Is Purgatory Necessary?

Catholic belief is that purgatory is a state of being between this world and the next where a person goes when they die if they warrant heaven and is not yet in a state of perfection. Non-Catholic Christians reject the idea of purgatory and believe a person goes directly to heaven when they die. I am going to explain the Catholic teaching on purgatory so you can better understand why it is not only a very beautiful teaching, but a very necessary one as well.

In The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, senior tempter, Screwtape, refers to humans as amphibians-half spirit and half animal. As spirits we belong to the eternal world, the supernatural world, but as animals we inhabit time. This means that while our spirits can be directed to an eternal object, our bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change.

Heaven is eternal or outside of time. If time is the measurement of continual change, and there is not time in heaven, there is no change in heaven. Those in heaven do not change. God is perfect, sacrificial love. Nothing imperfect can exist in the direct presence of God. For a person to be in the direct presence of God he must be perfect as God is perfect.

When God created the angels, he made them perfect, with full knowledge of who he is. They were given free will to worship and serve God or to serve themselves. Because angels can enter heaven and stand before God in timelessness, they have to be in a state of non-change. Once an angel makes their choice it is binding on them for all eternity. This is why angels who were cast out of heaven can never receive salvation and redemption. They are cursed to hell forever.

None of us achieve perfection in this life. We are given this life to work on our perfection, that is, we were given this life to learn to love the way God loves. When we die, we still have work to do. Non-Catholic Christians believe that when we die God takes us where we are at and automatically brings us to the fulfilment of perfection. Perfected, this person is now able to enter into the presence of God in heaven.

The problem with this idea is that it nullifies free will. God respects our free will above all else for not to do so would violate his very nature. God is total, sacrificial love. Love can never be forced. For love to exist there must be a choice. Free will exists so that we can choose to love or reject God. No free will, no ability to love God in return.

This creates a dilemma with the non-Catholic Christian understanding of what happens at our deaths. When we die, we cannot stay here. If God cannot automatically bring us to the fulfillment of perfection, we are unable to behold him in heaven. If we cannot stay here and we cannot enter heaven, where do we go?

The Jews believe in a place called Sheol, or the shadow world known as the Shades. Sheol is a place of stillness and darkness. If you lived a righteous life you would go to the part of Sheol known as the Bosom of Abraham. If you lived an immoral life your soul was consigned to the abyss, or the pit of hell reserved for the devil and his demons.

The Catholic belief of purgatory is similar to Sheol. Purgatory is a place of purgation where we learn to let go of our attachments to this life. This is a place where our love is perfected until only sacrificial love remains. Purgatory is more of a state of being than a physical place. When we die our souls are separated from our bodies and it is our souls that enter into purgatory. Because there is still change there is still time but time is experienced differently. In purgatory we are transitioning from time into timelessness.

Imagine being in a completely dark room with no light. Your eyes become a custom to the dark. Then imagine that you are sudden cast into the brightest light you have ever seen. The light would be so painful to your eyes that you would clench them tightly shut. You would be in agony until your eyes had the time to adjust to the light.

Going from this world into the presence of God is much like that. We are going from the darkness of this world into light itself. God’s light is so bright that we are blinded by it no matter how tightly we try to clutch our eyes shut. Purgatory is a place that allows us to come slowly into the light, only as fast as our eyes can adjust to it.

Purgatory is a very beautiful teaching of the Church. God allows us to continue to grow closer to him even after our time here is complete. It would be so much easier if God could just snap his fingers and make us perfect like him so we can be with him in heaven without having to do a thing ourselves. But if he could do that there would be no purpose for this life. If I have to be perfect to enter heaven, and God cannot just automatically make me perfect when I die, purgatory becomes a very necessary place.

An Army of One

There once was a young man who wanted to serve his country. When he was of legal age, he joined the army and went off to boot camp. After finishing all of his training he was stationed at an army base in Germany. There he went about his day doing all of the things a soldier does, obeying the commands of the officers above him.

The young soldier, however, did not agree with the way the base was being run and with some of the things that they were required to do. He thought that he knew a better way and made suggestions to his superiors on how they should be doing things. He was reminded that he was in the army and that the army had a particular way it did things. Unable to be obedient to the oath he took when he enlisted, the young man decided to leave the army.

But the young man still wanted to serve the country he dearly loved, so he started his own militia. He modeled his militia after the army. It looked like the army. It did army things. It even used the army manual which the young man modified, removing the sections he did not agree with, and changing others to align with his personal opinion on how an army should work.

His militia attracted many people to it who wanted to serve as he did but believed that the army had gone astray and no longer served the purpose for which it was created. They believed themselves to be the true army.

And then, one day it happened. One of the men who had enlisted into the militia and was trained by the militia thought he knew a better way to run the militia. When he was told that this was the militia and that the militia had a particular way of doing things, he too, decided to set out on his own and start his own militia and run it according to his own option on what was right and true. This quickly became a trend as more and more people broke off to start their own militias based upon their own opinions on how best to serve the country. What started off as a few became hundreds, then thousands, and eventually tens of thousands.

