WHY OUR LORD IS LESS LIKELY TO FREE THE SOUL OF A PRIEST OR NUN FROM PURGATORY

My all time favorite French saint is Margaret Mary Alacoque. While she is best known for receiving from Our Lord the devotion to His Sacred Heart, she also had a red-hot zeal to help the souls in Purgatory. Once Our Lord revealed to her that He is more likely to free the soul of a  layperson than the soul of a priest or nun. 

On one occasion when Margaret Mary heard of the death of three people - two people who had been in religious life and one who had been a layperson - she committed herself to prayer for them. Our Lord was impressed by Margaret Mary's generosity. On the first day of a new year Our Lord appeared to her and gave her a vision of the three souls in the fire boxes of Purgatory. It so happened that it was the first day of a new year. "My daughter, as New Year's gift, I give you the deliverance of one of these three souls, and I leave the choice to you. Which shall I release?" Margaret Mary was humbled by His offer, "Who am I, Lord, to say who deserves the preference? Deign Yourself to make the choice." 

Margaret Mary then saw Our Lord deliver the layperson. Then He explained that He was not as moved to compassion and therefore clemency by the sight of priests and nuns suffering because they had had greatly more opportunities to make satisfaction for their sins during their mortal life than people in the world.  

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I first learned this in Schouppe's Purgatory, and Schouppe found it in Jean Joseph Languet's marvelous biography of Margaret Mary. 

Stained glass of St Margaret Mary in St Matthew Church, Monroe, Los Angeles