pain
There are two kinds of pain: pain of loss and pain of sense.
- Pain of loss results:
- in Hell, from the eternal loss of God, whose possession alone in the Beatific Vision can completely satisfy the desire of intelligent beings for happiness
- in Purgatory, from the temporary deprivation of Him, whom the soul realizes to be the source of all happiness
- in Limbo there will be no subjective pain of loss (not an article of faith, but the opinion of Saint Thomas
- Pain of sense principally consists in the torment of fire.
The nature of this fire is not known.
New Catholic Dictionary
