Purgatory: Shedding for the Wedding
by Fr. Conor McDonough OP
Hymn
from the Office for the Dead
1. Remember those, O Lord,
Who in your peace have died,
Yet may not gain love’s high reward
Till love is purified.
With you they faced death’s night,
Sealed with your victory sign.
Soon may the splendour of your light
On them for ever shine.
Sweet is their pain, yet deep,
Till perfect love is born;
Their lone night-watch they gladly keep
Before your radiant morn.
Your love is their great joy;
Your will their one desire;
As finest gold without alloy
Refine them in love’s fire.
For them we humbly pray:
Perfect them in your love.
O may we share eternal day
With them in heaven above.
Scripture
passages
2.
By the grace God has given me, I laid a
foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one
should build with care. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one
already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on this foundation using
gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, their work will be shown for
what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with
fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. If what has
been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. If it is burned up, the
builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping
through the flames (1 Corinthians 3:10-15).
3.
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through
the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that
can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you,
who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation
that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In all this you greatly rejoice,
though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of
trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater
worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in
praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed (1 Peter 1:7).
4.
After the battle Judas led his men to the town of
Adullam. It was the day before the Sabbath, so they purified themselves
according to Jewish custom and then observed the holy day. By the following day
it was urgent that they gather up the bodies of the men who had been killed in
battle and bury them in their family tombs. But on each of the dead, hidden
under their clothes, they found small images of the gods worshiped in Jamnia,
which the Law forbids Jews to wear. Everyone then knew why these men had been
killed. So they praised the ways of the Lord, the just judge, who reveals what
is hidden, and they begged him that this sin might be completely blotted out.
Then, Judas, that great man, urged the people to keep away from sin, because
they had seen for themselves what had happened to those men who had sinned. He
also took up a collection from all his men, totalling about four pounds of
silver, and sent it to Jerusalem to provide for a sin offering. Judas did
this noble thing because he believed in the resurrection of the dead. If he
had not believed that the dead would be raised, it would have been foolish and
useless to pray for them. In his firm and devout conviction that all of God's
faithful people would receive a wonderful reward, Judas made provision for a
sin offering to set free from their sin those who had died [...]. It is
therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be
loosed from sins (2 Maccabees 12:38-46).
5.
I did not see a temple in the city, because the
Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun
or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb
is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth
will bring their splendour into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for
there will be no night there. The glory and honour of the nations will be
brought into it. Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who
does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in
the Lamb’s book of life (Revelation 21:22-27(.
Catechism
of the Catholic Church
6. 1030 All who die in God's
grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of
their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to
achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven.
1031 The Church gives the
name Purgatory to this final purification of the elect, which is
entirely different from the punishment of the damned (Council of Florence,
1439). The Church formulated her doctrine of faith on Purgatory especially at
the Councils of Florence and Trent. the tradition of the Church, by reference
to certain texts of Scripture, speaks of a cleansing fire (cf. 1
Corinthians 3:15; 1 Peter 7)
As for certain lesser
faults, we must believe that, before the Final Judgment, there is a purifying
fire. He who is truth says that whoever utters blasphemy against the Holy
Spirit will be pardoned neither in this age nor in the age to come (cf. Matthew
12:32). From this sentence we understand that certain offenses can be forgiven
in this age, but certain others in the age to come (St Gregory the Great
[c. 540-604], Dialogues).
1032 This teaching is
also based on the practice of prayer for the dead, already mentioned in
Sacred Scripture: “Therefore Judas Maccabeus] made atonement for the dead, that
they might be delivered from their sin” (2 Maccabees 12:46). From the beginning
the Church has honoured the memory of the dead and offered prayers in suffrage
for them, above all the Eucharistic sacrifice, so that, thus purified, they may
attain the beatific vision of God (Council of Lyons, 1274). The Church also
commends almsgiving, indulgences, and works of penance undertaken on behalf of
the dead:
Let us help and
commemorate them. If Job's sons were purified by their father's sacrifice, why
would we doubt that our offerings for the dead bring them some consolation? Let
us not hesitate to help those who have died and to offer our prayers for them (St John Chrysostom, c.
