Category Archives: Purgatory

Apologetics, Eschatology, Purgatory

The Joyful Truth of Purgatory Mt 5:48

“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
-Mt 5:48

“A Joyful Truth

Purgatory Provides Consolation for Believers

Some Protestants criticize the doctrine of purgatory by saying it’s “bad news” in contrast to the “good news” of salvation revealed in the Bible. But nothing could be farther from the truth. The Catholic doctrine of purgatory is indeed good news.

Purgatory consoles believers who struggle with sin.

We’re all too familiar with our own weaknesses. Who in the world goes throughout the day without turning to a creaturely good in some inordinate way?

Perhaps it’s binging of Netflix, mindlessly scrolling through Facebook, texting when someone is trying to have a conversation with you, using clock hours on the job to browse the internet for non-work-related stuff, a snappy comment to your co-worker, friend, or spouse, a brief indulgence of an uncharitable thought, a failure to promptly meet the needs of your spouse or friend when able. The list goes on and on.

It would be pretty darn hard to go through a day without falling short of Christian perfection in some way, at least for us ordinary folks. Such a task would be heroic. Heroes are rare!

Now think about the fact that death can surprise us at any moment. Jesus says, “The Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect” (Matt. 24:44). Elsewhere, he says, “Remember then what you received and heard; keep that, and repent. If you will not awake, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come upon you” (Rev. 3:3).

If death can come upon us so quickly, and we’re as spiritually ill adjusted as we are, it would seem there’s no hope for us entering into the glory of heaven. We might not die with our wills turned fully away from God as our life’s goal, but the guilt of venial sin and the effects of sin would impede us from entering such glory. Despair of final salvation would be inevitable—that is, if purgatory weren’t real.

Purgatory remedies that despair and infuses joy within the soul. It allows believers who love Jesus but continue to struggle with sin in their lives to know that their shortcomings against Christian perfection are not enough to guarantee keeping them from the glory of heaven. What’s so bad about that?

Consolation for us and our loved ones…

Purgatory consoles believers in knowing how much God loves them.
Purgatory also consoles us in that it manifests God’s love for us.

God loves us so much that he does everything he can to make it possible for us to be united with him, including providing us a postmortem opportunity to be freed from venial sin and any remnants of sin that impede us from entrance into heaven.

Isn’t God’s love for us part of the Gospel’s “good news”? Sure, it is!

Purgatory is a doctrine that manifests such love to us. Therefore, purgatory is good news.

Those who have gone before us in Faith…

Purgatory consoles believers concerning loved ones who die without the perfect holiness required for heaven.
Everything we said above with regard to our weaknesses and struggles with sin also applies to those we love. So purgatory consoles us not just with regard to our own entrance into heaven, but also with regard to our loved ones.

Purgatory gives us the assurance that even though our loved ones die without the perfect holiness required for heaven, we know they’re not forever excluded from there.

The late Marian scholar Fr. Martin Jugie puts it beautifully:

“They who mournfully follow the coffin, are consoled with thoughts of the mercy of God; of the expiation of venial sin and the cleansing of the wounds, left by mortal sin, after death; of extenuating circumstances which may have rendered certain sins venial for the dear deceased one. The anguished heart, torn with dread about the fate of the loved one, clings to this last hope, and there finds solace and some peace.”

That’s good news!”

Love, pray for me,
Matthew

Apologetics, Eschatology, Purgatory

Three joyful truths about & proof of Purgatory


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-Sacro Cuore di Gesù in Prati (Italian for “Sacred Heart of Jesus in Prati”), also known as Sacro Cuore del Suffragio (Italian for “Sacred Heart of the Suffrage”), is a Catholic church in the center of Rome (Italy), rising in the rione Prati, hosting the parish with the same name, entrusted to the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. Please click on the image for greater detail. The church, designed by engineer Giuseppe Gualandi, is sometimes referred as the little Milan Cathedral, due to its rich neo-gothic style. Museum of the Souls of Purgatory in Rome, Lungotevere Prati, 18. Please click on the image for greater detail.

https://aleteia.org/2018/10/30/eerie-messages-from-the-dead-at-the-museum-of-the-souls-of-purgatory/

“Located on the bank of the River Tiber, not far from the Vatican, is a church that contains a tiny museum with a unique purpose: to convince people that Purgatory exists and that their departed loved ones need their prayers.


-Nightcap w/scorched fingerprint believed to have been left by soul in Purgatory. In 1875, Luisa Le Senechal, appeared before her husband Luigi Ducey, in France. Asking for his prayers and for Masses to be said in her name, she left the burnt marks of five finger on his nightcap.  Please click on the image for greater detail.


-Burned hand mark on nightshirt of Joseph Leleux. In 1789, Joseph Leleux hear noises for eleven consecutive nights. Then, on June 21, 1789, his mother appeared and reminded him that he was under obligation to have Masses celebrated for her and Joseph’s late father. She hen placed her hand on his nightshirt, leaving an imprint. Leleux later converted and founded a congregation of pious lay people. Please click on the image for greater detail.


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-Please click on the image for greater detail.

The Museum of the Souls of Purgatory is no ordinary museum. It was created not simply to edify and inspire, but to make a case, just as a prosecutor would make a case before a jury.

Its collection is made up not of sacred art, but of actual physical evidence purporting to prove the existence of Purgatory – namely the tangible marks souls in Purgatory left in order to convince their loved ones to pray for them.

The scorched papers and clothing displayed in the vestry of the Church of the Sacred Heart of Suffrage in Prati testify to the trials of those who managed to avoid going to hell, but sought escape from the purifying fires of Purgatory.

The story of how the church and its museum came about begins in 1897 when a fire broke out in the small chapel that once stood at the same spot. After the fire was put out and the smoke cleared, a Fr. Victor Jouët, who – not incidentally – had a devotion to the souls in Purgatory, noticed that the image of a sad, suffering face was left behind on the wall. Convinced that it was a soul crying out for help, he was from that moment inspired to build a church dedicated to the souls in Purgatory.

According to Fr. Domenico Santangini, the parish priest of the church for the last 14 years, Fr. Jouët accumulated the museum’s collection while traveling to raise funds to build the church.

