{"id":700,"date":"2007-06-26T08:32:23","date_gmt":"2007-06-26T15:32:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/?p=700"},"modified":"2016-10-11T21:55:25","modified_gmt":"2016-10-12T04:55:25","slug":"is-purgatory-like-a-novel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/is-purgatory-like-a-novel","title":{"rendered":"Is Purgatory Like a Novel?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-3984\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/Thornton_Wilder_Yale_graduation_photo_1920-196x300.jpg\" alt=\"Thornton Wilder\" width=\"196\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/Thornton_Wilder_Yale_graduation_photo_1920-196x300.jpg 196w, http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/Thornton_Wilder_Yale_graduation_photo_1920-500x764.jpg 500w, http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/Thornton_Wilder_Yale_graduation_photo_1920.jpg 541w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 196px) 100vw, 196px\" \/>What makes fiction so powerful and so poignant? Thornton Wilder sums it up in one of the most moving quotes I have ever read:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If Queen Elizabeth or Frederick the Great or Ernest Hemingway were to read their biographies, they would exclaim, &#8220;Ah, my secret is still safe.&#8221; But if Natasha Rostov were to read <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">War and Peace<\/span> she would cry out as she covered her face with her hands: &#8220;How did he know, how did he know?&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Is this what the pain of Purgatory might be like: reading the story of our life as seen by God, and finally understanding that He sees and knows all? Will we, like Natasha, cover our faces and say, &#8220;How did He know, how did He know?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Death is the moment when we realize that none of our secrets were safe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What makes fiction so powerful and so poignant? Thornton Wilder sums it up in one of the most moving quotes I have ever read: If Queen Elizabeth or Frederick the Great or Ernest Hemingway were to read their biographies, they would exclaim, &#8220;Ah, my secret is still safe.&#8221; But if Natasha Rostov were to read War and Peace she would cry out as she covered her face with her hands: &#8220;How did he know, how did he know?&#8221; Is this what the pain of Purgatory might be like:&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3984,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,10,9],"tags":[47,245,31,773,160,190,266],"class_list":["post-700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","category-spirituality","category-theology","tag-classics","tag-death","tag-literature","tag-purgatory","tag-quotes","tag-thornton-wilder","tag-war-and-peace"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/Thornton_Wilder_Yale_graduation_photo_1920.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOucj-bi","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=700"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3986,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700\/revisions\/3986"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}