sin and sin, and that consequently there must be a difference in the punishment. Prayer. Release, O Lord, etc., etc. Seventeenth Day. The souls in purgatory suffer. They are sent there to suffer. They are detained there to suffer. The time of action is gone; the time of passive suffering has come. Their whole existence, or life, is, as it were, taken up with suffering. What are they suffering? Of what kind and character are their sufferings? The pains of purgatory are just the same as the torments of hell, with the exception of eternity and despair. The difference between the two is, that the pains of purgatory come to an end, and are not severed from the sweet hope of eternal happiness. Like the pains of hell, so also the pains of purgatory are of two kinds. They are the pain of loss and the pain of sense. These two kinds of pain correspond to the twofold disorder contained in every sin. For every sin is first of all an aversion or turning away from God, the highest and uncreated good—either a complete aversion as in the case of mortal sin, or a partial aversion as in the case of venial sin. Second, every sin is a conversion to, or a turning towards, a created, real or apparent good as our highest good, which is, of course, a disorderly conversion. Now this twofold inordinateness must be expiated by a twofold corresponding punishment. For wherein a man sins, says the Scripture, therein is he punished. Prayer. Release, O Lord, etc., etc. Eighteenth Day. Man sins, and thus turns away from God; the punishment, therefore, must be an eternal or temporary deprivation of God, the highest good of man. He sins, and thus turns towards a created good, and derives pleasure and satisfaction from it; the punishment, therefore, for this illicit, sensual pleasure, is the pain of sense, the pain inflicted by created things. Now fire is a pain of sense; and it is a doctrine sufficiently warranted by Scripture and tradition, that the fire of purgatory is a real fire, by which the souls are chastised and purified. The Holy Fathers explain that the greatest imaginable sufferings here on earth, the most dreadful martyrdom of the holy confessors of Christ, the worst pains of the most terrible illness, can bear no comparison with the torments and pains suffered by the poor souls in purgatory. Well known is the exclamation of St. Augustine, “Here burn, here cut, here crucify, but spare me in eternity, O God!” The sufferings of this life can be soothed by consolation, can be softened by many distractions; now and again there is a respite granted to the greatest sufferer, and time heals many woes. But the sufferings of purgatory continue without any alleviation or interruption. Prayer. Release, O Lord, etc., etc. Nineteenth Day.