That evidence includes relics that testify to the existence of souls in Purgatory. Besides the original scorched image on the wall of the suffering soul in Purgatory the collection includes:

The scorched imprint of a hand on a desk

A section of wood from the desk belonging to Ven. Mother Isabella Fornari, Abbess of the Poor Clares Monastery of St. Francis in Todi, bears the clear imprint of hand. The mark, which was burned into the desk, was said to be left by the deceased former Abbott, a Father Panzini, of the Benedictine Olivetan Order in Mantua on November 1, 1731, as a message to her that he was suffering in Purgatory.

At the same time, Mother Isabella reported to her confessor, Holy Cross Father Isidoro Gazata, the poor soul placed his hand on her sleeve, burning a hole through it. The desk and the scorched garment are in the museum’s collection.

Handprint on a nightshirt

In 1789, Joseph Leleux heard noises for 11 consecutive nights. Then on June 21, 1789, his mother appeared and reminded him that he was under obligation to have Masses celebrated for her and Joseph’s late father. She then placed her hand on his nightshirt, leaving an imprint. Leleux later converted and founded a congregation of pious lay people.

Handprint on a book

In 1815, Margherite Demmerlé of Metz, France, was visited by her mother-in-law who had died 30 years before. When the mother-in-law asked that she go on a pilgrimage and have two Masses said for her in order to clear her path to Heaven, Margherite asked for a sign that she was truly in Purgatory. An imprint of a hand on the book she was reading was left behind.

Burnt fingerprints on a nightcap

In 1875 Luisa Le Sénèchal, who had died two years earlier, appeared before her husband Luigi in Ducey, France. Asking for his prayers and for Masses to be said in her name, she left the burnt marks of five fingers on his nightcap.

Documents and photos of these and a number of other similar occurrences are displayed in the small museum.

“The charred images we have in the museum represent the fire that burns but purifies. Little by little it burns and purifies the souls who are in purgatory. We see a physical manifestation of this fire, but for the souls in purgatory it is interior,” said Fr. Santangini, curator of the museum.

Today, just as when the museum was first founded, the souls in Purgatory are in need of prayer, said Fr. Santangini.

“The relics in the museum are signs that tell us that we need to believe in Purgatory, that this place of suffering exists, that so many souls pass through it, and also that there are so many souls that are there and forgotten. We need to pray for them.”

“Once the money had run out, little by little as the church was being built, he would travel through Europe both to look for money and to look for testimonies that bore evidence of visits from souls in Purgatory, and he brought them all here to Rome. Those that we have in the museum now are authentic,” Fr. Santagini told Aleteia’s Diane Montagna.


-by Karlo Broussard, from Purgatory Is For Real

“In a tiny little church on the banks of the Tiber, called the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Patri (also known as the Church of the Sacred Heart of Suffrage), there’s a most curious collection of artifacts from four different European countries (Belgium, France, Germany, and Italy) —sixteen pieces of cloth, paper, or wood, all of which are claimed to bear the signs of the scorched hands and fingerprints of souls in purgatory, a postmortem temporary state of existence where the souls of the elect imperfectly holy are purified of any remnants of sin.

For some, these tokens might be “exotic,” like remains from some ancient culture. Others might view them as belonging to folklore.

Regardless of what you make of these so-called “relics” of purgatory, it does raise the question: Is purgatory for real? And if it is real, what’s it like?

To the question, “Is purgatory real?,” many say no. Protestant reformer John Calvin, for example, said purgatory is “a deadly fiction of Satan.” An Anglican theologian claims that purgatory is “a medieval invention that brought a new sense of order and purpose to previously vague notions of what life after death held in store.”

The Catholic Church definitively teaches that purgatory is real and claims that it can be supported by biblical revelation and early Christian testimony.

So who’s right?

With regard to the nature of purgatory, questions abound: is it really just another chamber of hell that happens to be temporary? You might think it is, based on the not so few testimonies of saints and what has been emphasized in traditional catechism classes.

Other portraits of purgatory might not highlight the intense suffering but nevertheless suggest it’s gloomy. Perhaps it’s portrayed as an anteroom to heaven, where souls wander, like in (spoiler alert!) the TV series Lost. Or perhaps some catechist has taught you that purgatory is like a train you never get off, as one of my colleagues said he was taught.

Such depictions of purgatory make it sound as if purgatory were nothing but a realm of sorrow, where no joy whatsoever can be found. But such a state of existence is inconsistent with what the Bible promises the Christian as a citizen of Christ’s kingdom, which souls in purgatory are: “For the kingdom of God is . . . righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 14:17).

As a reaction to such a dire portrait of purgatory, some end up on the other end of the spectrum, where suffering is eliminated entirely, and purgatory is said to be all joy and peace—nothing more than a clean-up job before entrance into heaven.

I’m here to tell you that purgatory is for real.

As to its nature, it does involve suffering. However, there is great joy to be found in purgatory that’s consistent with our life in Christ as Christians, and such joy gives proper context to the suffering involved. In fact, purgatory is a beautiful gift of God’s mercy for which we should be thankful, a joyful truth of God’s purifying love.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines purgatory as a postmortem “final purification” (1031) for “all who die in God’s grace and friendship [the elect], but still imperfectly purified” (1030) so that they may “achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven.”

Throughout the centuries, the Church has identified three things that this postmortem purification accomplishes: the remission of the remaining guilt of venial sin, the purging of unhealthy attachments to created goods, and the discharge of remaining debt of temporal punishment due to past forgiven sins. This gives us a good working definition as to what we’re setting out to show is real.

The three joyful truths are:

• Purgatory is a doctrine of consolation for believers.
• Purgatory consists of joys that go beyond the joys of this world.
• Purgatory inspires the pursuit of holiness.

This should provide grounds to bring purgatory back onto the stage in the drama of the Last Things and present it as a truth that’s worth knowing and defending. There is no shame in professing the truth of purgatory.

My hope is that you will better appreciate the sweet reasonableness of purgatory and its truth as found in the biblical and early extra-biblical Christian sources. Also, my hope is that you come to see purgatory as a great gift that God in his mercy and love gives us. May we hear in the Church’s teaching on purgatory the words of Jesus: “I have said these things to you, so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete” (John 15:11).”

-by St John Henry Newmann

“O GOD of the Spirits of all flesh, O Jesu, Lover of souls, we recommend unto Thee the souls of all those Thy servants, who have departed with the sign of faith and sleep the sleep of peace. We beseech Thee, O Lord and Savior, that, as in Thy mercy to them Thou became man, so now Thou would hasten the time, and admit them to Thy presence above. Remember, O Lord, that they are Thy creatures, not made by strange gods, but by Thee, the only Living and True God; for there is no other God but Thou, and none that can equal Thy works. Let their souls rejoice in Thy light, and impute not to them their former iniquities, which they committed through the violence of passion, or the corrupt habits of their fallen nature. For, although they have sinned, yet they always firmly believed in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and before they died, they reconciled themselves to Thee by true contrition and the Sacraments of Thy Church.

