Tag: chapter5howtoavopidpurgatory

HOW TO AVOID PURGATORY By Fr. Paul O’Sullivan O.P.

For those who have not read this little book and to refresh myself, I will be posting the entire book in daily doses.  (To read later find in the Purgatory Category).

Chapter 5

THE THIRD MEANS: SUFFERING

The Third Means of avoiding Purgatory is very easy.   It consists in making a
virtue of necessity, by bearing patiently what we cannot avoid and all the
more since suffering, borne patiently, becomes easy and light.    Suffering,
if accepted with calmness and for God’s sake, loses all its sting.    If
received badly, in the spirit of revolt and with repugnance, it is
intensified a hundredfold and becomes almost intolerable.

Everyone in this vale of tears has to face sorrows innumerable and infinite
in variety.    Crosses light and crosses heavy are the lot of us all.    Strange
as it may seem, these sorrows, which most of us would gladly dispense with,
are in truth God’s greatest graces.   They are the little share He offers us
of His Passion and which He asks us to bear for love of Him and as penance
for our sins.

Borne in this spirit they will lessen considerably our time in Purgatory
and very possibly completely remove it–with this difference, that
Purgatory, even a Purgatory of 50 or 100 years, will in no wise increase
our merits in Heaven; whereas, every pain and sorrow and disappointment in
this life will lessen our suffering in Purgatory and also bring us more
happiness and glory in Heaven.

How sad it is that so many Christians, for want of thought, make their
sufferings a thousand times worse than they are and lose all the immense
merits that they could so easily gain.

RESOLUTION

Let us suffer with calmness and serenity for the love of God. We shall thus
save ourselves from Purgatory.