Heaven, Hell & Purgatory
The Afterlife by Fr. Dolindo Ruotolo
The Mystery of Suffering
The soul in its earthly life had always had a leaning toward the goodness of the Lord. Sometimes, it may have had complaints, especially when confronted with the mysteries of suffering, Providence, evil, human freedom, and so on. We all have or had these complaints. At best, we try to drive them away as temptations, and we attempt, with great effort, to perform the opposite acts or an occasional and weak act of faith. We do not live in the radiant light of God, but in the darkness of our mind, which does not want to reason, or of our heart, which does not love with tenderness what appears to the soul as harshness and severity. Our soul, rather than loving our Lord, tries not to oppose Him and not to be submerged by unbelief in the dark waves of fatalism and blind destiny.
As soon as the soul is out of the body, it finds itself before the infinite goodness of God. It sees its own miseries and complaints in the light of the Divine Goodness, even if it does not contemplate, nor it can contemplate yet, that ocean of love. It is still unable to immerse itself in this unequalled bliss. The soul remains, to give a faint example, like someone who has treated a king in disguise as a villain, a cardinal as a sacristan, or, even worse, a priest as a thief. Such a thing happened to two policemen in Venice one night when they stopped Pope St. Pius X, mistaking him for a thief while he was carrying on his shoulders a mattress for a very poor pregnant mother.
“You, wretched thief,” the two policemen shouted to him from a distance, “Stop there! Where did you steal the mattress? Put it down. Put out your arms that we can handcuff you!”
When they were closer to him, on dragging him down they recognized the angelic face of the holy patriarch. Who can describe the confusion that they felt? This is a very poor comparison with the surprise of the soul at its first encounter with the Lord, finding itself in the presence of His infinite goodness and love. Even without seeing Him face to face, because the soul is not yet glorified, it feels the goodness of God because it is in a state of grace.
And, there is more: the soul in the light of God, becoming aware of His perfection and greatness, finds itself stained and unadorned. It feels so ashamed that its only wish is to move away from the Lord to purify itself.
It may be that you have had a nightmare in which you were out in the street in your underclothes, or even naked. What an embarrassment! You tried to hide in the entrance of buildings. Looking around, it seemed to you that all the passers-by were staring at you, and you felt panic-stricken. You only started to breathe again when you woke up and found that it was only a nightmare: thank You, Lord, that it was only a bad dream! But, the soul that comes into the presence of God and sees all its stains is not having a nightmare: instead, it wakes up from the proud, selfish dreams of its earthly life in which it judged itself in hasty benevolence. The soul now sees in the Divine Light how deceived it had been.
During a reception, a young lady feels a sharp pain in her side. Not wanting to make a show of it, she does not even touch herself where she felt the pain, because it is a very elegant affair. Finally the pain is such that she seeks out the ladies’ room. When she begins to undress, she sees with horror a small mouse jumping out from her clothing. The soul in the light of God sees with such horror all those actions to which it did not pay any attention throughout its life. A great shame and suffering take hold of it when it realizes that those shortcomings were not as simple as it had believed. Instead, they were the gnawing rodents of its conscience. It now longs only to get rid of them, withdrawing from the Heavenly Reception to Purgatory.
This withdrawal from the Heavenly Reception causes it excruciating pains because it is in the state of grace. It seems a paradox, but that is what it is.
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