O Gracious Lord, we beseech Thee, remember not against them the sins of their youth and their ignorance; but according to Thy great mercy, be mindful of them in Thy heavenly glory. May the heavens be opened to them, and the Angels rejoice with them. May the Archangel St Michael conduct them to Thee. May Thy holy Angels come forth to meet them, and carry them to the city of the heavenly Jerusalem. May St Peter, to whom Thou gave the keys of the kingdom of heaven, receive them. May St Paul, the vessel of election, stand by them. May St John, the beloved disciple, who had the revelation of the secrets of heaven, intercede for them. May all the Holy Apostles, who received from Thee the power of binding and loosing, pray for them. May all the Saints and elect of God, who in this world suffered torments for Thy Name, befriend them; that, being freed from the prison beneath, they may be admitted into the glories of that kingdom, where with the Father and the Holy Ghost Thou lives and reigns one God, world without end.

Come to their assistance, all ye Saints of God; gain for them deliverance from their place of punishment; meet them, all ye Angels; receive these holy souls, and present them before the Lord. Eternal rest give to them, O Lord. And may perpetual light shine on them.

May they rest in peace. Amen.”

Love, and the joy of growing closer to the Lord, no matter the cost, no matter the cost. Consume me, Lord, in the fire of your holy love.
Matthew

Apologetics, Eschatology, Lutheranism, Purgatory

Purgatory in Protestant traditions

“Purgatory is also found among many non-Catholic Christians. In fact, Christians who reject the doctrine of purgatory, in its consciously articulated form or at least the concepts that undergird it, are of the minority position.

As we’ll argue below, such a widespread belief among Christians outside the visible boundaries of the Catholic Church gives reason to think purgatory is for real and is so intertwined with the sources of Christian revelation that Christians can’t get away from it.

Belief in purgatory is also found among Protestant Christians old and new.

Martin Luther himself was among those who believed in purgatory, even after he began the Protestant movement, although he changed his view later, after the Reformation. For example, in his Ninety-Five Theses (1517), Luther wrote, “The pope does very well when he grants remission to souls in purgatory, not by the power of the keys, which he does not have, but by way of intercession for them.”

Just a few years later, in his Defense and Explanation of All the Articles (1521), Luther re-affirmed his belief in purgatory, saying, “The existence of a purgatory I have never denied. I still hold that it exists, as I have written and admitted many times, though I have found no way of proving it incontrovertibly from Scripture or reason.”

In one of his sermons, he says the following:

[The Holy Spirit] kindles a new flame or fire in us, namely, love and desire to do God’s commandments. In the kingdom of grace this should begin and ever grow until the Day of Judgment, when it shall no longer be called grace or forgiveness, but pure truth and perfect obedience. In the meantime He continues to give, forgive, to bear and forbear, until we are laid in our graves. Now if we thus continue in faith, that is, in what the Holy Spirit gives and forgives, in what he begins and ends, then the fire on the judgment day, by which the whole world is to be consumed, will cleanse and purify us, so that we will no longer need this giving and forgiving, as if there were something unclean and sinful in us, as there really is at present; we will certainly be as the brightness of the dear sun, without spot and defect, full of love, as Adam was at the beginning in paradise.

Luther also acknowledged the legitimacy of praying for the dead. In his Confession Concerning Christ’s Supper (1528), he says:

As for the dead, since Scripture gives us no information on the subject, I regard it as no sin to pray with free devotion in this or some similar fashion: “Dear God, if this soul is in a condition accessible to mercy, be thou gracious to it.” And when this has been done once or twice, let it suffice.

Luther eventually would change his view about purgatory, rejecting it as a doctrine of the devil (1537):

Therefore purgatory, and every solemnity, rite, and commerce connected with it, is to be regarded as nothing but a specter of the devil. For it conflicts with the chief article [which teaches] that only Christ, and not the works of men, are to help [set free] souls. Not to mention the fact that nothing has been [divinely] commanded or enjoined upon us concerning the dead.

Other Protestants at the time of the Reformation also expressed openness to purgatory.

For example, Philipp Melanchthon, in his Apology to the Augsburg Confession (1531), wrote, “Our opponents quote the Fathers on offerings for the dead. We know that the ancients spoke of prayer for the dead. We do not forbid this.”

Another famous Protestant who affirmed purgatory was the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Although he denied purgatory as an article of faith, he believed that it is a reality: “I personally hold that a certain temporal punishment after this life is rather reasonable and probable.”

Leibniz elsewhere explains:

The remission of sins which delivers us from the pains of hell by virtue of the blood of Jesus Christ does not, however, prevent there from still being some punishment in this life or in the other, and the one which is in store for us in the other life serving to purge souls is called purgatory. Holy Scripture insinuates it, and reason endorses it on the grounds that according to the rules of perfect government, which is God’s government, there should be no sin left entirely unpunished.

What’s unique about Leibniz’s view of purgatory relative to others among Protestants is that he clearly affirms what some have come to call the satisfaction model of purgatory. The satisfaction model refers to purgatory’s punitive dimension, whereby a soul undergoes temporary suffering due to it for past forgiven sins (both venial and mortal) and thus discharges the debt of temporal punishment.

As we’ll see below, many modern Protestants deny this model of purgatory and adopt purely a sanctification model, which says purgatory is a postmortem intermediate state where the soul achieves its complete state of sanctification or holiness through the cleansing of any remaining guilt of venial sin (a sin that “allows charity to subsist, even though it offends and wounds it”—CCC 1855) and purging of unhealthy attachments to created goods.

The nineteenth-century German Protestant theologian and church historian Karl August von Hase also affirmed a postmortem intermediate state akin to purgatory. He stated:

Most people when they die are probably too good for Hell, yet surely too bad for Heaven. It must be frankly confessed that the Protestantism of the Reformers is unclear on this point, its justified denial not yet having advanced to the stage of affirmation.

