See you in hell?

CatholicLane has an excellent post about praying for souls in Purgatory.

I think too many people believe that unless you say the faithful departed are in heaven, you are consigning them to hell. The reality is that very few of us deserve either outright condemnation or outright reward. Most of us live lives of quiet mediocrity.

So it's more likely that most of us will be in Purgatory, and while that's not a goal, neither is it such a bad thing to undergo purification. It's painful, but in the same way that fasting is painful. It has a happy ending, a good outcome- it's worth it.

The more we embrace our crosses in this life, the happier we will be in the next. Life on earth makes us students of pain, and not everyone graduates summa cum laude.

Therefore it becomes so vital that we pray for sinners now and at the hour of our death. All of us need each other' prayers. We might not have flunked, but we certainly don't all do our utmost, every single day, to be heroically virtuous.