My Wife, Purgatory Guru

A few slim pamphlets taken from a display rack in our church’s narthex lit the fire.  My wife, a Protestant convert, curiosity piqued, stashed a few in her purse.  In the midst of a conversation about kitchen renovations, I didn’t notice.  I was too busy listening to a comparison of hardwood floors to tile.

My Wife, Purgatory Guru: Purgatory is a Frightening Concept for Protestant Converts #robertglover #comedy Share on X

A few weeks later, her curiosity still on simmer, she skimmed the book rack in the same narthex, its shelves stocked with assorted Catholic topics: salvation and damnation and everything in between.  It was the everything in between that interested my wife.  I had no idea she was about to become…

The Purgatory Guru

It seemed to happen overnight.  One book after another appeared on her end table: St. Catherine of Genoa, St. Maria Faustina Kowalska, Curly Howard…  Okay, not Curly; he was tormented enough by Moe and Larry while he was alive.

I would like a comedian’s perspective on purgatory though.  The whole topic is too frightening to contemplate.  You don’t sit around having pillow fights with the evil one.  He doesn’t join you around the campfire to sing songs and roast s’mores.  He is the campfire and you’re what gets roasted.

My wife didn’t do anything to ease my anxiety.  I entered the bedroom one afternoon to find her curled up in a fetal position.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t want to go to purgatory.”

Half paying attention, I responded, “Okay, I’ll take her.”

“I’m not talking about Colleen,” she said.  “I’m talking about purgatory.”  She sat up.  “Life after death.”

“Okay, I’m definitely not taking her then.”  Having failed at lightening the mood, I moved on.  “Be thankful if you get to go to purgatory.  At least it’s not hell.”

She sat up.  “No, you don’t understand,” she said.  “It is hell.”

Purgatory Insights

Purgatory is hell?  Maybe I was naïve, but I always imagined it as a doctor’s waiting room, stuffed with two year old magazines and around-the-clock CNN.  (You have to suffer a little.)  I didn’t imagine fire and brimstone, actual torture.  I can’t survive a summer without air conditioning and now I’ve got to burn?  How long would that last?

The way my wife explained it, purgatory is hell, only you’re renting, not buying.  You have a short-term lease on torture and suffering.  In spite of that, even though you’re experiencing the worst pain you’ve ever known, you’re supposed to be happy, because you know eventually you’re going to heaven.

“Is there any way to get out of it,” I asked her, beginning to panic.

“You can become a canonized saint.”

“That can’t be too bad.  They canonize everybody these days.  Just last week, a man helped an old lady across the street, and the Catholic Church gave him his own feast day.  Saint Oleo of Margarine, I think.”

“Laugh all you want,” she said, collapsing on the bed.  “I can’t think about it.”

“Not gonna’ work on your canonization?”

“I’m too vindictive.”

“It’s good to know your limitations.”

“I need a nap.”

“That’s it.  Start fresh in the morning.”

Maybe that was the ticket though.  Get canonized?  I’d never thought about that road to heaven before.  I figured a fiver in St. Peter’s palm at the pearly gate would get me right in.

What was holding me back?  What were my limitations?  Besides, an inability to dunk and unintelligible penmanship, I couldn’t think of any.  Perhaps, I was too modest?  I decided I’d make a list.

Limitations

On a grizzly May afternoon, I dragged a chair away from the kitchen table and plopped down, paper and pencil before me, prepared to whittle away at my flaws.  What was holding up my canonization process, besides my premature demise?  If I wanted to be a saint, I’d have to start somewhere.

I began scribbling down a few notes.  The first was my perennial problem with punctuality.  Of course, it wasn’t actually my problem.  It was mostly my wife’s, who spent half her life waiting for me to show up for appointments.  But it was a vice.

Then there was my frequent gluttony.  I’d load up a plate with enough slop to fill a pig’s trough, and then go back for seconds.  I’d only stop when I couldn’t raise up out of my chair for another helping, and spend the next twenty minutes groaning in misery.

What goes along with eating too much?  How about drinking too much?  After all, you needed something to wash down all that food with.  Beer, wine, spirits: it didn’t matter.  I was always good for one too many.

As long as I was going through the vices, how about sloth?  Some days, I just didn’t get a darn thing done.  (I was always putting off writing my blog, for example.)  I needed to accomplish more.

The list kept growing and the prospect of sainthood was becoming more daunting by the minute.  Maybe there was a shortcut?  A way to do good without doing good?  Without doing anything?  A way to make it easier for other people to do good in my stead?

It would be easier to write a check.  Hey, wait a minute…

The Canonization Process

Could it be that easy?  Was it possible?  Why not?  They were the professional do-gooders.  It was their job.  Why not pay them to do the work they loved to do?  I could become a surrogate saint.  They would do all of the good works, and I would get the praise.

“Mr. Glover, thank you for your check.”

“Mr. Glover, we’re so grateful for your donation.”

“Mr. Glover, you are a saint.”

Yes, that was the one!  A saint.  After writing out a check to the ALS Association and Michael J. Fox Parkinson’s Foundation (neurological disorders scare me to death), I figured I was well on my way to beatification.  One more check to the local soup kitchen, and I could feel the angel’s wings growing out of my shoulder blades.  I could practically fly.

An Alternative Solution

My wife, however had arrived at another solution, which she sprang on me at two-thirty on a Tuesday morning as I lay fast asleep.  After reading the latest book from Susan Tassone, she grabbed my shoulder and rattled me like a maraca.

“I want thirty Gregorian masses said for me.”

My mind was murkier than an unfiltered hefeweiss, which I’d drunk several of before bed.  “Now?”

“No, when I die.  According to Pope Saint Gregory the Great, if you have thirty Gregorian masses said, you get out of purgatory.”

“You truly are the purgatory guru now.”  I closed my eyes and was ready to conk out.  I was concerned about the afterlife, but I needed sleep.

Then she said the magic words: “It costs three hundred dollars.”

I sat up.  “Can I write a check?”