Among modern Protestants who affirm purgatory, perhaps the most famous is the late C.S. Lewis. In his Letters to Malcolm, he writes:

Our souls demand purgatory, don’t they? Would it not break the heart if God said to us, “It is true, my son, that your breath smells and your rags drip with mud and slime, but we are charitable here and no one will upbraid you with these things, nor draw away from you. Enter into the joy”? Should we not reply, “With submission, sir, and if there is no objection, I’d rather be cleaned first.” “It may hurt, you know”—”Even so, sir.”

Love,
Matthew

7th Day Adventist, Anti-Catholicism, Apologetics, Assemblies of God, Baptist, becoming Catholic, Ecumenism, Episcopalian/Anglican, Eschatology, Evangelical, Jehovah's Witness, LDS, Lutheranism, New Testament, Non-denominational, Presbyterianism/Calvinism, Purgatory, Scripture, Theology, United Methodism

Purgatory & 2 Cor 5:8

Every Catholic has heard the challenge:

“How can you believe that? Don’t you know the Bible says…”

It’s a challenge we have to meet. If we can’t reconcile apparent contradictions between Scripture and Catholic teaching, how can our own faith survive? And if we can’t help our Protestant brothers and sisters overcome their preconceptions about “unbiblical” Catholic doctrines and practices, how will they ever come to embrace the fullness of the Faith?

In these excerpts from Meeting the Protestant Challenge, Karlo Broussard gives an example of how to counteract the Protestant claims about Purgatory and the rapture

“At Home with the Lord”
2 Corinthians 5:8 and Purgatory

THE PROTESTANT CHALLENGE: How can the Catholic Church teach that there is an intermediate state after death, like purgatory, when the Bible says that the only place for a Christian to be (besides this life) is heaven?

Referring to a soul’s “entrance into the blessedness of heaven,” the Catechism teaches that it will enter either “through a purification or immediately” (CCC 1022). This presupposes that it’s possible for a soul to die in God’s friendship but yet not be present with the Lord in heaven.

Some Protestants view Paul’s teaching in 2 Corinthians 5:6-8 as contradicting this belief. Paul writes,

So we are always of good courage; we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord…and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.

Since the Bible says that for a Christian to be “away from the body” is to be “at home with the Lord,” there can’t be any intermediate state in the afterlife.

MEETING THE CHALLENGE

1. Paul doesn’t say what the challenge assumes he says.

Protestants who appeal to this passage often fail to realize that Paul doesn’t say that “to be away from the body is to be at home with the Lord.” Paul simply says, “While we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord” and that “we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.”

Protestants may reply that although Paul doesn’t exactly say what the challenge claims, that’s what he means. Are they right? Does the logic follow? Does the statement, “We would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord” mean the same as, “To be absent from the body is to be at home with the Lord”?

Suppose I’m at work, and I’m wishing that I could instead be away from work, and at home. Can we conclude from this that if I’m away from work, I must automatically be at home?

Doesn’t seem like it. I could be away from work, eating lunch at McDonald’s. I could be away from work, on my way home, but sitting in traffic. So, it’s fallacious to conclude from this verse that, once away from the body, a Christian must immediately be present with the Lord.

2. Even if we concede the interpretation of 2 Corinthians 5:8 that the challenge asserts, it still doesn’t rule out purgatory.

But let’s assume for argument’s sake that the interpretation this challenge offers of 2 Corinthians 5:8 is true, and that to be away from the body is to be immediately present with the Lord. That still wouldn’t pose a threat to purgatory.

First, because the challenge assumes that purgatory involves a period of time (during which we are “away from the body” but not “with the Lord”). But as we’ve seen, the Catholic Church has never defined the precise nature of the duration of purgatory. We simply don’t know what the experience of time is beyond this life. If purgatory did not involve a duration of time as we know it, it would be perfectly compatible with the challenge’s interpretation of this verse.

A second reason is that the challenge assumes purgatory is a state of existence away from the Lord. But, as we have also seen, purgatory could very well be that encounter with the Lord that we experience in our particular judgment, as we “appear before the judgment seat of Christ” (2 Cor. 5:10). This makes sense because Paul describes the soul’s judgment as being one of a purifying fire (1 Cor. 3:11-15). It makes sense for God’s presence, not His absence, to be part of our soul’s purification.

COUNTER-CHALLENGE: Shouldn’t you make sure that the Bible passage you use to challenge a Catholic belief actually says what you think it says?

AFTERTHOUGHT: The early Christian writer Tertullian (c. A.D. 160-220) affirms the existence of a state after death before entering heaven when he writes, “Inasmuch as we understand the prison pointed out in the Gospel to be Hades [Matt. 5:25], and as we also interpret the uttermost farthing to mean the very smallest offense which has to be recompensed there before the resurrection, no one will hesitate to believe that the soul undergoes in Hades some compensatory discipline, without prejudice to the full process of the resurrection.”

“Caught Up with the Lord in the Air”
1 Thessalonians 4:15-17 and the Rapture

THE PROTESTANT CHALLENGE: How can the Catholic Church teach that faithful Christians will experience the final trial when the Bible teaches that Christians will be raptured before such a time?

The Catechism says that that the Church “must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers,” and such a persecution will “unveil the ‘mystery of iniquity’ in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth.” And this religious deception will be “that of the Antichrist” (675).

But some Protestants believe that the Bible teaches otherwise: that Christians will not experience the persecution of the Antichrist but will be snatched up by the Lord prior to it. This is a doctrine known as the pre-tribulation Rapture.

The passage they often appeal to is 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17, which reads,

For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first; then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord.

Protestants argue that Paul can’t be talking about the Second Coming here, because Jesus only comes part-way down and then goes back up. Moreover, because no judgment of the nations is mentioned, like we see in Matthew 25:31-46 and Revelation 20, it must be referring to the “rapture.”

MEETING THE CHALLENGE

1. The challenge misreads the text as a partial coming-from and return back to heaven.

Verse 15 reads that the Lord will “descend from heaven with a cry of command.” But nowhere does Paul actually say that Jesus returns to heaven. If Jesus’ descent is definitive, it’s not a partial coming like the pre-tribulation rapture requires it to be.

But what are we to make of Paul’s description that the saints who are alive will be “caught up…to meet the Lord in the air”? A possible interpretation is that Paul is describing how Christians will meet the Lord in the air to escort him, in a way that is analogous to the ancient custom of citizens ushering in important visitors.

It was common for citizens to meet an illustrious person (such as dignitary or victorious military leader) and his entourage outside the walls of their city and accompany him back in. This was a way for people to honor the visitor and take part in the celebration of the visitor’s coming.

