All souls in purgatory!

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God! (Matthew 5:8)

Why do we celebrate the All Souls Day? The answer is in yesterday's readings, the First and the Gospel. In the Gospel Jesus said that Blessed are the pure in heart, because they will see God. What Jesus says in this sentence is that it is the pure in heart, the holy, good the that will see God. In other words, we cannot see God without being purified, forgiven, cleansed. Purgatory is about purging, purifying, is about being readied.

In yesterday's First Reading, we heard that the holy saints were those who washed their robes and made them pure in the blood of the Lamb. It means that Jesus' blood purified those that made it to heaven.

If we get the two ideas together from the readings of yesterday, we get one idea, those who are purified by the blood of Jesus will see God. In Isaiah 6:5-7 we read: "And I said: "Woe is me! for I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts." Then flew one of the seraphim to me, having in his hand a burning coal which he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth, and said: "Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin forgiven."

This passage is a noteworthy example of what happens when men experience God's presence directly. An immediate recognition of one's own unholiness occurs, along with the corresponding feeling of inadequacy. Like Isaiah, we must all undergo a purging upon approaching God; we must be cleansed before we approach and see God because our works do follow us when we die (Rev 14:13). If those works are good they follow us; if bad, they do follow us too. It is in purgatory that the bad works we did in life are purged.