349-407).
Council of
Lyons (1274)
7. Because if [those who sin
after baptism] die truly repentant in charity before they have made
satisfaction by worthy fruits of penance for (sins) committed and omitted,
their souls are cleansed after death by purgatorical or purifying punishments
[...]. And to relieve punishments of this kind, the offerings of the living
faithful are of advantage to these, namely, the sacrifices of Masses, prayers,
alms, and other duties of piety, which have customarily been performed by the
faithful for the other faithful according to the regulations of the Church.
However, the souls of those who after having received holy baptism have
incurred no stain of sin whatever, also those souls who, after contracting the
stain of sin, either while remaining in their bodies or being divested of them,
have been cleansed, as we have said above, are received immediately into
heaven.
Council of
Florence (1439)
8. Also, if truly penitent
people die in the love of God before they have made satisfaction for acts and
omissions by worthy fruits of repentance, their souls are cleansed after death
by cleansing pains; and the suffrages of the living faithful avail them in
giving relief from such pains, that is, sacrifices of masses, prayers,
almsgiving and other acts of devotion which have been customarily performed by
some of the faithful for others of the faithful in accordance with the church's
ordinances.
Council of
Trent (1563)
9. The Catholic Church,
instructed by the Holy Spirit and in accordance with sacred Scripture and the
ancient Tradition of the Fathers, has taught in the holy Councils and most
recently in this ecumenical Council that there is a purgatory and that the
souls detained there are helped by the acts of intercession (suffragia) of the
faithful, and especially by the acceptable sacrifice of the altar. Therefore
this holy Council commands the bishops to strive diligently that the sound
doctrine of purgatory, handed down by the Holy Fathers and the sacred Councils,
be believed by the faithful and that it be adhered to, taught and preached
everywhere. But let the more difficult and subtle questions which do not make
for edification and, for the most part, are not conducive to an increase of
piety (cf. I Tim. 1:4), be excluded from the popular sermons to uneducated
people. Likewise they should not permit opinions that are doubtful and tainted
with error to be spread and exposed. As for those things that belong to the
realm of curiosity or superstition, or smack of dishonourable gain, they should
forbid them as scandalous and injurious to the faithful.
Church
Fathers
10. We offer sacrifices for
the dead on their birthday anniversaries (Tertullian, The Crown, c.
211).
11.
A
woman, after the death of her husband . . . prays for his soul and asks that he
may, while waiting, find rest; and that he may share in the first resurrection.
And each year, on the anniversary of his death, she offers the sacrifice
(Tertullian, Monogamy, c. 216).
12.
Then
we make mention also of those who have already fallen asleep: first, the
patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs, that through their prayers and
supplications God would receive our petition; next, we make mention also of the
holy fathers and bishops who have already fallen asleep, and, to put it simply,
of all among us who have already fallen asleep, for we believe that it will
be of very great benefit to the souls of those for whom the petition is carried
up, while this holy and most solemn sacrifice is laid out (Cyril of
Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, c. 350).
13.
There
is an ecclesiastical discipline, as the faithful know, when the names of the
martyrs are read aloud in that place at the altar of God, where prayer is not
offered for them. Prayer, however, is offered for other dead who are
remembered. It is wrong to pray for a martyr, to whose prayers we ought
ourselves be commended (Augustine, Sermon 159, c. 411).
14.
Temporal
punishments are suffered by some in this life only, by some after death, by some
both here and hereafter, but all of them before that last and strictest
judgment (Augustine, City of God 21, c. 419).
15.
That
there should be some fire even after this life is not incredible, and it can be
inquired into and either be discovered or left hidden whether some of the
faithful may be saved, some more slowly and some more quickly in the greater or
lesser degree in which they loved the good things that perish, through a
certain purgatorial fire (Augustine, Handbook on
Faith, Hope, and Charity 18, c. 421).
16.
