"This holy soul found herself, while still in the flesh, placed by the fiery love of God in Purgatory, which burnt her, cleansing whatever in her needed cleansing, to the end that when she passed from this life she might be presented to the sight of God, her dear love."

 

 

So begins St. Catherine of Genoa's revelations about Purgatory, which have for 500 years now been treated with gratitude and reverence by theologians, spiritual writers, and the Church Herself

. . . since official Church teachings tell us little more about Purgatory than that it's a place where souls undergo purification by cleansing fire to attain the holiness necessary to enter Heaven.

 

*

In such circumstances, reliable eyewitness testimony is treasured, even when, as in Catherine's case, it is brief: you can read the whole transcript in less than an hour.

 

Fire of Love book jacket


Yet in that hour you'll encounter a soul of such rare intensity and divine simplicity that you'll close the book convinced that a whole shelf of volumes couldn't focus on the subject with the precision that Catherine brings to it, nor could they match her depth and comprehensiveness.

 

Indeed,
in Fire of Love,
each sentence is a meditation itself.

 

For Catherine does not speak the dry language of the theologian: hers is the passionate language of a strong, holy, observant woman who suddenly found herself --- while still in the flesh ---- placed by God in Purgatory where, by means of its cleansing fires, she came to know and to understand the state of the souls there.



*

And what did
she see?

 

Contrary to so many other accounts, among the suffering she found no hungry souls yearning to break free to wander the Earth reproaching friends for dissolute lives . . .

 

. . . no ghostly hands reaching out from unquiet graves.

 

 

*

On the contrary, Catherine saw that the eyes of the souls in Purgatory are lifted solely toward God alone, intent only on His goodness, which is drawing them ever closer to Him.


 

Oh, sure, reports Catherine:
there's fire in Purgatory,
even pains equal to
those of Hell.

But as happens with a woman in childbirth, with that great pain comes even greater happiness, as the new Birth approaches.

 

Says Catherine:

"I believe that no happiness can be found worthy to be compared with that of the souls in Purgatory except that of the Saints in Paradise.

"And that day-by-day this happiness grows as God flows into souls, more and more as a hindrance to his entrance is consumed, and as more and more the soul opens itself up to the divine inflowing."

 

Which is why the souls in Purgatory would never wander the earth like zombies, or choose to leave --- even for an instant --- the purifying fires that draw them ever upward and closer to God.

 

 

 

*

Yet even today, superstitious Catholics continue to embroider Purgatory with lurid tales of the souls in Purgatory as zombie-like creatures with eyes turned earthward rather than toward God.

But
"God don't make
no zombies."

 

*

St. Catherine's revelations confirm that in such ghoulish notions there's more of Hollywood than holiness

. . . a fact made clear by contrasting such creepy tales with the serene, supernatural beauty of what God revealed to Catherine in Fire of Love.

 

Mary Queen of Heave and the souls in purgatory

 

Contents:

1. Charity in Purgatory

2. Happiness in Purgatory

3. Our Need for Purgatory

4. Repentance in Purgatory

5. God's Will in Purgatory

6. Spiritual Hunger in Purgatory

7. Hell and Purgatory

8. Mercy in Purgatory

9. The Fire of Love in Purgatory

10. Purification in Purgatory

11. Sins Revealed in Purgatory

12. Happiness in Purgatory

13. Justice in Purgatory

14. Contentment in Purgatory

15. A Warning from Purgatory

16. Joyful suffering in Purgatory

17. Purgatory Suffered in This Life

 

But don't take my word for it.

Get a copy of Fire of Love now, and finally put behind you all childish notions of Purgatory from your youth.

 

Fire of Love book jacket

St. Catherine of Genoa's
Fire of Love
96 pages $5.95
Former title:
A Treatise on Purgatory

 

You may also be interested in:

 

Mystery book on
'End Times' reappears
--- Beloved by St. Thérèse of Lisieux!

 


Fin du Monde (title page)

 

It's one of those books that come out of nowhere --- almost literally --- just when the world needs it most.


Is it all correct --- what it reveals about the future, both for the world and the soul?

From the vantage point of earth, who can say? It is written by a human.

But a great saint --- Thérèse of Lisieux --- was so taken by this book that it spurred her entry into the convent.

St. Therese

"Reading this book was one of the greatest graces of my life," she says.

