A thought on purgatory…

Yesterday morning was one of those perfect Maryland summer mornings, all the more appreciated after the brutal heat wave that had descended over the region the past week.  I had

left the house about 6:20 am, passing by puppy sad eyes as I walked to the door, Micah is a master at peering up at you with those liquid brown eyes…makes me feel guilty everytime I leave him. I think he practices his sad eyes in the mirror when we aren’t home.

The sun was just coming up and I started out on one of the prettiest little drives there is, the back way to St. Peter’s in Libertytown.  I was on my way to our Adoration hour at St. Peter’s, a time of quiet solitude with our Lord.  Through small town USA, out past fields and farms, the cows looking like black polka dots on the  green fields. It was particularly beautiful  morning with great gossamer mists hanging over the  fields and small dells,  I was grateful to be up and out even though I had not slept again.  There is always a period of transition in the mornings, a re-orientation with reality.  Waves of grief wash over you as you are once again fully conscience of loss…and you cry, silent tears that can’t be stopped. You get used to them in a way, I can drive, cry and drink coffee all at the same time now.

There is one low lying meadow on the right as you come around the last curve leading into Libertytown, the sun was backlighting the mist so that it glowed and as I wound up the hill, the sun shot through the trees, so bright, so pure..I was blinded. I had to turn my head, but I didn’t want too! I wanted to stop the car and just bask in that sunlight and look right into it and see what mystery was in the sun and mist…and the thought came to me, that is what purgatory may be like.  The pure, early sunlight…not harsh, not hot and dry, but brilliant white…it made me think of being in the presence of God. Wanting so much to be able to look right into eternity and yet having to turn my head because of the pain in my eyes from the light.   Wanting to remain in the light, regardless of the pain, to let the light purify my heart and soul of the dross clinging to it…the love of self and my own will.  There seemed to me that there would be peace and rest in that meadow, a contentment to let the fire of God’s love finish the purgation process.  I remember reading Pope Benedict the XVI’s general audience address of January 12, 2011, he was writing on St. Catherine of Genoa  and her mystical vision of Purgatory, he writes:

“The soul, says Catherine, appears before God still bound to the desires and the sorrow that derive from sin, and this makes it impossible for it to enjoy the Beatific Vision of God. Catherine affirms that God is so pure and holy that the soul with stains of sin cannot be in the presence of the Divine Majesty (cf. Vita Mirabile, 177r). And we also realize how far we are, how full we are of so many things, so that we cannot see God. The soul is conscious of the immense love and perfect justice of God and, in consequence, suffers for not having responded correctly and perfectly to that love, and that is why the love itself of God becomes a flame. Love itself purifies it from its dross of sin. “

Purgatory is all about this great exchange of love between the lover and the beloved, God and our soul, how merciful is God to continue this courtship of our soul.

There is a line from the book I am currently reading,  another author Justin introduced me to…Abbot Vonier of  Buckfast Abbey.  Justin was reading the Abbot’s book  “A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist”,  he had it with him his last visit home.  I am reading  “The Life of the World to Come”….so absorbing, I am going to have to read it twice just to catch all that I missed on the first go at it.  Anyway the good Abbot is writing on Jesus speaking in the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 14:12…he writes:

“This was white, unrefracted light, straight from the mind of the Son of God”

I just stopped at that line, I tried to read further and had to keep flipping back to that page..reading it over and over.  White, unrefracted light….pure, not split…straight, not bent….straight from the mind of the Son of God.  It is our minds that do the splitting and bending, all sorts of refraction going on as the pure light hits our darkened intellect. That must be part of that purgation process also, the training of our mind to accept that pure light, to allow our minds to be illumined…to seek truth and be well contented in that truth. I think of that line everytime I hear the Gospel read at Mass now, that what I am hearing is white, unrefracted light, straight from the mind of the Son of God.

Further on in the book is a beautiful thought on eternal rest,

“Eternal rest is unchanging contemplation of the beauty of God, not spiritual anesthesia. It is the exhilarating joy of work with everlasting freshness of mind. Fatigue is absent, because the  creature’s noblest faculty is busy with its most satisfying object; the created mind is fixed on the uncreated Truth.”

Today marks the 10^th month of Justin’s death.

Réquiem ætérnam dona eis, Dómine,
et lux perpétua lúceat eis.
Requiéscant in pace. Amen.