This process of purification, though it has to begin here, is not completed here except in the case of the Saints, those rare souls who even in this life reach a union with God so advanced as to be beyond our powers to understand.  For the penitent and faithful soul, this purification is continued and finished in Purgatory where the last remaining weeds of self-centredness are uprooted and burnt in the fires of penitence.  It is then that the righteous shall shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father, for all the dark shadows in their souls will have been finally dispersed.

And what then?  That shining life of Heaven is something which we can only guess at, and know all the time that our guess must fall short, far short, of reality.  For Heaven consists, not in the absence of all that spoils this life, but in the visible Presence of God whose infinite love and goodness and beauty supply all the needs which he himself has implanted in the human soul.