The Souls In Purgatory Desire To
Purified From Every Stain Of Sin--
Of The Wisdom Of God In Immediately
Concealing From These Souls Their Faults.--
The soul was originally endowed with all the means of attaining
its own degree of perfection, by living in conformity with the
laws of God and keeping itself pure from all stain of sin. But,
being contaminated by original sin, it loses its gifts and
graces. It dies, and can only rise again by the assistance of
God. And when he has raised it to life again by baptism, a bad
inclination still remains in the soul, leading it, if unresisted,
to actual sin, by which it dies anew. God raises it again by
another special grace; nevertheless it remains so soiled, so
fallen back upon itself, that, to be restored to the state of
purity in which God created it, it has need of all the divine
operations before mentioned to enable it to return to its
primitive condition.
When the soul is on its way back to this state, its desire of
being lost in God is so great as to become the purgatory of the
soul.
Purgatory is nothing to it _as_ purgatory. The burning
instinct which forces it toward God, only to find an impediment,
constitutes its real torture.
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By a last act of love, God, the author of this plan for the
perfection of the soul, works without the concurrence of man; for
there are in the soul so many hidden imperfections that if it saw
them it would be in despair. But the state of which we have just
spoken destroys them all. It is only when they are obliterated
that God shows them to the soul, in order that it may comprehend
the divine operation wrought by this fire of love consuming all
its imperfections.