Some of what I write in this series is the hardest I have ever written. It evokes deep emotion in me and I assume it will in you. But that will come later. I begin with this: What happens in purgatory? How does God help people change in purgatory? As St. Augustine asked God, “How did You make heaven and earth?”[1]

We know the “before” picture: a sinner dies and does not immediately enter heaven. We also know the “after” picture: the sinner is reconciled with God and enters heaven. We know why there is a purgatory: namely, that even though by the time of death sins have been forgiven, there must be “temporal punishment” due to the sins.[2] There is a purging, a purification, of oneself. As Pope St. John Paul II wrote, “Love…demands purification.”[3]

Purification by Fire?

How does this purging, this purification, happen? In 2017 Father Kenneth Doyle stated: “Even for those who must undergo some punishment after death — which, I would think, includes most of us — we have no idea as to just what purgatory involves or how long it lasts. (It could even be instantaneous.)”[4] Would it be by fire, physically painful — although how can that be since it would be happening to a bodiless soul? St. Augustine (354-430) thought it was by fire.[5] St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1224-1274) also thought so.[6]

Purification by Means Other Than Fire 

As a graduate student, writer Elise Italiano Ureneck[7] wrote her master’s thesis on purgatory. Later she wrote of St. Catherine of Genoa’s (1447-1510)[8] different take on “fire” in purgatory:

So what will it [purgatory] be like? As when speaking about anything divine, we have to rely on image, analogy and metaphor.

According to St. Catherine of Genoa, a mystic known for her vision of purgatory, it will be a type of fire, though not like that used to describe the experience of hell.

“Rust which is sin, covers souls, and… is burnt away by fire, the more it is consumed, the more the soul responds to God. … As the rust lessens and the soul is opened to the divine rays, happiness grows,” she wrote.

Fire has a lot of effects: light, heat, warmth and destruction. But when a precious metal is placed in its midst, it’s purified and perfected.[9]

Father William Saunders has described a “pain of loss” and a “pain of sense” in purgatory. He writes, “The pain of loss for those in Purgatory is the temporary deprivation of the Beatific Vision. Each of us longs to be with God, see Him, and be enwrapped in His love.” With regard to the pain of sense, he writes, “While not defined, traditionally this pain of sense has involved some purifying fire, which causes torment… Think of this image of ‘fire tried’ gold or silver. When these precious metals are mined from the earth, other minerals or rocks accompany them. By fire, these impurities are separated, and the pure gold or silver remains. In the same sense, a soul containing the impurities of venial sin or hurts caused by sin will first be purified, i.e. ‘fire tried.’” He adds, “Perhaps a more modern version would be the idea of radiation therapy ‘burning’ out the cancer cells; while such therapy is very painful, one has the hope of returning to good health…”[10]

Father Paul O’Callaghan, a priest of Opus Dei who teaches theology at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome, describes the experience as follows: “the fire of purgatory has been interpreted by modern theologians such as Yves Congar, Hans Urs von Balthasar and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict XVI) as ‘the fire of the face of Christ.’ … But…it’s not an impersonal fire: It’s the fire of the one who loves us and saves us and looks after us” — it is the ‘fire that emanates from the face of Christ.’”[11]

Let’s go directly to Cardinal Ratzinger, who in Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life writes:

The essential Christian understanding of Purgatory has now become clear. Purgatory is not, as Tertullian[12] thought, some kind of supra-worldly concentration camp where man is forced to undergo punishment in a more or less arbitrary fashion. Rather is it the inwardly necessary process of transformation in which a person becomes capable of Christ,[13] capable of God and thus capable of unity with the whole communion of saints. Simply to look at people with any degree of realism at all is to grasp the necessity of such a process…

The cardinal continues:

Does not the real Christianizing of the early Jewish notion of a purging fire lie precisely in the insight that the purification involved does not happen through some thing, but through the transforming power of the Lord himself, whose burning flame cuts free our closed-off heart, melting it, and pouring it into a new mold to make it fit for the living organism of his body?[14]

In 2002, Pope Benedict XVI told an interviewer: “Purgatory basically means that God can put the pieces back together again.”[15] In 2007 he discussed purgatory in his encyclical Spe Salvi:

Some recent theologians are of the opinion that the fire which both burns and saves is Christ himself, the Judge and Savior. The encounter with him is the decisive act of judgement. Before his gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves. All that we build during our lives can prove to be mere straw, pure bluster, and it collapses. Yet 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.” 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. In this way the inter-relation between justice and grace also becomes clear: the way we live our lives is not immaterial, but our defilement does not stain us for ever if we have at least continued to reach out towards Christ, towards truth and towards love. Indeed, it has already been burned away through Christ’s Passion. At the moment of judgement we experience and we absorb the overwhelming power of his love over all the evil in the world and in ourselves. The pain of love becomes our salvation and our joy. It is clear that we cannot calculate the “duration” of this transforming burning in terms of the chronological measurements of this world. The transforming “moment” of this encounter eludes earthly time-reckoning—it is the heart’s time, it is the time of “passage” to communion with God in the Body of Christ.[16]

Part 2 will continue with “Crying After Death: Memory, Emotion, and Mental Anguish.”

[1] Confessions (Maria Boulding, O.S.B., trans., David Vincent Meconi, S.J., ed.; 2012), Bk V, ch. 7, p. 334.

[2] The Catechism of the Catholic Church reads: “All who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but, after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of Heaven. The Church gives the name Purgatory to this final purification of the elect, which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned” (No. 1030-32).

