What happens to the soul at the moment of death?
Defined dogma What the Church holds
At death the time of merit and conversion ends, and each soul is judged at once: it goes to Heaven (at once or after purification) or to Hell. The Particular Judgement is personal and immediate; the General Judgement at the end of the world reverses nothing, but makes everything manifest.
Private revelation What the saints and mystics report
The accounts give three pictures of the moment that do not quite agree: a courtroom with accusers and Our Lady pleading; a light in which the soul sees itself and goes to its purification of its own accord; and an anticipated judgement such as St Faustina’s “one day of fire”. A striking number turn on one act of perfect contrition in a sudden death.
Accounts that bear on this
- FAU-03St Faustina: §36: before God's judgement seat she is told "one day of fire in purgatory" and offered a short suffering on earth …
- VIS-01The Portuguese visionary: Watching an adolescent die: he hears no sentence; the soul, seeing its sins in God's holiness, withdraws to …
- MED-41St Bridget: Bridget watches a soldier's judgement, sense by sense; Mary obtains him mitigation
- EMO-83Marie-Denise: Sr Marie-Denise (Visitation): the duellist prince saved by contrition but sentenced "until the Day of Judgment"; her …
- EMO-84Leonarde Collin: Leonarde Collin (Dole, 1629), dead seventeen years, nurses her niece Hugette Roy for fourteen days as a girl in …