"The impression I received from it is too intimate and too sweet for me to express. All the great truths of religion, the mysteries of eternity, plunged into my soul a happiness not of this earth."

(It was while reading this book that Thérèse asked her father's permission to enter the convent.)

*
Completed in 1881 by Fr. Charles Arminjon, an aged French priest, Fin du Monde Présent et Mystères de la Vie Future surfaced just long enough to draw Thérèse into the convent and then, for more than a century, plunged back into obscurity.

Now, with the help of a pious devotee of St. Thérèse who spent decades searching for the original French edition, and then years translating it, we have the honor of placing before you the very first English translation of this urgent, hope-filled, and chilling work:

 

End of the Present World (book cover)

 

With pious audacity, Fr. Arminjon devotes the first chapter to the end --- the end of the world:

"Although Christ chose to leave us ignorant of the exact time of the end of the world," Fr. Arminjon says, "He deemed it fitting to give us detailed information on the matter and circumstances of this great event."

"The end of the world, Christ says, will come at time when the human race, sunk in the outermost depths of indifference, will be far from thinking about punishment and justice. It will be as in the days of Noah, when men lived without a care, built luxurious houses, and mocked Noah as he built his ark. 'Madman! Dreamer!' they cried. Then the flood came and engulfed the whole earth."

"So," writes Fr. Arminjon, "Christ warns us that the final catastrophe will take place when the world is at its most secure: civilization will be at its zenith, markets will be overflowing with money, and government stocks will never have been higher."

"Mankind, wallowing in an unprecedented material prosperity, will have ceased to hope for heaven. Crudely attached to the pleasures of life, man, like the miser in the gospel, will say "My soul, you possess goods to last for many years. Eat, drink and be merry."

 

Has that dread day
finally arrived?

"Unprecedented material prosperity"? We've enjoyed it for decades, building the "luxurious houses" Fr. Arminjon speaks of. The world's "markets have been overflowing with money" --- until the crisis slammed us last year like a tsunami come from nowhere.

Is this the end?

Fr. Arminjon reminds us that "the present world, precisely because it was created, necessarily tends toward its conclusion and end." And, indeed, all around us we see perishing the world we have known for generations.

Is this the end?

Fr. Arminjon claims no special knowledge, nor is he a sensation-monger. On the contrary, he insists that we "steer clear of every perilous opinion, relying neither upon dubious revelations nor upon apocryphal prophecies, and making no assertion that is not justified by the doctrine of the Fathers and of Tradition."

Which is precisely what makes this book so chilling for the sober-minded among us: Fr. Arminjon's conclusions are grounded in the Fathers of the Church, Tradition, and the Bible.

He always speaks with thoughtfulness and prayerful prudence: which is why these pages moved Thérèse so completely, and why they will lead you, too, to share so many of his conclusions about the end of the present world, the Antichrist, Purgatory, Hell, the importance of Christian sacrifice, the role of suffering in salvation, and the mysteries of eternity that Father so ably illuminates here.

*
Finally, you'll be grateful that Fr. Arminjon does not merely sketch the darkness ahead; he paints as well a vivid picture of the sweet means Jesus has given us to fill that darkness with light; and of the rich bounty He has in store for all who stay faithful.

It is the sweetness of this book that caught St. Thérèse up in a fervent love of God and nourished what her biographer describes as her "impatience for the joys of Heaven and her paramount esteem for a life wholly consecrated to Divine Love."

The End of the Present World and the Mysteries of the Future Life: the book our world desperately needs, not only to show us how to read the signs of the times, but also to equip us to bear ourselves as Christians, no matter what the future brings.

 

End of the Present World (book cover)

 

Save 25%*
when you
order the set!
(*shipping not included)

 

Set of both books!

The End of the Present World and the Mysteries of the Future Life
by Fr. Charles Arminjon.
336 pgs ppbk $17.95

 

 

Contents:

1.
The End of the World:
The Signs that Will Precede and the Circumstances That Will Accompany It

2.
The Persecution by the Antichrist and the Conversion of the Jews

3.
The Resurrection of the Dead and the General Judgment

4.
The Place of Immortal Life and the State of Glorified Bodies after the Resurrection

5.
Purgatory

6.
Eternal Punishment and the Unfortunate Destiny

7.
Eternal Beatitude and the Supernatural Vision of God

8.
Christian Sacrifice, the Means of Redemption

9.
The Mystery of Suffering in its Relationship with the Future Life


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