Monday, November 3, 2014

St. Gregory of Nyssa: "The purging fire"

“WHEN he has quitted his body and the difference between virtue and vice is known he cannot approach God till the purging fire shall have cleansed the stains with which his soul was infested. That same fire in others will cancel the corruption of matter, and the propensity to evil.”

~St. Gregory of Nyssa. (PG 46, 524)

An Angel Frees the Souls of Purgatory, by Lodovici Carracci.
Oil on canvas, c. 1610; Pinacoteca, Vatican.