We see an example of this in Acts 28:14-15, where the brethren at Rome went out of the city to meet Paul as he approached: “And so we came to Rome. And the brethren there, when they heard of us, came as far as the Forum of Appius and Three Taverns to meet us.” This ancient custom also explains why the crowds go out to meet Jesus on Palm Sunday and usher him into Jerusalem (see Matt. 21:1-17).

So, for Paul, those who are alive at the Second Coming will do for our blessed Lord what the ancients did for their dignitaries: they will be caught up in the air to meet the approaching king Jesus and escort him as he “descend[s] from heaven with a cry of command” (1 Thess. 4:16).

2. The details of the passage reveal that Paul is talking about the final coming of Jesus at the end of time.

Notice that it’s not just the living who are caught up with the Lord, but also the dead in Christ: “And the dead in Christ will rise first” (v.16). That Paul speaks of the resurrection of the dead tells us that he’s referring to the end of time.

We know this for several reasons. First, Paul states in 1 Corinthians 15 that the end happens in tandem with the resurrection of the dead:

For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at His coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power (1 Cor. 15:22-24).

If Paul viewed the resurrection of the dead as occurring in tandem with the end of time, and if he speaks of the resurrection of the dead in tandem with Christ’s coming in 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17, it follows that Christ’s coming in those verses is His coming at the end of time and not the beginning of a pre-tribulation rapture.

A second reason why we know Paul is talking about the end of time is because when he speaks about the “coming of the Lord” in 2 Thessalonians, he says that the Antichrist and his reign of evil must precede it:

Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our assembling to meet him him, we beg you, brethren, not to be quickly shaken in mind or excited, either by spirit or by word, or by letter purporting to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one deceive you in any way; for that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you this? And you know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, and the Lord Jesus will slay him with the breath of His mouth and destroy him by His appearing and His coming (2 Thess. 2:1-8).

It’s clear that Paul is connecting the “coming of our Lord” here in 2 Thessalonians and the “coming of the Lord” in 1 Thessalonians 4:15, because he speaks of “our assembling to meet Him.”

So, if the “coming of the Lord” in 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17 must be preceded by the Antichrist and his reign of evil, those verses can’t be referring to a pre-tribulation rapture. Rather, they must refer to our Lord’s coming at the end of time, when he vanquishes all evil and condemns those “who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thess. 2:12).

A final clue for this being the final day of judgment is the fact that the Lord will descend with “the sound of the trumpet of God” (v.16). Paul speaks of the same trumpet when he describes the resurrection of the dead at the end of time:

Lo! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality (1 Cor. 15:51-53).

Since in Paul’s mind, the trumpet is associated with the resurrection of the dead at the end of time, and he speaks of it when describing the “coming of the Lord” in 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17, we can conclude that the “coming of the Lord” that Paul writes of in 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17 is the final coming at the end of time.

COUNTER-CHALLENGE: How can a text be used to support an idea when the text never mentions that idea?

AFTERTHOUGHT: The rapture is often portrayed as a “secret coming” of Jesus. But in 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17, Paul describes Christ’s coming with “the sound of the trumpet of God.” There is nothing secret about descending with the sound of a trumpet!

Love, pray for me,
Matthew

Apologetics, Eschatology, Purgatory

10 truths about Purgatory


-Dante’s Purgatrio, Canto 2, Katerina Machytkova, please click on the image for greater detail.


— by Valerie Schmalz, Catholic San Francisco [10.30.2013]

1. Purgatory exists: The Catechism of the Catholic Church states there are three states of the church, those who are living on earth, those who are in purgatory, and those who are in heaven with God.

2. It is not a second chance: The soul is already saved. Purgatory is a
place to pay off debts for sins that were forgiven but for which sufficient penance had not been done on earth.

3. It is not an actual place: Blessed John Paul II said in an August 4, 1999 general audience that purgatory was a state of being: “The term does not indicate a place, but a condition of existence.” Pope Benedict XVI said in a January 12, 2011 general audience, “This is purgatory, an interior fire.”

4. Purgatory is not punishment but God’s mercy: “Few people can say they are prepared to stand before God,” says Susan Tassone, author of “Prayers, Promises, and Devotions for the Holy Souls in
Purgatory” (Our Sunday Visitor, 2012). “If we didn’t have purgatory
there would be very few people in heaven, because it would be heaven or hell. It is his mercy that allows us to prepare to be with Him in heaven.”

5. Our prayers for the souls in purgatory help them achieve heaven:
“The doctrine of purgatory recalls how radically we take love of
neighbor,” says Sulpician Father Gladstone Stevens, vice rector and
dean of men at St. Patrick’s Seminary & University, Menlo Park. “The
obligation to pray for each other does not cease when biological life
ends. God wants us to always pray for each other, work for each other’s redemption.”

6. The souls in purgatory can intercede for those on earth but cannot pray for themselves: The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 958) states: “…the church in its pilgrim members, from the very earliest days of the Christian religion, has honored with great respect the memory of the dead;…Our prayer for them is capable not only of helping them, but also of making their intercession for us effective.”

7. God does not send souls to purgatory – each soul sends itself to
purgatory: Once a soul sees itself with the light of God, it realizes it
cannot stay in his presence until all imperfections are wiped away. “The soul chooses,” Tassone says.

8. There is no fire in purgatory: But each soul is aflame with the pain of being separated from God and with the desire to be purified so it can be in the beatific vision. Each soul also feels joy knowing it will one day be with God, Father Stevens and Tassone say.

9. There is a special day and month to pray for the souls in purgatory:
November 2 or All Souls’ Day is the day set aside and November is the month in the liturgical calendar to pray especially for all the souls who are in purgatory. November 2 is called “The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed,” but the church asks us to pray always for each other, including for the souls in purgatory.

10. Prayers for souls in purgatory always count: Pope Benedict says in his encyclical “Spe Salve” (“On Christian Hope”), regarding the souls of the dead, “…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.””

Love, Lord, have mercy on me for I am a sinful man,
Matthew

Apologetics, Eschatology, Purgatory

What is Purgatory?


-“Dante kneeling before celestial helmsman”, Purgatorio, Canto 2.28, by Doré, Gustave, c.1868, engraving, The vision of Purgatory and Paradise by Dante Alighieri (London and New York: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin [1868?], please click on the image for greater detail.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines purgatory as a “purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven,” which is experienced by those “who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified” (CCC 1030). It notes that “this final purification of the elect . . . is entirely different from the punishment of the damned” (CCC 1031).

