Purifying Fires

Saintly people, having leaped, now wholly

Grateful for the purifying fires; Love;

This chasm spanned: unbelievers, scoffers,

The busy, pre-occupied, pessimists,

Skeptics of every slick stripe, cynics and

Sick; covertly and overtly sexual,

Self sustainers, successfully self-

Sufficient, the lot of them, their own end,

An untimely end but yet, gifted, oh

Those few final seconds! eternity!

For what the eyes could not conceive! visions!

Exalted and glorified! beauty! those

Lives before are seen as but slow shadows,

Contrasting now with the crisp lines of the

Reality - the realm that has always

Been and always will be: Sweet Afterlife!

A new reality unlike any

Earthly experience. vain life itself

Obscured, opaque like condensation on

Planetary glass, how did we advance?

Crossing this long bridge between death and life?

A life with God? Whoever accepted it,

Who found it within themselves during those

Fleeting, final seconds, to be strangely

Assisted - with a gentle plea - a slight

Act of loving persuasion - an offer

Made in kindness for one more, final chance -

The chance to wholeheartedly step forward,

To feel the heat, and to make the great leap:

Purifying fires of Purgatory!

Gary Edward Geraci