“On the following day, since the task had now become urgent, Judas and his men went to gather up the bodies of the slain and bury them with their kinsmen in their ancestral tombs. But under the tunic of each of the dead they found amulets sacred to the idols of Jamnia, which the law forbids the Jews to wear. So it was clear to all that this was why these men had been slain. They all therefore praised the ways of the Lord, the just judge who brings to light the things that are hidden. Turning to supplication, they prayed that the sinful deed might be fully blotted out. The noble Judas warned the soldiers to keep themselves free from sin, for they had seen with their own eyes what had happened because of the sin of those who had fallen. He then took up a collection among all his soldiers, amounting to two thousand silver drachmas, which he sent to Jerusalem to provide for an expiatory sacrifice. In doing this he acted in a very excellent and noble way, inasmuch as he had the resurrection of the dead in view; for if he were not expecting the fallen to rise again, it would have been useless and foolish to pray for them in death. But if he did this with a view to the splendid reward that awaits those who had gone to rest in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought. Thus he made atonement for the dead that they might be freed from this sin.”
I know that you also share a love for C.S. Lewis' writing and that you might have some light to shed on this subject. I've been reading his book, A Grief Observed, and he brings up the idea of the dead feeling the pains of separation, as the living do, and that this might be one of their purgatorial sufferings. He explains that this bereavement is an integral part of our experience of love, and that death is just another phase, not a truncation, of that experience/process. Was wondering what you think about this? I was fascinated with his intellectual reasoning, as I usually am.
It is a legitimate speculation. Nothing that has been taught dogmatically has made it something that Catholics must either accept or reject; it's an undefined question.
Besides the pain of separation from us (or feeling the pain that we feel with a new, supernatural gift of compassion), the souls in purgatory probably also feel the pain of not yet being fit to enter into union with God, the angels, and the saints. Death separates them from us; sin (or the remnants and effects of sin) separate them from final bliss.
There is an end to their suffering. It does not go on forever. God requires–and I speculate that they themselves desire–that they make amends for all of their sins and wrongdoing, but no more. There is nothing added on to their purgation other than what is necessary to make them fit for everlasting love.
That's just my guess. I haven't been there and the Church doesn't say too much about it because God has not revealed everything there is to know about the affairs of Heaven. He has given us what we need to know to get there from here.