I asked the Father many years ago if there was a purgatory. The Father told me that there was no such place as purgatory. The Father said, “You know my Son, purgatory is down here on earth while you are still alive. Purgatory is not after you die; it is before you die.”

Purgatory came from the word “purga”, which means to be cleansed. Filipinos know very well what “purga” means.

There is an old Filipino custom called purga, wherein a child suffering from worm infestation would be coerced to take caster oil and after this, the worm infestation would stop – all the worms would come out.

So purgatory is before you die – your Tamayong* is your purgatory. I went through purgatory in Tamayong. There, I was purged and my soul was cleansed from the serpent seed.

My commitment and dedication to follow the Father’s will was solidified because every dross in my being was burned by the fire of persecutions, hardships, afflictions and temptations, which the Father set to burn everything that’s not His will. I went through the fire in following the Father’s will and 1 Corinthians 3: 10—which says, “According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise masterbuilder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon”—was fulfilled in my life.

Of limbo and loyalty to religious beliefs

The doctrine of the limbo— which refers to a permanent status of the unbaptized who die in infancy, too young to have committed personal sins, but not having been freed from original sin—was formulated in the 13th century and it was only last April 20, 2007 that the Roman Catholic Church banished this age old doctrine.

Even before the Catholic Church formally stated that limbo does not exist, I have come to know, a very long time ago, that there was no such place as limbo.

I was a catechist before, and I asked the Father if there was really a limbo for those children and infants who died without baptism. My question to the Holy Father was “How can you ever put an innocent child— who had died at childbirth—in a place so dark that he or she would wait for eternity, because of the very fact that he was not sprinkled with water? How can You, Father, do that?”