Thursday, September 27, 2007

The Pains of Purgatory

Thanks to Sue for sharing.

Just one account of how the Holy Souls suffer in Purgatory.
Pray for the Souls in Purgatory!

THE PAINS OF PURGATORY

From the revelations of the saints we understand that there are different degrees of pain and suffering in Purgatory. We could have no better guide than that of Mary Magdalen Dei Pazzi. Among all the saints canonised by the Church, she is the one who, after Saint Frances of Rome, has left us the most detailed and the most exact description of Purgatory.

One evening, as she was walking in the garden of the Convent, she was suddenly taken away in spirit and she was heard to say: "Yes, I will walk around it; I will walk around it! " With these words she consented to her Guardian Angel's request to visit Purgatory. Once the ecstasy was over, she wrote her account about it.

Mary Magdalen Dei Pazzi witnessed the intensity of the suffering in Purgatory and visited the different places where the souls are imprisoned. There was an abyss filled with tormented Priests and religious, another place which was not so severe held the souls of children and those who were guilty through ignorance. She saw souls being pricked by the points of very sharp needles and almost torn to shreds..these were the souls of those who had tried to please others during their lives and so had been hypocrites. Further on were observed the souls of the impatient and disobedient..they were being crushed under enormous weights. To her horror she witnessed a group of souls having molten lead poured into their mouths while at the same time having their bodies immersed in a pool of ice. These souls, who were burning and freezing at the same time, belonged to those who were liars. The avaricious were being liquefied with lead whilst the souls of the ambitious suffered excruciating pain in darkness. The hard-hearted and ungrateful to God were immersed in a lake of molten lead as punishment for allowing the source of Grace to remain sterile through their ingratitude. Finally she visited the prison of those who during their lives held no great vices but they suffered also, but to a lesser degree than the others, all the castigation of all those lesser vices which they had.

After two extremely painful hours Mary Magdalen Dei Pazzi returned to herself, physically weak and in a state of moral prostration.....requiring several days to recover.

The body of Saint Mary Magdalen Dei Pazzi remains incorrupt after several hundred years.
Source: Friends of the Holy Souls

2 comments:

Michele said...

i think the souls in purgatory suffer joyfully because they know when they are released from purgatory that they will go to heaven:)

EC Gefroh said...

I think I read that too. It's painful but they love God so much they are willing to suffer the pains.