The purification is necessary because, as Scripture teaches, nothing unclean will enter the presence of God in heaven (Rev. 21:27) and, while we may die with our mortal sins forgiven, there can still be many impurities in us, specifically venial sins and the temporal punishment due to sins already forgiven.

What Happens in Purgatory?

When we die, we undergo what is called the particular, or individual, judgment. Scripture says that “it is appointed for men to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Heb. 9:27). We are judged instantly and receive our reward, for good or ill. We know at once what our final destiny will be. At the end of time, when Jesus returns, there will come the general judgment to which the Bible refers, for example, in Matthew 25:31-32: “When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.” In this general judgment all our sins will be publicly revealed (Luke 12:2–5).

Augustine said in The City of God that “temporary punishments are suffered by some in this life only, by others after death, by others both now and then; but all of them before that last and strictest judgment” (21:13). It is between the particular and general judgments, then, that the soul is purified of the remaining consequences of sin: “I tell you, you will never get out till you have paid the very last copper” (Luke 12:59).

The Catholic Church, Purgatory, and Money

One argument anti-Catholics often use to attack purgatory is the idea that the Catholic Church owes the majority of its wealth to the doctrine of purgatory. But the numbers just don’t add up.

When a Catholic requests a memorial Mass for the dead—that is, a Mass said for the benefit of someone in purgatory—it is customary to give the parish priest a stipend, on the principles that the laborer is worth his hire (Luke 10:7) and that those who preside at the altar share the altar’s offerings (1 Cor. 9:13–14). In the United States, a stipend is commonly around five dollars; but the indigent do not have to pay anything. A few people, of course, freely offer more. This money goes to the parish priest, and priests are allowed to receive only one such stipend per day. No one gets rich on five dollars a day, and certainly not the Church, which does not receive the money anyway.

But look at what happens on a Sunday. There are often hundreds of people at Mass. In a crowded parish, there may be thousands. Many families and individuals deposit five dollars or more into the collection basket; a few give much more. A parish might have four or five or six Masses on a Sunday. The total from the Sunday collections far surpasses the paltry amount received from the memorial Masses.

Is Purgatory a Catholic “Invention”?

Fundamentalists may be fond of saying the Catholic Church “invented” the doctrine of purgatory to make money, but they have difficulty saying just when. Most professional anti-Catholics—the ones who make their living attacking “Romanism”—seem to place the blame on Pope Gregory the Great, who reigned from A.D. 590 to 604.

But that hardly accounts for the request of Monica, mother of Augustine, who asked her son, in the fourth century, to remember her soul in his Masses. This would make no sense if she thought her soul would not benefit from prayers, as would be the case if she were in hell or in the full glory of heaven.

Nor does ascribing the doctrine to Gregory explain the graffiti in the catacombs, where Christians during the persecutions of the first three centuries recorded prayers for the dead. Indeed, some of the earliest Christian writings outside the New Testament, like the Acts of Paul and Thecla and the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity (both written during the second century), refer to the Christian practice of praying for the dead. Such prayers would have been offered only if Christians believed in purgatory, even if they did not use that name for it. (See Catholic Answers’ tract The Roots of Purgatory for quotations from these and other early Christian sources.)

Why No Protests?

A study of the history of doctrines indicates that Christians in the first centuries were up in arms if anyone suggested the least change in beliefs. They were extremely conservative people who tested a doctrine’s truth by asking, Was this believed by our ancestors? Was it handed on from the apostles? Surely belief in purgatory would be considered a great change, if it had not been believed from the first—so where are the records of protests?

They don’t exist. There is no hint at all, in the oldest writings available to us (or in later ones, for that matter), that “true believers” in the immediate post-apostolic years spoke of purgatory as a novel doctrine. They must have understood that the oral teaching of the apostles, what Catholics call tradition, and the Bible not only failed to contradict the doctrine, but, in fact, confirmed it.

It is no wonder, then, that those who deny the existence of purgatory tend to touch upon only briefly the history of the belief. They prefer to claim that the Bible speaks only of heaven and hell. Wrong. It speaks plainly of a third condition, commonly called the limbo of the Fathers, where the just who had died before the redemption were waiting for heaven to be opened to them. After his death and before his resurrection, Christ visited those experiencing the limbo of the Fathers and preached to them the good news that heaven would now be opened to them (1 Pet. 3:19). These people thus were not in heaven, but neither were they experiencing the torments of hell.

Some have speculated that the limbo of the Fathers is the same as purgatory. This may or may not be the case. However, even if the limbo of the Fathers is not purgatory, its existence shows that a temporary, intermediate state is not contrary to Scripture.

“Purgatory Not in Scripture”

Some Fundamentalists also charge, “The word purgatory is nowhere found in Scripture.” This is true, and yet it does not disprove the existence of purgatory or the fact that belief in it has always been part of Church teaching. The words Trinity and Incarnation aren’t in Scripture either, yet those doctrines are clearly taught in it. Likewise, Scripture teaches that purgatory exists, even if it doesn’t use that word and even if 1 Peter 3:19 refers to a place other than purgatory.

Christ refers to the sinner who “will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come” (Matt. 12:32), suggesting that one can be freed after death of the consequences of one’s sins. Similarly, Paul tells us that, when we are judged, each man’s work will be tried. And what happens if a righteous man’s work fails the test? “He will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire” (1 Cor 3:15). Now this loss, this penalty, can’t refer to consignment to hell, since no one is saved there; and heaven can’t be meant, since there is no suffering (“fire”) there. The Catholic doctrine of purgatory alone explains this passage.

Then, of course, there is the Bible’s approval of prayers for the dead: “In doing this he acted in a very excellent and noble way, inasmuch as he had the resurrection of the dead in view; for if he were not expecting the dead to rise again, it would have been useless and foolish to pray for them in death. But if he did this with a view to the splendid reward that awaits those who had gone to rest in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought. Thus he made atonement for the dead that they might be freed from this sin” (2 Macc. 12:43–45). Prayers are not needed by those in heaven, and no one can help those in hell. This verse so clearly illustrates the existence of purgatory that, at the time of the Reformation, Protestants had to cut the books of the Maccabees out of their Bibles in order to avoid accepting the doctrine.

