Purgatory

Today I caught on Radio 4 a BBC dramatisation of Dante's "Divine Comedy".  The first episode was last week so I missed the Inferno and caught up with Virgil and Dante on the slopes of Mount Purgatory. 

It has been many years since I read the whole of the Divine Comedy and clearly I need to go back and read it again, as there's so much I'd forgotten. 

According to Wikipedia, "Purgatory, according to Catholic Church doctrine is an intermediary state after physical death in which those destined for heaven "undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven".^[1] Only those who die in the state of grace but have not in life reached a sufficient level of holiness can be in Purgatory, and therefore no one in Purgatory will remain forever in that state or go to hell. This theological notion has ancient roots and is well-attested in early Christian literature, but the poetic conception of Purgatory as a geographically existing place is largely the creation of medieval Christian piety and imagination."

Purgatory was always a hard concept for me, and never one that I felt I really understood well.  The "Dream of Gerontius", a poem by John Henry Newman, brought me closest to understanding, the redeemed soul flying in love and desire to the feet of its Creator though the touch brought agony and the desire to be made fit to be in the presence of God.

Angel

…. Praise to His Name!

The eager spirit has darted from my hold,

And, with the intemperate energy of love,

Flies to the dear feet of Emmanuel;

But, ere it reach them, the keen sanctity,

Which with its effluence, like a glory, clothes

And circles round the Crucified, has seized,

And scorch'd, and shrivell'd it; and now it lies

Passive and still before the awful Throne.

O happy, suffering soul! for it is safe,

Consumed, yet quicken'd, by the glance of God.

Soul

Take me away, and in the lowest deep

There let me be,

And there in hope the lone night-watches keep,

Told out for me.

There, motionless and happy in my pain,

Perhaps my best understanding of it came from giving birth to my son.  It was a thirty six hour labour, for various reasons the pain relief I was given was ineffective, and I counted out those hours in love and desire, and fear, and great pain.  And I listened to the monitor that they had rigged to let me hear my son's heartbeat, and somehow bore out the hours of helplessness a heartbeat at a time.  When I heard his loud cry and knew he had been born alive and strong, then all the pain and exhaustion didn't matter any more.  They put him into my arms - and I looked into the face of Heaven.   Heaven had huge eyes and dark hair and soft pale skin and was utterly perfect.  And I finally understood the journey through Purgatory, with Love waiting at the end.