The only thing that all of the militias can agree upon is that the army is wrong. Many believe the army to be the true enemy. Some have pulled so far away that their militia no longer resembles the army at all. On occasion, someone reads the actual army manual, the one without sections removed or pages changed, and begins to question why it is thought that the army is wrong. Seeking understanding of the truth, many leave their respective militias and join the army.

Disclaimer - This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

Or is it?

The Meaning of Life

One of the oldest pursuits of man is to find the meaning of life. Why am I here? What difference does any of it make? The Baltimore Catechism, which originated at the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1884 asks the question,

“Why did God make me?”

It answers the question with,

“God made me to know him, to love him, and to serve him in this world, and to be with him forever in heaven.”

God brings every person into this world because he wishes to be with that person forever in heaven.

When God made the angels he gave them all knowledge of who he is. Who is God? God is pure, sacrificial love. Love can never be forced upon another. Love can only be offered. This means that all persons, angelic and human, must be able to accept or reject God’s infinite love. To be able to reject God’s love there must be something other than his love to choose from. Hell exists as a choice so that love can therefore also exist. Because the angels were created with full knowledge of who God is their free will choice, once made, is binding upon them for all of eternity. The devil cannot repent of his pride and reenter heaven.

God went a different route when he created us. Mankind was created with no knowledge of who God is. God put into our hearts an infinite hole only he can fill, which creates within us the desire to know our creator. Then he slowly reveals himself to us over time. In a way, this allows us to court our God and fall in love with him. Our free will choice to accept or reject God’s love becomes binding on us at the moment of our death. God sends no one to hell. We choose hell by rejecting God’s infinite love for us. This makes the ultimate purpose of our lives to know our creator so we can freely accept the love he has for us and spend all of eternity with him in heaven.

We were created in the image and likeness of God. If God is sacrificial love, then that is the image we were created in. Because of the disobedience of our original parents, we are fallen, broken creatures. We no longer conform to the image we were created in. We have been given our time on earth to reclaim that image. Jesus is the visible image of the invisible God. If heaven at the end of our lives is the goal we desire, we need to spend our lives configuring ourselves as closely as we can to the image of Jesus. Does that mean we have to swing a hammer for a living, walk on water, or cure lepers? What does the image of Christ look like and how can we conform our lives to look like his?

The answer is three-fold.

Sacrificial love is the highest form of all love, a supernatural love. It is a love that puts the good of the other above all else. This is the love God has for the world –

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” – John 3:16

This is the love Jesus has for us –

“Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” – John 15:13

And it is this love that Jesus has commanded we have for each other –

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.” – John 3:34.

How did Jesus love us? He gave up his life as a sacrifice for us. This is the kind of love we are called to have for one another. We are to sacrifice for the good of one another. What a different world this would be if we all could put the needs of the other before our own selfish desires.

In 1 Samuel 15:23 we read,

“Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the word of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.”

Obedience is more pleasing to God than sacrifice. In fact, sacrifice would never have been necessary if our first parents were obedient to God. Sacrifice, and now penance, is only necessary because we are disobedient to God’s commands. Jesus’ obedience and sacrifice on the cross repaired the damage that is done by our disobedience and makes it possible for eternal life in heaven to be offered to us. But eternal life is only possible if we obey God’s commands. We cannot be disobedient to God and think that he will allow us to live with him in an intimate union with him for all eternity.

God gave us the Ten Commandments, commandments that flow from the very nature of God, which is sacrificial love. Jesus summarized these commandments down to two; Love God above all else, and love each other with the same love God has for us. When we follow these two commandments, we are obedient to God and our obedience is more pleasing to him than any penance we can offer.

Through his death on the cross Jesus won for us the salvation of the world and opened to us the gates of heaven. But if this is all he did for us it would not have been enough. Through the disobedience of our first parents, we became slaves to death. As slaves we needed to be ransomed back from death. Jesus’ suffering and death redeemed mankind. Redeem means to buy back. Jesus bought us back at the cost of his suffering and death. Suffering is the currency in which love is measured. You only love someone as much as you are willing to suffer for them. Ask any loving parent who has had to watch their child suffer and they will tell you that they would gladly take their place if it were possible.

Through Adam’s sin we were sold into slavery. The ransom for our freedom was set so high that no mere human could every pay it. It required God to become one of us, to offer his blood of infinite worth to free us from the bonds of slavery. As Catholics, we believe in redemptive suffering. If suffering is the currency of love, God can use our suffering to give love and grace to ourselves or others in need. Saint Paul teaches that, through the Mass the crucifixion is made present to us so we can make up in our bodies that which is lacking in crucifixion of Christ. What could possibly be lacking in the crucifixion of Christ? Quite simply, our participation in it. We are allowed to unite our suffering with that of Jesus’ and share in the redemption of mankind.

The purpose of life is therefore this: to conform our lives to the image and likeness of Jesus, to be obedient to his commands to love God and each other with sacrificial love, and to demonstrate that love through our redemptive suffering for the good of each other.