What Actually Happens in Purgatory: The 7 Stages the Saints Saw

From Totus Catholica

Most Catholics think purgatory is a waiting room, a punishment, maybe even a lesser hell. But when you read what the saints who were shown purgatory left behind, in prison diaries, convent notebooks, and words their own disciples copied down across 1,800 years, you find something almost nobody expects: a soul on fire that would not trade places with you. A suffering greater than anything on earth, and right beside it a peace greater than anything on earth too. The Church has never officially defined seven stages of purgatory. But when you line up what the saints actually saw, seven stages appear on their own. In this video: • 2 Maccabees 12: God's people praying and offering sacrifice for their dead before Christ was born • Why St. Catherine of Genoa says no one drags the soul into purgatory. It plunges in willingly • Sr Faustina's question to the suffering souls, and the one voice answer: not the flame, the longing • Padre Pio, the soul who asked for one Mass, and the death certificate that matched his account • The origin of the 30 Gregorian Masses, and why the saints say the traffic runs both ways ⏱ CHAPTERS 0:00 The Soul on Fire That Would Not Trade Places 1:36 What the Church Actually Teaches About Purgatory 2:37 2 Maccabees 12: Praying for the Dead Before Christ 5:35 What Catherine, Faustina, and Aquinas Saw 6:53 The Seven Stages the Saints Described 9:41 Padre Pio and the 30 Gregorian Masses 10:38 Does Purgatory Insult the Cross 📖 SCRIPTURE REFERENCED • 2 Machabees 12: Judas Machabeus sends 2,000 pieces of silver to Jerusalem as a sin offering for his fallen soldiers; "a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be loosed from sins." • 1 Corinthians 3: the Day will test what each person has built, and one can lose the work yet still be saved, but only as through fire. • Matthew 12: a sin that will not be forgiven in this age or in the age to come, which Augustine and Gregory the Great both read as implying some faults can be dealt with after death. • Hebrews: appears to nod to the account of the seven martyred brothers in 2 Maccabees 7. ⛪ FROM THE CHURCH FATHERS & THE CATECHISM • Tertullian (around the year 200): describes Christians making offerings for their dead on the anniversary of death, a custom already handed down to him. • St. Augustine (4th to 5th century): his dying mother Monica asked one thing only, "remember me at the altar of the Lord." • Pope St. Gregory the Great (died 604): before the final judgment, there must be a purifying fire for the lesser faults that remain. • CCC 1030: all who die in God's grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, undergo purification, entirely different from the punishment of the damned. 📜 SOURCES & FURTHER READING • St. Perpetua (203): in prison, prayed for her dead brother Dinocrates and saw him move from a dark, thirsty place into light and rest. • St. Catherine of Genoa: gold in a furnace, the fire consuming only what is not gold; no peace compares to the souls in purgatory except the saints in paradise; the same fire becomes "the fire of divine love." • St. Thomas Aquinas: the souls suffer the delay of the vision of God (the pain of loss, by far the heavier) and the pain of sense. • Padre Pio: a soul who had burned to death in that very building when it was a poorhouse appeared asking for one Mass; the next morning Pio celebrated it, then found the death certificate at the town hall exactly as described. • Pope St. Gregory's account of the monk released after 30 Masses on 30 consecutive days, the origin of Gregorian Masses; St. Robert Bellarmine and St. Alphonsus Liguori held those souls can pray for us in return. 🔗 EXPLORE MORE 🌍 Website: https://totuscatholica.org/ Rosary Guide: https://totuscatholica.org/rosary ✉️ Contact: https://totuscatholica.org/contact 🔍 Examination of Conscience: https://catholicexaminationofconscien... 📚 Free eBooks: https://buymeacoffee.com/totuscatholi... 👥 Become a Totus Insider: https://buymeacoffee.com/totuscatholi...