The body is subject to various sorts of illness. Some are easy to treat, others are not, and for the latter, recourse is had to incisions, cauterization, bitter medicine… We are told something of the same sort about the judgment in the next world, the healing of the soul’s infirmities. If we are superficial people, that amounts to a threat and a process of severe correction, so that the fear of a painful expiation may lead us to fly from wrongdoing and become wiser people. But the faith of deeper minds regards it as a process of healing and a therapy applied by God in such a way as to bring back the being he created to its original grace.
In fact those who by incisions or cauterization remove boils or warts that have formed contrary to nature on the surface of the body, do not bring about the healing without pain; but it is not to do harm to the patient that they carry out the incision. It is the same with the ‘warts’ that have formed on our souls…at the moment of judgment they are cut out and removed by the ineffable wisdom and power of him who is, as the Gospel says, the physician of the sick.
GREGORY OF NYSSA Great Catechetical Oration, 8
