure heart.

Blessed indeed are the pure, for they can see God face to face!

You may also want to read Jocelyn’s book “What Should You Look Forward To In Heaven?”