Prayers for the dead and the consequent doctrine of purgatory have been part of the true religion since before the time of Christ. Not only can we show it was practiced by the Jews of the time of the Maccabees, but it has even been retained by Orthodox Jews today, who recite a prayer known as the Mourner’s Kaddish for eleven months after the death of a loved one so that the loved one may be purified. It was not the Catholic Church that added the doctrine of purgatory. Rather, the Protestant churches rejected a doctrine that had always been believed by Jews and Christians.

Why Go to Purgatory?

Why would anyone go to purgatory? To be cleansed, for “nothing unclean shall enter [heaven]” (Rev. 21:27). Anyone who has not been completely freed of sin and its effects is, to some extent, “unclean.” Through repentance he may have gained the grace needed to be worthy of heaven, which is to say, he has been forgiven and his soul is spiritually alive. But that’s not sufficient for gaining entrance into heaven. He needs to be cleansed completely.

Fundamentalists claim, as an article in Jimmy Swaggart’s magazine, The Evangelist, put it, that “Scripture clearly reveals that all the demands of divine justice on the sinner have been completely fulfilled in Jesus Christ. It also reveals that Christ has totally redeemed, or purchased back, that which was lost. The advocates of purgatory (and the necessity of prayer for the dead) say, in effect, that the redemption of Christ was incomplete. . . . It has all been done for us by Jesus Christ, there is nothing to be added or done by man.”

It is entirely correct to say that Christ accomplished all of our salvation for us on the cross. But that does not settle the question of how this redemption is applied to us. Scripture reveals that it is applied to us over the course of time through, among other things, the process of sanctification through which the Christian is made holy. Sanctification involves suffering (Rom. 5:3–5), and purgatory is the final stage of sanctification that some of us need to undergo before we enter heaven. Purgatory is the final phase of Christ’s applying to us the purifying redemption that he accomplished for us by his death on the cross.

Nothing Unclean or Purged

Catholic theology takes seriously the notion that “nothing unclean shall enter heaven.” [Ed. not just covered: cleansed completely, new, to make new again, from the inside out.] From this it is inferred that a less than cleansed soul isn’t fit for heaven. It needs to be cleansed or “purged” of its remaining imperfections. Sanctification is thus not an option, something that may or may not happen before one gets into heaven. It is an absolute requirement, as Hebrews 12:14 states that we must strive “for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.”

NIHIL OBSTAT: I have concluded that the materials
presented in this work are free of doctrinal or moral errors.
Bernadeane Carr, STL, Censor Librorum, August 10, 2004

IMPRIMATUR: In accord with 1983 CIC 827
permission to publish this work is hereby granted.
+Robert H. Brom, Bishop of San Diego, August 10, 2004

Apologetics, Eschatology, Purgatory, Theology

Purgatory 3


-“Purgatory” by Sergey Tyukanov, 2007. Please click on the image for more detail.


-by Karlo Broussard

“Matthew 12:32 is often a go-to passage for Catholics when it comes to purgatory. The text reads: “Whoever says a word against the Son of man will be forgiven; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.”

Pope St. Gregory the Great wrote that, from this passage “we understand that certain offenses can be forgiven in this age, but certain others in the age to come” (Dial. 4, 39). The Catechism of the Catholic Church uses this quote as support for its definition of purgatory as an after-death “final purification of the elect” (1031). Since purgatory involves the forgiveness of unrepented venial sins (along with the purification of any remnants of past forgiven venial or mortal sins—e.g., unhealthy attachments to created goods, unpaid debt of temporal punishment), some conclude that Jesus affirms the existence of purgatory.

But some Christians don’t think this passage supports purgatory. They argue that Jesus’ use of the phrase “either in this age or in the age to come” was simply a matter of emphasis—an exaggerated expression used to convey the idea that the sin against the Holy Spirit can never be forgiven. Just like we don’t take Randy Travis to mean that there are two distinct stages in which he’s going to love his beloved when he sings, “I’m gonna love you forever and ever,” so too we shouldn’t take Jesus to mean there’s a distinct “age to come” where some sins can be forgiven when he says, no forgiveness “either in this age or the age to come.”

For support, they appeal to Mark’s parallel passage: “Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin” (Mark 3:29; emphasis added).

How can we respond?

The first thing we can say is that Mark’s version doesn’t preclude the reading of Matthew’s account in support of Purgatory. For if Jesus excludes forgiveness of the sin against the Holy Spirit in the only two states of existence where forgiveness can occur—in this life and in the intermediate state between death and the final judgment—then it would follow that the one who sins against the Holy Spirit “never has forgiveness.” The eternality of this sin would be because it can neither be forgiven in this life nor in the next. On this reading, Mark simply emphasizes the eternal nature of the sin without specifying the reason why. Matthew, on the other hand, provides a ground for why the sin can never be forgiven. Thus, Mark’s version doesn’t require that we reject purgatory based on Matthew 12:32.

“Okay,” our interlocutor might reply. “Maybe Mark 3:29 doesn’t prove that Jesus intended his phrase ‘this age or the age to come’ to be an exaggerated expression. But since that’s all we got to work with, doesn’t it seem reasonable to read Matthew 12:32 in light of Mark 3:29?”

No, it doesn’t, because Mark 3:29 is not the only relevant information that we have.

We know that Matthew’s Jewish audience already believed that some sins could be forgiven in the afterlife (cf. 2 Macc. 12:46). Given this knowledge, it doesn’t make sense that Matthew would include the saying “no forgiveness either in this age or in the age to come” if all he meant was that this sin is never forgiven. To do so without clarification seems only to reinforce the Jewish belief about sins being forgiven in the afterlife.

Since Matthew doesn’t give any sort of clarification, and he includes the saying knowing what his Jewish audience believed about sins being forgiven in the afterlife, it’s reasonable to conclude that the “age to come” in Matthew 12:32 is not merely a restatement of what Mark says in Mark 3:29 (that the sin against the Holy Spirit is never forgiven) but an extra tidbit for his Jewish audience about the afterlife.

Further, Jesus uses “the age to come” elsewhere in the gospels, and not merely for emphasis—it clearly refers to a distinct state of existence beyond this one: the afterlife.

Consider, for example, Mark 10:29-30 (see also Luke 18:30), where Jesus says those who leave house, brother, sister, mother, father, and land for his sake will receive a hundredfold return “in this time . . . and in the age to come eternal life.”

Jesus’ reference to “the age to come” is not merely a rhetorical flourish. Rather, Jesus speaks of “this time” and “the age to come” as two distinct states of existence (this life and the next), both of which consist of people receiving rewards for giving up everything for him.

