Sheen, Lewis, and Ratzinger
January 31, 2026
key words; attention economy, God economy, accidental glory
Purgatory Files; Sheen, Lewis, and Ratzinger
Fulton Sheen: “As we enter Heaven, we will see them, so many of them coming toward us and thanking us. We will ask ‘who are [you]?’ and they will say ‘a poor soul you prayed for in Purgatory’.”
I believe that deep inside, the understanding of Purgatory always held a special place and truly resonated at my core. How detached we become from our core, our Imago Dei, in this noisy world. We find ourselves in an attention economy. The destructive forces that vie for our consciousness are great.
We no longer hear of, or understand, the ‘God Economy’. Translated from the Greek, oikonomia, household law for the administration and carrying out of God’s eternal purpose.
I wonder how it has taken sixty-plus years to free my will with this act of volition. To allow attachment to souls who have been calling out. Thank you, Sr. Colette, for speaking into this reality. For inspiring connection and exceptional friendships; the church suffering.
Sue Tassone tells us that we cannot know, in this lifetime, such an intense magnitude of friendship as we can have, now, with these souls. I have found this to be emotionally, spiritually, temporally and tangibly true. This level of closeness and devotion was previously unknown to me. Our time on earth may, or may not, be shared. Our destiny is.
CS Lewis: “Our souls demand purgatory, don’t they? Would it not break the heart, if God said to us ‘it is true my son that your breath smells and your rags drip with mud and slime, but we are charitable here and no one will upbraid you with these things, nor draw away from you. Enter into joy’? Should we not reply, ‘with submission sir and if there is no objection, I’d rather be cleaned first.’ ‘It may hurt you know’. ‘Even so, sir’.”
In Letters to Malcolm, number XX, Lewis goes on to say “I assume that the process of purification will normally involve suffering. Partly from tradition; partly because most real good that has been done me in this life has involved it.”
J.R.R. Tolkien took Lewis’s love of myth and held it along side “true myth”, the story of Christ. Myth, as known by Lewis was something of a broken and shattered search for the ultimate reality; the longing of every man, for God.
Nine days after a late night conversation with his friend, Lewis converted to Christianity. “That which I had greatly feared had come upon me. I finally gave in and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps that night the most dejected and reluctant convert in England.”
Christianity, the myth that actually happened. Lewis describes, in Surprised by Joy, “the fog had lifted and the Son was now shining bright”.
Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger. A humble worker in the vineyard of The Lord. “Our lives are involved with one another, through innumerable interactions they are linked together. No one lives alone. No one sins alone. No one is saved alone.”
There is a perpetual relationship between us; the church militant, the church suffering, and the church triumphant. We pray, fervently, for the souls in purgatory. They can not pray for themselves. They can pray for us. We do not know when they finally enter paradise, but we continue to pray for them.
We also pray for the church triumphant. From those prayers, additional grace may be given them. God uses our prayers where they are most needed, be it for other souls in purgatory or to bring greater joy; accidental glory to those in Heaven. For, as St. Thomas Aquinas tells us, no prayer is ever wasted.