When we come to die, therefore, we have a long way to go before we are able to enter Heaven, that is, to live in the immediate visible Presence of God himself.  What is set before the soul is a continuation of its spiritual development, and that is achieved by a deepening love for God which in turn makes one’s sorrow for the sins and failures of the past all the more poignant, for there is now the realisation how one has been wounding the Saviour’s Sacred Heart – a realisation made all the more vivid by the sight of Our Blessed Lord himself before whom the soul appears at death and by whom it is then judged.

Thus that love and that sorrow, which the sight of him then kindles within the soul, together quicken and inspire the progress towards perfection of the faithful departed.  So the angel in the Dream of Gerontius described the effect of that sight of the Saviour and Judge by saying,

“And these two pains, so counter and so keen, –
The longing for Him, when thou seest Him not;
The shame of self at thought of seeing Him, –
Will be thy veriest, sharpest purgatory”. (1)

In our prayers for the faithful departed we ask that they may be given refreshment, light and peace.

Refreshment they do indeed need after the feverish interior conflict in this life with temptation and sin.  It is the spiritual counterpart of a cool draught of water from a deep well at the end of a hot and exhausting day.

Light is the growing knowledge of God and of his love and holiness, and the deepening awareness of his Presence.

Peace is the true harmony with God that comes from complete penitence and full forgiveness – one’s trust and love for him free of all doubt and wavering, one’s will happy and content to be wholly under his Sovereign rule – so that at last the soul understands St Augustine’s famous words, “Thou hast made us for Thyself, O God, and our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee”. (2)

So in refreshment, light and peace their union with God through Christ (Hebrews 10:19,20) becomes ever closer until it issues in the eternal bliss of the Beatific Vision, the enjoyment of the visible Presence of God himself.