A QUEEN IN PURGATORY

 

St Elizabeth, who was Princess of Hungary and Duchess of Thuringia (Germany), often spent long hours of the night in prayer.  Elizabeth was the daughter of King Andrew II and Queen Gertrude. When her mother died in  1220, Elizabeth was only 13. It was the year before she was to be married. Elizabeth was a single woman at the time and used her time to pray and offer much penance for her mother's soul as well as doing good works done in her mother's name. 

One dark night, Elizabeth was, as usual, asking God's mercy for sinners and souls in the next life, her mother appeared to her and instructed her to multiply her mortifications. Gertrude knelt before her teenage daughter and begged her, "My daughter, you see at your feet your mother overwhelmed with suffering. I come to implore you to multiply your suffrages, that Divine Mercy may deliver me from the frightful torments I endure. Oh! How much are those to be pitied who exercise authority over others!" 

Queen Gertrude revealed why she was in Purgatory,  "I expiate now the faults that I committed upon the throne." She made this solemn request of her daughter, "Oh, my daughter, I pray you by the pangs I endured when bringing you into the world, by the cares and anxieties that your education cost me, I conjure you to deliver me from my torments."

In honoring her mother's request that she offer pain for her release from Purgatory, Elizabeth gave herself to the harshest self-punishment, so much so she caused her body immense pain. Later on in her life, Elizabeth became one of the early 3rd Order Franciscans. But already at 13, of her free will she lashed herself like Francis lashed himself. Soon, it was revealed to her that her mother had gone to Heaven. 

In her day, Queen Gertrude held the highest office of any woman in Hungary and her decisions impacted two million subjects, the population of Hungary at the time. She was generally revered as good and holy. Yet, it is a reoccurring motif that souls who had power over others have a more exacting Purgatory and need penance to be done for their deliverance. There is sometimes a lot of heated debate as to whether we ought offer up suffering for dead leaders (the fear among people who pray is that the leader may have...gone down) but instead of chatter, there needs to be a will to give souls the suffering we can offer them, because they may have wielded great power on earth, but in Purgatory they cannot help themselves and may be in dire need. 

PS - Only a few years after she died, Elizabeth was canonized on May 25, the date St Francis was buried and the day Padre Pio was born. Many, myself included, esteem her as a founding member of the Franciscans - she was a contemporary of St Francis - and she laid the foundations of the Order that would give us Padre Pio. 

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Classic painting of St Elizabeth executed by Pietro Nelli. This was informed by Schouppe's Purgatory and my wider reading on St Elizabeth of Hungary.