vows, theologians compare them to martyrdom.
They maintain that, as a man who lays down his life for the faith
enters heaven immediately, without any detention in purgatory, so
also does a religious who dies immediately after taking his vows.
Whatever temporal punishment was due to him on account of His sins,
is entirely cancelled by that one act. And the reason they give is,
that the act of sacrificing one's self to God by the vows of religion
is, like martyrdom, one of the noblest and most heroic acts that man
can perform.

If then, virgins, as such, are rewarded with a peculiar glory in
heaven, what shall we say of the glory and splendor which surrounds
religious? For virgins make only one great sacrifice, by the practice
of perfect chastity, while religious, who make the same sacrifice,
add to this two others, namely, poverty and obedience. And experience
teaches that these two additional vows are, for most persons, far
more difficult, because they involve far more suffering and
self-denial than the mere practice of chastity. From all this it
follows, that virgins who are religious, enjoy a far higher degree of
glory in heaven than those who are not religious. It follows, also,
that religious, as such, whether virgins or not, enjoy an exceeding
glory in heaven, in virtue of the great sacrifices they have made for
God by the three vows of religion. Like Jesus, they were poor,
chaste, and obedient unto death; and like Him also, they are exalted
to the high honors of heaven.

But, although it is true that religious, as such, enjoy a high glory
in heaven, it must not be inferred that they all enjoy the same
degree of glory. There is, perhaps, not a class in heaven in which
the degrees of glory are so various. Some of them died only a few
days after taking their vows; others, on the day itself; while others
lived half a century, and more, in the practice of the most heroic
virtue. Some were called by the grace of God after a life of
worldliness and sin; while others had already reached a high degree
of sanctity when they offered their sacrifice to God. Others again,
after their consecration to God, were extremely faithful to grace,
and gave all the energies of their nature to the acquirement of
greater perfection; while others were sadly wanting in generosity to
God, and aimed at only an inferior degree of holiness. Again, some
had few or no temptations from the day upon which they took their
vows; while for others t