



Produced by Michael Gray, Diocese of San Jose








HAPPINESS IN PURGATORY.

  Published April, 1897,

   in

   THE CATHOLIC WORLD

   A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and Science



HAPPINESS IN PURGATORY.

IT may be said of Purgatory that if it did not exist it would have to be
created, so eminently is it in accord with the dictates of reason and
common sense. The natural instinct of travellers at their journey's end
is to seek for rest and change of attire. Some are begrimed with mud,
others have caught the dust of a scorching summer day; the heat or cold
or damp of the journey has told upon them and their attire. Perhaps,
even, the way has made them weary unto sickness, and they crave for an
interval of absolute repose.

Travellers from earth, covered with the mud and dust of its long road,
could never wish to enter the banquet-room of eternity in their
travel-stained garments. "Take me away!" cried Gerontius to his angel.
It was a cry of anguish as well as desire, for Gerontius, blessed soul
though he is, could not face heaven just as earth had left him. He has
the true instinct of the traveller at his journey's end. Dust, rust, and
the moth have marked their presence, and even the oddities and
eccentricities of earthly pilgrimage must be obliterated before the home
of eternity can be entered. _De mortuis nil nisi bonum_ is interpreted,
nothing short of heaven for those who have crossed the bourne. But, if
the heavenly gates are thrown open to the travellers all weary and
footsore, "not having on a nuptial garment," no heterogeneous meeting
here on earth could compete with the gathering of disembodied spirits
from its four quarters. It is human ignorance alone which canonizes all
the departed, and insists on a direct passage from time to heaven. The
canonization is not ratified in heaven, because heaven would not exist
if it took place. The Beatific Vision is incompatible with the shadow of
imperfection. To act as if it were belongs to the same order of things
as rending the garment of Christian unity.

Purgatory makes heaven, in the sense that heaven would not be possible
for men without it. As well might we try to reach a far-off planet,
which is absolutely removed from our sphere, an unknown quantity, though
a fact science does not dispute. Heaven