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Reverend Father Angelo,

For some years I have been reading topics and answers on the website “amicidomenicani.it” and I am sincerely grateful for all the work that you and your confreres do to keep alive this very important service which so many souls benefit from.

I would ask you which kind of purification the souls experience in Purgatory, and which is their future degree of glory once they reach Paradise.

I wonder: if God thought a precise place, and therefore a precise degree of holiness, bliss and glory for each of us, when not fulfilling in life what the Lord planned for us and ending up in Purgatory (as I think it happens for most of the souls), once in Heaven, will we have the degree of glory, holiness and bliss that God originally intended for us, or a lower degree of glory as we were not able to live to the fullest of our potential, and therefore not able to acquire sufficient merit?

Here is a concrete example to better express myself: let us assume one, to whom God intended a high degree of glory, and living one’s own existence far from the Lord’s plan because of free will, and that person converts in the last years of life and then was saved, but with no more time to carry out the plan God had for him or her. Will the undergone purification compensate in Purgatory – so to speak – also for the merits which were not acquired during life, or will purification consist only in the atonement of the temporal punishment of the sins committed and not sufficiently repaired?

In Paradise, will that soul have the degree of glory that God intended according to His original plan, or a lower degree as the earthly life was spent in a different way than the Father’s plan?

From the depths of my heart, I thank you for your willingness and for the answer you will give me.

May God bless you and may the Virgin Mary lead your life and ministry at every step.

Maria Chiara

The priest’s answer

Dear Maria Chiara,

1. The Lord set our target: perfect communion with us in eternal life. He did not fix the degree of bliss that we will enjoy in Heaven.

He gave us freedom so that we could be the architects not only of our actions, but even of our eternal destination.

2. Of course, by only our natural forces we can in no way achieve the target of communion with God, because that pertains to a supernatural order.

But, as God enables us by sanctifying grace to perform works of supernatural value, then we can accomplish that target by our cooperation with His grace.

3. One example to explain: iron alone is not capable of burning a certain object. But if the iron is on a fire, receiving the property of fire, it becomes capable of burning.

4. So also for us.

Besides, since God dwells in an inaccessible light, as Sacred Scripture says, according to St. Thomas after dying in grace we need further equipment to know and enjoy God.

God relates us to Himself through the lumen gloriae (the light of glory), says St. Thomas, by instilling a new and supernatural capacity in us to know him.

This ability will relate us to the degree of charity attained on earth.

5.  Here are the words of St. Thomas: “The faculty of seeing God, however, does not belong to the created intellect naturally, but is given to it by the light of glory, which establishes the intellect in a kind of deiformity, as appears from what is said above, in the preceding article.

Hence the intellect which has more of the light of glory will see God the more perfectly; and he will have a fuller participation of the light of glory who has more charity; because where there is the greater charity, there is the more desire; and desire in a certain degree makes the one desiring apt and prepared to receive the object desired. Hence he who possesses the more charity, will see God the more perfectly, and will be the more beatified” (Summa Theologiae, I, 12, 6).

6. In the beatific vision, precisely because man enters eternity, a possibility of further merit no longer exists.

If we were to admit a possibility of deserving the Reward for those who are in Heaven, we should put it also on those who are in Purgatory. But in no way the souls in Purgatory may help themselves. Only our charity can help them.

Otherwise, we should even admit a capacity to repent for demons and the damned.

But this possibility does not exist for them too, because they entered the eternal. That is, they do not have a further moment to repent.

7. By your own words, we can say that God ab aeterno appointed us the degree of glory which we acquire.

Similarly, He fixed the degree of suffering for the damned, which they themselves prepared with their own hands.

But in both cases, everything is tied to one’s own freedom.

I bless you, hoping we will reach the highest degree of beatitude that we may imagine with God’s grace and our cooperation. Father Angelo