Chapter XI.

The Souls In Purgatory Desire To Purified From Every Stain Of Sin-- Of The Wisdom Of God In Immediately Concealing From These Souls Their Faults.--

The soul was originally endowed with all the means of attaining its own degree of perfection, by living in conformity with the laws of God and keeping itself pure from all stain of sin. But, being contaminated by original sin, it loses its gifts and graces. It dies, and can only rise again by the assistance of God. And when he has raised it to life again by baptism, a bad inclination still remains in the soul, leading it, if unresisted, to actual sin, by which it dies anew. God raises it again by another special grace; nevertheless it remains so soiled, so fallen back upon itself, that, to be restored to the state of purity in which God created it, it has need of all the divine operations before mentioned to enable it to return to its primitive condition.

When the soul is on its way back to this state, its desire of being lost in God is so great as to become the purgatory of the soul.

Purgatory is nothing to it _as_ purgatory. The burning instinct which forces it toward God, only to find an impediment, constitutes its real torture.

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By a last act of love, God, the author of this plan for the perfection of the soul, works without the concurrence of man; for there are in the soul so many hidden imperfections that if it saw them it would be in despair. But the state of which we have just spoken destroys them all. It is only when they are obliterated that God shows them to the soul, in order that it may comprehend the divine operation wrought by this fire of love consuming all its imperfections.