[3] In his 1994 book Crossing the Threshold of Hope, Pope St. John Paul II (1920-2005) wrote: “God makes man pass through such an interior purgatory… in order to bring him into union with himself. Here we do not find ourselves before a mere tribunal. We present ourselves before the power of love itself. Before all else, it is Love that judges. God, who is Love, judges through love. It is love that demands purification, before man can be made ready for that union with God which is his ultimate vocation and destiny” (Quoted in Rev. William Saunders, “All Saints and All Souls,” Arlington [Virginia] Catholic Herald, Oct. 23, 2019).

[4] Rev. Kenneth Doyle, “In Heaven for Sure? What Is the Length of Dispensation Process?” Arlington [Virginia] Catholic Herald, Sept. 13, 2017.

[5] While Augustine did not use the word purgatory, he distinguished two kinds of fire, the everlasting fire that will torment the wicked forever and the purifying or purgatorial fire. Thus, in his City of God (Henry Bettenson, trans., 1967, Bk XXI, ch. 13, p. 990), he refers to Virgil’s Aeneid on the question of whether the air, fire, or water would inflict the pain. Then he adds, “Of those who suffer temporary punishments after death…they are not punished with the eternal punishment of the world to come.”

And he wrote in his Discourse on Psalms (Enarrationes in Psalmos) 37.3 (English translation from Ancient Christian Writers, Vol. 30, pages 330-331):

In his dread of those more serious misfortunes, the speaker disregards this life which causes him to weep and groan with its misery, and makes his entreaty: Rebuke me not, O Lord, in thy indignation [Psalms 38:1]. Let me not be among those to whom thou wilt say: Depart into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels [Matthew 25:41]. Nor chastise me in thy wrath [Psalms 38:1]. Do thou cleanse me in this life and make me such that I shall have no need to pass through the purifying flames prepared for those who will be saved yet so as by fire [1 Corinthians 3:15]. Why? Is it not because in this world they are building upon a foundation of wood, hay, stubble? If they constructed with gold, silver, precious stones, they would be safe from both kinds of fire, not only from the everlasting fire which will torment the wicked forever and ever, but also from that which will purify those who are to be saved by fire. For we are told: He himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire [1 Corinthians 3:15]. And because of the phrase shall be saved, that fire is not taken seriously enough. Clearly, although they will be saved by fire, yet that fire will be more grievous than anything a man is capable of bearing in this life.

In St. Augustine’s Enchiridion (also called Handbook on Faith, Hope and Charity), ch. 69 (J. F. Shaw, trans.), he wrote:

And it is not impossible that something of the same kind may take place even after this life. It is a matter that may be inquired into, and either ascertained or left doubtful, whether some believers shall pass through a kind of purgatorial fire, and in proportion as they have loved with more or less devotion the goods that perish, be less or more quickly delivered from it…

[6] See St. Thomas Aquinas on this subject.

[7] She currently writes columns for the Angelus newsletter. Prior to that, she was associate director of the Center for the Church in the 21st Century at Boston College and wrote the “Finding God in All Things” column for Catholic News Service.

[8] Catherine of Genoa, Treatise on Purgatory (4^th ed. 1858); Catherine of Genoa, Purgation and Purgatory, The Spiritual Dialogues (The Classics of Western Spirituality), Serge Hughes, trans., 1979.

[9] Elise Italiano Ureneck, “Why Pray for the Dead,” Arlington [Virginia] Catholic Herald, Nov. 19, 2019.

[10] Rev. William P. Saunders, “What Is Purgatory Like?,” Arlington [Virginia] Catholic Herald, Nov. 17, 2005 (quoting L’Esprit de St. Francois de Sales, IX, p. 16, quoted in Purgatory by Rev. F. X. Shouppe, S.J.).

[11] Hannah Brockhaus, “Why Do Catholics Pray for the Dead and Other Questions About Purgatory Answered,” Arlington [Virginia] Catholic Herald, Nov. 2, 2022.

[12] c. 155-220, a native of Carthage who was the first theologian to write in Latin.

[13] See St. Paul: “In Him you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit” (Eph. 2:22) and “we should grow in every way into him who is the head, Christ” (Eph. 4:15).

[14] Cardinal Ratzinger, “Hell, Purgatory, Heaven,” in Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life, (Michael Waldstein, trans., 2d ed. 1988), pp. 215-38, at pp. 223-31.

Pope Benedict XVI delivered a talk on St. Catherine of Genoa during a weekly audience on Jan. 12, 2011, in which he said:

The first original passage concerns the “place” of the purification of souls. In her day it was depicted mainly using images linked to space: a certain space was conceived of in which purgatory was supposed to be located.

Catherine, however, did not see purgatory as a scene in the bowels of the earth: for her it is not an exterior but rather an interior fire. This is purgatory: an inner fire.

The Saint speaks of the Soul’s journey of purification on the way to full communion with God, starting from her own experience of profound sorrow for the sins committed, in comparison with God’s infinite love…

[15] Benedict XVI, God and the World: A Conversation with Peter Seewald (2002) quoted in Regis Martin, “Of Purgatory and Homage to the Dead,” thecatholicthing.org, Nov. 2, 2016: “for who would dare say of himself that he was able to stand directly before God? And yet we don’t want to be, to use an image from Scripture, ‘a pot that turned out wrong,’ that has to be thrown away; we want to be able to be put right. Purgatory basically means that God can put the pieces back together again. That he can cleanse us in such a way that we are able to be with him and can stand here in the fullness of life.”

[16] Spe Salvi (2007), para. 47.