The Place of Departed Souls

Souls that depart from their bodies at death areas signed to certain corporeal places. However, these souls are not present in a place by quantity or dimension, as bodies are, for the souls are spirits and have no quantity or dimensions of their own. But a spirit can be in a place in a manner proper to itself. We rightly say that the souls of the departed are in heaven and purgatory and hell. And these terms mean places aswell as states.

The assignment of a departed soul to its place occur sat the instant it is severed from its body. Souls fit for heaven,go there; souls in mortal sin are, by their own free choice and decision, assigned to hell; souls in God’s grace but unreadyfor heaven are detained in purgatory. For it may be, and doubtlessoften is, that a soul at the moment of death, even if free from mortal sin, is in venial sin, or has yet to pay some temporal punishment due to forgiven sins, and perhaps has upon it the remains of sin. Now, the soul that labors under these burdens isnot fit for heaven (which is for those without spot or wrinkle, andis the place and state into which nothing defiled can enter),and still such a soul does not deserve the eternal pains of hell. Such a soul labors under an obstacle that must be first removed before it can enter heaven. As a body lighter than air tends to fly upward, but is prevented from reaching its true level by anoverhanging obstacle, so the soul in purgatory is blocked by its burdens from ascending into heaven; it remains in purgatory until the preventing obstacle is removed by enduring the penalties of its state or by prayers and suffrages offered on its behalf.

Heaven, hell, and purgatory are places and states. No soul in heaven or in hell may ever leave its state, but itis possible by divine dispensation that a soul may leave its place and come in apparition before the eyes of people on earth.

Before the redemption, all the departed souls were said to be in hell. This was a general term, like our own expression,“the hereafter.” Or we may say that the hell of the older time had two departments: the limbo of the just, and the hell of lost souls.

The limbo of the just was known as “the limbo ofthe fathers,” that is of holy men (such as the patriarchs, and Job, and St. Joseph) who died before our Lord’s Resurrection and Ascension. It is possible that the limbo of the fathers and the hell of eternal punishment were in the same place, but they were not the same state. For the fathers suffered only their unfulfilled longing for heaven, and not a pain of sense.

The limbo of children is the state and place ofunbaptized children who have original sin only. As to place, this may be the same as the limbo of the fathers,but it is not the same state. In the limbo of children there is no suffering whatever.

Thus we distinguish the abodes of departed souls:heaven, hell, purgatory, the limbo of children. The limbo of the fathers ceased to exist when our Lord ascended into heaven carrying with him the souls of all the just who were awaiting that glad hour in the limbo of the fathers.