The
time which interposes between the death of a man and the final resurrection
holds souls in hidden retreats, accordingly as each is deserving of rest or of
hardship, in view of what it merited when it was living in the flesh. Nor can
it be denied that the souls of the dead find relief through the piety of their
friends and relatives who are still alive, when the Sacrifice of the Mediator
[Mass] is offered for them, or when alms are given in the Church. But these
things are of profit to those who, when they were alive, merited that they
might afterward be able to be helped by these things. There is a certain manner
of living, neither so good that there is no need of these helps after death,
nor yet so wicked that these helps are of no avail after death (Augustine, Handbook
on Faith, Hope, and Charity 29, c. 421).
17. While she was sick, she fainted
one day, and was unconscious a short time. We hurried up to her; but she soon
regained her senses, and gazing on me and my brother as we stood by her, she said
to us as if looking for something, “Where was I?” Then looking intently at us
stupefied with grief, “Bury your mother here”. I kept silence and fought back
my tears; but my brother as if to cheer her up, said that he hoped she would be
buried in her home country, not in a foreign land. When she heard that, her
face became worried and her eyes looked at him in reproach that he should think
that. She looked in my direction and said, “See how he talks”, and soon said to
both of us, “Lay this body anywhere, let not the care for it trouble you at
all. This only I ask, that you will remember me at the Lord's altar, wherever
you be”. And when she had given forth this opinion in such words as she could,
she was silent, being in pain with her increasing sickness (Augustine, Confessions
9.11).
Pope
Benedict, Spe Salvi
18. 45. This early Jewish
idea of an intermediate state includes the view that these souls are not simply
in a sort of temporary custody but, as the parable of the rich man illustrates,
are already being punished or are experiencing a provisional form of bliss.
There is also the idea that this state can involve purification and healing
which mature the soul for communion with God. The early Church took up these
concepts, and in the Western Church they gradually developed into the doctrine
of Purgatory. We do not need to examine here the complex historical paths
of this development; it is enough to ask what it actually means. With death,
our life-choice becomes definitive—our life stands before the judge. Our
choice, which in the course of an entire life takes on a certain shape, can
have a variety of forms. There can be people who have totally destroyed their
desire for truth and readiness to love, people for whom everything has become a
lie, people who have lived for hatred and have suppressed all love within
themselves. This is a terrifying thought, but alarming profiles of this type
can be seen in certain figures of our own history. In such people all would be
beyond remedy and the destruction of good would be irrevocable: this is what we
mean by the word Hell. On the other hand there can be people who are utterly
pure, completely permeated by God, and thus fully open to their
neighbours—people for whom communion with God even now gives direction to their
entire being and whose journey towards God only brings to fulfilment what they
already are.
46. Yet we know from experience that neither case
is normal in human life. For the great majority of people—we may
suppose—there remains in the depths of their being an ultimate interior
openness to truth, to love, to God. In the concrete choices of life, however,
it is covered over by ever new compromises with evil—much filth covers purity,
but the thirst for purity remains and it still constantly re-emerges from all
that is base and remains present in the soul. What happens to such
individuals when they appear before the Judge? Will all the impurity they have
amassed through life suddenly cease to matter? What else might occur? Saint
Paul, in his First Letter to the Corinthians, gives us an idea of the differing
impact of God's judgement according to each person's particular circumstances.
He does this using images which in some way try to express the invisible,
without it being possible for us to conceptualize these images—simply because
we can neither see into the world beyond death nor do we have any experience of
it. Paul begins by saying that Christian life is built upon a common
foundation: Jesus Christ. This foundation endures. If we have stood firm on this
foundation and built our life upon it, we know that it cannot be taken away
from us even in death. Then Paul continues: “Now if any one builds on the
foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each man's work
will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed
with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the
work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a
reward. If any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself
will be saved, but only as through fire” (1 Cor 3:12-15). In this text, it is
in any case evident that our salvation can take different forms, that some
of what is built may be burned down, that in order to be saved we personally
have to pass through “fire” so as to become fully open to receiving God and
able to take our place at the table of the eternal marriage-feast.
