“You are only saved because you are crucified with Christ and no longer live. You have to put off your old self in order to be made new in Christ.”

The reward is ecstatic union beyond our imagination, for sure, gratuitously given and undeserved by anyone, but the process is and will be painfully purgative, here and hereafter. Comfort is not a concept that springs to my mind in any of this, except perhaps in the context of the virtue of hope, an uncontroversial good, 'keeping man from discouragement; sustaining him during times of abandonment...'

Wood is a convert to Catholicism of only 8 years, fired up with its practices accordingly, and I think, John, if you told him face to face that he actually wasn't really a Catholic because he entertained views in common with certain Church fathers and saints, that St Paul really meant what he said eg in 1 Corinthians 15, he might be more bemused than offended.