IT IS POSSIBLE TO AVOID PURGATORY ALTOGETHER

During the same summer that I had my first visit from a soul in Purgatory, I was getting intense teaching experience at a school in Spain that was run by a congregation of nuns. This was 21 years ago, and I was very slowly coming to piety, I was still of the arrogant disposition that the Lord ought grant my desires without my asking Him. One of the nuns, Sister M.L. was 97, and looked like a film star; she was most like Michelle Pfeiffer, and had an otherworldly glow, with perfect skin and the palest of pale blue eyes that glittered with pain. 

Sister M.L. had known torturous psychological distress, she was particularly grieved by the escalating numbers of abortions in Spain, but she offered it up with heroic persistence. She was from an exceptionally wealthy background and had not joined the convent because she had no other options; rather as a ravishing beauty she'd had the world at her feet. 

There came a late summer evening with a blazing orange sunset, I had finished my classes for the day and had gorged myself on cold gazpacho soup. Suddenly Sr. M.L. wanted to see me. She was fleet of foot, and came swiftly towards me, and pressed her rosary into my hand; such pretty turquoise gems were the beads, and a silver crucifix. As always she looked radiant, she was, however, more serious than ever and her face looked like she was hanging from the cross of mental agony. She will die in exactly 3 days is the inner locution I heard, and I knew this was going to be the last time I'd ever see her. 

I did not breathe a word to her or anyone that I'd had this premonition, but the next day, she went from being totally active and well to taking to her bed and telling the other sisters that was about to die. They were somewhat astonished because she had been totally healthy, but she protested that her Spouse was coming at the exact time and day that aligned with the message I'd heard. 

The priest came and gave her the Last Rites, and she had a peaceful passing, and even smiled for the first time in decades when her soul left to be reunited with her Spouse. A vision came before my eyes of her being received into a golden Heaven, without so much as spending a second in the purgatorial ice chambers or baths of fire. The bliss that was Sister M.L.'s eternal destiny was beyond anything that can be put into words. 

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The classic painting was executed by Niccolò Circignani II, and is in the public domain.