Norham Castle, Sunrise c.1845 Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775-1851

“NO ONE … can be said to be without peace, who is perfectly content with his lot and extremely thankful for it, but the holy sufferers in Purgatory know that their present condition is the very one condition which suits them best, and is most for their good. They know that God has used towards them infinite mercy in not exacting from them a far greater amount of suffering, that they have deserved far more, and even Hell itself, and on this account they are overflowing with gratitude that their case is not harder than it is.

“Besides these elements of peace in the Holy Souls there are others which consist in or result from their condition in itself. We all know what are the dangers to peace in this life dangers so many and so great that it seems almost impossible to be at perfect peace as long as we are what we are. What a blessing we should account it to be free from all external temptation, from all molestation of the evil one, from all provocations to sin from objects external to ourselves, whether they attack us on the side of the irascible part of our nature, or whether their seductions are addressed to our concupiscence! But in the case of the Holy Souls there are no disturbances to their peace from the things which cause us pain or pleasure, which appeal to ambition, or pride, or anger, or envy, or jealousy. All the beauty in the world cannot be a danger to them, all the riches or honours of the world cannot even seem to them desirable, much less be the occasion of serious temptation. But there is a more interior cause of unrest in us in our present condition, without which the external allurement to sin would not have any power to molest us. This is the interior division in ourselves, the struggle of the spirit against the flesh, of reason and conscience against passion and concupiscence, of the lower part of our nature, as we call it, against the higher, the struggle which makes us feel that we have traitors in our own camp, and produces a sense of insecurity which is destructive of all perfect peace. It is in this internal conflict and division that our great danger to sin consists, and so our great cause for perpetual anxiety and watchfulness. But all this is at an end for the Holy Souls. They have no external temptation and no interior conflict, and their state may well be compared to that of the calm lake, which was, as it were, charmed into preternatural repose and absolute tranquillity by the words of our Lord when He commanded the winds and the waves, and they obeyed Him.”

— Henry James Coleridge, The Prisoner of the King: Thoughts on the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory (1889), p. 165

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord; and let perpetual light shine upon them.

May they rest in peace. Amen.

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