“THIS will cause acute pain, greater pain than we have ever known; it will be like a sword going right through the heart. Were death still possible we would die for sorrow, but death is over and we have to bear it, till God relieves us. When Christ was in agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, He sweated blood and the drops of His blood fell on the ground. There was then no bodily pain, but only mental sorrow: ‘My soul is sorrowful unto death,’ He had said on entering the garden. He writhed in agony, and, prostrate on the ground, He pleaded: ‘Father, all things are possible unto Thee; let this chalice pass away; yet not My will but Thine be done.’ A picture ‘ indeed of our sorrows in purgatory, when our souls, shall be sorrowful unto death, when mere bodily death would be a welcome respite, when we would be willing to die a thousand times if thereby we could reach God one instant sooner.”

— J.P. Arendzen,. Purgatory and Heaven (Sheed and Ward, 1960)

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