47. Some recent theologians are of the opinion
that the fire which both burns and saves is Christ himself, the Judge and
Saviour. The encounter with him is the decisive act of judgement. Before his
gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with him, as it burns us,
transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves. All that we
build during our lives can prove to be mere straw, pure bluster, and it
collapses. Yet in the pain of this encounter, when the impurity and sickness of
our lives become evident to us, there lies salvation. His gaze, the touch of
his heart heals us through an undeniably painful transformation “as through
fire”. But it is a blessed pain, in which the holy power of his love sears
through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus
totally of God. In this way the inter-relation between justice and grace also
becomes clear: the way we live our lives is not immaterial, but our defilement
does not stain us for ever if we have at least continued to reach out towards
Christ, towards truth and towards love. Indeed, it has already been burned away
through Christ's Passion. At the moment of judgement we experience and we
absorb the overwhelming power of his love over all the evil in the world and in
ourselves. The pain of love becomes our salvation and our joy. It is clear that
we cannot calculate the “duration” of this transforming burning in terms of the
chronological measurements of this world. The transforming “moment” of this
encounter eludes earthly time-reckoning—it is the heart's time, it is the time
of “passage” to communion with God in the Body of Christ. The judgement of God
is hope, both because it is justice and because it is grace. If it were merely
grace, making all earthly things cease to matter, God would still owe us an
answer to the question about justice—the crucial question that we ask of history
and of God. If it were merely justice, in the end it could bring only fear to
us all. The incarnation of God in Christ has so closely linked the two
together—judgement and grace—that justice is firmly established: we all work
out our salvation “with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12). Nevertheless grace
allows us all to hope, and to go trustfully to meet the Judge whom we know as
our “advocate”, or parakletos (cf. 1 Jn 2:1).
48. A further point must be mentioned here,
because it is important for the practice of Christian hope. Early Jewish
thought includes the idea that one can help the deceased in their intermediate
state through prayer (see for example 2 Macc 12:38-45; first century BC). The
equivalent practice was readily adopted by Christians and is common to the
Eastern and Western Church. The East does not recognize the purifying and
expiatory suffering of souls in the afterlife, but it does acknowledge various
levels of beatitude and of suffering in the intermediate state. The souls of
the departed can, however, receive “solace and refreshment” through the
Eucharist, prayer and almsgiving. The belief that love can reach into the
afterlife, that reciprocal giving and receiving is possible, in which our
affection for one another continues beyond the limits of death—this has been a
fundamental conviction of Christianity throughout the ages and it remains a
source of comfort today. Who would not feel the need to convey to their
departed loved ones a sign of kindness, a gesture of gratitude or even a
request for pardon? Now a further question arises: if “Purgatory” is simply
purification through fire in the encounter with the Lord, Judge and Saviour,
how can a third person intervene, even if he or she is particularly close to
the other? When we ask such a question, we should recall that no man is an
island, entire of itself. Our lives are involved with one another, through
innumerable interactions they are linked together. No one lives alone. No one
sins alone. No one is saved alone. The lives of others continually spill over
into mine: in what I think, say, do and achieve. And conversely, my life spills
over into that of others: for better and for worse. So my prayer for another is
not something extraneous to that person, something external, not even after
death. In the interconnectedness of Being, my gratitude to the other—my prayer
for him—can play a small part in his purification. And for that there is no
need to convert earthly time into God's time: in the communion of souls simple
terrestrial time is superseded. It is never too late to touch the heart of
another, nor is it ever in vain. In this way we further clarify an important
element of the Christian concept of hope. Our hope is always essentially also
hope for others; only thus is it truly hope for me too. As Christians we should
never limit ourselves to asking: how can I save myself? We should also ask:
what can I do in order that others may be saved and that for them too the star
of hope may rise? Then I will have done my utmost for my own personal salvation
as well.
Resources
- Michael Root, Purgatory: Good News for Most of Us, https://soundcloud.com/thomisticinstitute/purgatory-good-news-for-most-of-us-michael-root
- Scott Hahn, Purgatory: Holy Fire, https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/religion-and-philosophy/apologetics/purgatory-holy-fire.html
- Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi.html
- C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
- Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio