In his encyclical Spe Salvi, Pope Benedict XVI asks: “what sort of hope could ever
justify … that, on the basis of that hope and simply because it exists, we are redeemed?
And what sort of certainty is involved here?” (Spe Salvi, 1).
St. Thomas Aquinas, commenting on Paul’s Letter to the Romans, provides an answer:
“We can be certain that hope does not confound, ‘because the love of God is poured
forth in our hearts, by the Holy Spirit who is given to us.’ (Commentary on Romans,
392).
“The love of God can be taken in two ways: in one way, for the love by which God loves
us: ‘he loved you with an everlasting love’ (Jer 31:3); in another way for the love by
which we love God: ‘I am sure that neither death nor life… shall be able to separate us
from the love of God’ (Romand 8:38-39).”
We may accept that God’s love is “everlasting” but feel that our own love for God is
fickle. St. Thomas assures us that we do not have to produce love for God but ask God
to give it to us: “Both these loves are poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has
been given to us” (Commentary on Romans, 392).
As Thomas points out, the Spirit is given to us: “For the Holy Spirit, who is the love of
the Father and of the Son, to be given to us is our being brought to participate in the
love of the Holy Spirit and by this participation we are made lovers of God. The fact that
we love him is a sign that he loves us; ‘I love those who love me’ (Prov 8:17); ‘not that
we loved God first but that he first loved us’ (1 John 4:10) (Commentary on Romans,
392).
The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes the need for us to receive participation
in the Holy Spirit in a full way: “All who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still
imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they
undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven”
(Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1030).
The Catechism recalls the practice of prayers for the dead, such as appears in the
Second Book of the Maccabees: “Therefore Judas Maccabeus made atonement for the
dead, that they might be delivered from their sin” (2 Macc 12:46).
St. Thomas comments: “There is no need to pray for the dead who are in heaven, for
they are in no need; nor again for those in hell, because they cannot be loosed from
sins. Therefore, after this life, there are some not yet loosed from sins, who can be
loosed, therefrom, and they have charity, without which sin cannot be loosed, for ‘charity
covers all sins’ (Appendix II, from the Commentary on the Sentences, cf. Summa
Theologica, III, 3022).

The Catechism notes: “From the beginning the Church has honored the memory of the
dead and offered prayers in suffrage for them, above all the Eucharistic sacrifice, so
that, thus purified, they may attain the beatific vision of God.” (Catechism of the Catholic
Church, 1031).
Pope Benedict explains: “There is also the idea that this state can involve purification
and healing which mature the soul for communion with God. The early Church took up
these concepts, and in the Western Church they gradually developed into the doctrine ,
of Purgatory (Spe Salvi, 1).
St. Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians asserts: “Now if any one builds on the
foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each man’s work will
become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and
the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work which any man has
built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned
up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire” (1 Cor
3:12-15).
A person can be tested but saved after transitional suffering. Thomas thought the fire
was physical. But the delay in reaching the Lord was greater suffering: “For the more a
thing is desire the holy souls desire the Sovereign Good with the most intense longing
… it follows that they grieve exceedingly for their delay” (Appendix II, from the
Commentary on the Sentences, cf. Summa Theologica, III, 3018).
A person doesn’t save him- or her self but they become responsive to God’s love, as
Thomas explains: “The love by which he loves us is said to be poured into our hearts,
because it is clearly said to be poured in our hearts by the gift of the Holy Spirit sealed
in us: ‘by which we know that he abides in us, by the Holy Spirit he has given us’ (1
John 3:24)” (Commentary on Romans, 392).
Thomas continues: “if Christ died for us while we were still sinners, much more being
now justified by his blood, as was said above, whom God has proposed to be a
propitiation through faith (Rom 3:25), through his blood, shall we be saved from wrath”
(Commentary on Romans, 400).
Although many people have pictured this as physical suffering. St. Catherine of Genoa has a
beautiful image when she says just as water can’t flow through a pipe when it is full of rust, so
the pipe needs to be cleansed. God’s love can’t flow through us because it blocked. So what
purifies us? God’s love itself. St. Catherine of Genoa said that the people in purgatory are the
happiest people, second only to the people in heaven.
“Pope Benedict has written:“. Some recent theologians are of the opinion that the fire which
both burns and saves is Christ himself, the Judge and Saviour. The encounter with him is the

decisive act of judgement. Before his gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with him, as
it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves. All that we build
during our lives can prove to be mere straw, pure bluster, and it collapses. Yet in the pain of this
encounter, when the impurity and sickness of our lives become evident to us, there lies
salvation. His gaze, the touch of his heart heals us through an undeniably painful
transformation “as through fire”. But it is a blessed pain, in which the holy power of his love
sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God. In
this way the inter-relation between justice and grace also becomes clear: the way we live our
lives is not immaterial, but our defilement does not stain us for ever if we have at least
continued to reach out towards Christ, towards truth and towards love. Indeed, it has already
been burned away through Christ’s Passion. At the moment of judgement we experience and
we absorb the overwhelming power of his love over all the evil in the world and in ourselves.
Our faith is that we can pray for those who have died. In some way we can participate in their
purification. At times people pictures this as we take some of their suffering, but maybe it is
that we bring our faith and our love of God into this process.
Monica, dying on the coast of Italy. Augustine’s son wished she could be buried in Africa.
Monica was disturbed when Augustine’s brother regretted that she wouldn’t be buried in North
Africa. She told them to bury her body where they would but the only thing she asked was
when they approached the Eucharist they would remember her.
Pope Benedict comments:
“The belief that love can reach into the afterlife, that reciprocal giving and receiving is
possible, in which our affection for one another continues beyond the limits of
death—this has been a fundamental conviction of Christianity throughout the ages and
it remains a source of comfort today. Who would not feel the need to convey to their
departed loved ones a sign of kindness, a gesture of gratitude or even a request for
pardon? …
“How can a third person intervene, even if he or she is particularly close to the other?
When we ask such a question, we should recall that no man is an island, entire of itself.
Our lives are involved with one another, through innumerable interactions they are
linked together. No one lives alone. No one sins alone. No one is saved alone. The lives
of others continually spill over into mine: in what I think, say, do and achieve. And
conversely, my life spills over into that of others: for better and for worse. So my prayer
for another is not something extraneous to that person, something external, not even
after death. In the interconnectedness of Being, my gratitude to the other—my prayer
for him—can play a small part in his purification. And for that there is no need to convert
earthly time into God’s time: in the communion of souls simple terrestrial time is
superseded. It is never too late to touch the heart of another, nor is it ever in vain. In this

way we further clarify an important element of the Christian concept of hope. Our hope
is always essentially also hope for others; only thus is it truly hope for me too” (Spe
Salvi, 47).
Thomas had a conviction that the Eucharist was the meeting place of the living and the
departed:
“The suffrages of the living profit the dead in so far as the latter are united to the living in
charity…Now the sacrament of the Eucharist belongs chiefly to charity, since it is the
sacrament of ecclesiastical unity, inasmuch as it contains Him in whom the whole
Church is united and incorporated, namely Christ: wherefore the Eucharist is as it were
the origin and bond of charity” (from the Supplementum, cf. Summa Theologica, III,
2852).

Denis Vincent Wiseman, O.P.