Similarly, in Luke 20:34-35 Jesus speaks of “this age” as referring to this life, when men are given in marriage, and “that age” as the afterlife, when men are not given in marriage. Jesus clearly intends this distinction to be taken literally, conveying a truth about the age to come—namely, there is no marriage.

A critic might respond that an appeal to the above passages (Mark 10:30 and Luke 20:35) fails because the Greek word for “age to come” in Matthew 12:32, mellō, is not used in those passages. Rather, “the age to come” in Mark 10:30 translates the Greek phrase aiōni erchomenō and “that age” in Luke 20:35 translates aiōnos ekeinou.

This is true. But given that “this age” (Greek, toutō aiōni) in Matthew 12:32 is juxtaposed with mellonti (“the age to come”), which means “to occur at a point of time in the future which is subsequent to another event and closely related to it—to be about to,” we can conclude that Jesus has the same idea in mind as when he speaks of aiōni erchomenō in Mark 10:30 and aiōnos ekeinou in Luke 20:35. This is why the English translation of Matthew 12:32 translates the Greek as “the age to come” even though the Greek word for “age,” aiōn, is not used.

Therefore, it’s fair to read Matthew 12:32 in light of Mark 10:30 and Luke 20:35, where Jesus speaks of “the age to come” or “that age” as a reference to the afterlife. And since Jesus’ implication in Matthew 12:32 is that some sins can be forgiven in “the age to come,” or the afterlife, we have at least one aspect of purgatory confirmed by Jesus—after-death purification of unrepented venial sins.

This reading of “the age to come” as a reference to the afterlife is further supported by the fact that mellō is used elsewhere in Scripture to refer to the afterlife. See, for example, Ephesians 1:21, 1 Timothy 4:8, and Hebrews 2:5, 6:5, and 13:14.

In this debate, no one disagrees with the scriptural passage that one who sins against the Holy Spirit “never has forgiveness.” But this is so because for Jesus it’s a sin that cannot be forgiven in either state of existence where sins can be forgiven—in this life (“this age”) or in the intermediate state between death and the final judgment (“the age to come”). Mark’s reference to the “eternal” nature of the sin against the Holy Spirit, therefore, doesn’t prevent the use of Matthew 12:32 in support of the Church’s doctrine of purgatory.”

Love, Lord, have mercy on me for I am a sinful man,
Matthew

Eschatology, Purgatory

Jesus taught Purgatory


-Florence Italy’s cathedral (Duomo) stands tall over the city with its magnificent Renaissance dome designed by Filippo Brunelleschi. The cathedral named in honor of Santa Maria del Fiore is a vast Gothic structure built on the site of the 7th century church of Santa Reparata, the remains of which can be seen in the crypt. The biggest artwork within the cathedral is Giorgio Vasari’s frescoes of the Last Judgment (1572-9): they were designed by Vasari but painted mostly by his less-talented student Frederico Zuccari by 1579.


-by Karlo Broussard

“The [main charter] for all Christian evangelists is Christ’s great commission: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations . . . teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:19-20). Notice Christ’s command restricts the Christian evangelist to teaching only what Christ revealed and not his own opinions.

Many Protestants think the Catholic Church fails in this regard. Purgatory is one Catholic dogma they don’t think came from our Lord. It’s asserted that this is one of the many made-up dogmas the Catholic Church binds its members to believe.

It’s true all members of the Catholic Church are bound to believe in the dogma of purgatory. But it’s not true that it’s made up.

In answering this claim, the Catholic apologist could turn to St. Paul’s classic text in 1 Corinthians 3:11-15 wherein he explains how the soul suffers loss through a purgation of fire on the day of judgment but yet is saved.

However, the question I want to consider in is, “Is there any evidence that Jesus taught such a place exists?” If so, then the Church’s usage of 1 Corinthians 3:11-15 for purgatory would be more persuasive.

There are two Bible passages where Jesus taught the reality of purgatory: Matthew 5:25-26 and Matthew 12:32.

Forgiveness in the age to come

Let’s consider Matthew 12:32 first:

“And whoever says a word against the Son of man will be forgiven; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.”

Putting aside the question of what the unforgivable sin is, notice Jesus’ implication: there are some sins that can be forgiven in the age to come, whatever that age may be. Pope St. Gregory the Great says: “From this sentence we understand that certain offenses can be forgiven in this age, but certain others in the age to come” (Dial. 4, 39).

I would argue that the “age” (or “world,” as the Douay Rheims translates it) that Jesus refers to in this passage is the afterlife. First, the Greek word for “age,” aion, is used in reference to life after death in Mark 10:30, when Jesus speaks of eternal life as a reward in the “age to come” for those who give up temporal things for His sake. This doesn’t mean Jesus is teaching purgatory is eternal, since He teaches souls who are there can get out by having their sins forgiven, but He is asserting this state of being exists in the afterlife.

Aion can be used to refer to a distinct period of time in this life, as in Matthew 28:20 when Jesus says He’ll be with His apostles until the end of the “age.” But I think the context suggests it’s being used for the afterlife. Just a few verses later (v. 36) Jesus speaks of the “day of judgment,” which, according to Hebrews 9:27, comes after death.

So what do we have? We have a state of existence after death wherein the soul is being forgiven of sins, which in light of the Old Testament tradition (Psalms 66:10-12; Isaiah 6:6-7; 4:4) and Paul’s writings (1 Corinthians 3:11-15) means the soul is being purged or purified.

This state can’t be heaven, since there are no sins in heaven. It can’t be hell, since no souls in hell can have their sins forgiven and be saved. What is it? It’s purgatory.

Paying your dues

The second Bible passage where Jesus teaches the reality of purgatory is Matthew 5:25-26:

“Make friends quickly with your accuser, while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison; truly, I say to you, you will never get out till you have paid the last penny.”

Jesus makes it clear that the offender has to pay for his sins. But the question is, “Is Jesus referring to a place of repayment in this life or the next?” I argue the next.

The first clue is the Greek word for “prison,” which is phulake. St. Peter uses this Greek word in 1 Peter 3:19 when he describes the prison in which the Old Testament righteous souls were kept before Jesus’ ascension and that which Jesus visited during the separation of his soul and body in death. Since phulake was used for a holding place in the afterlife in the Christian tradition, it’s not unreasonable to conclude that’s how Matthew is using it in Matthew 5:25, especially when one considers the context, which constitutes our second clue.

The verses before and after the passage under consideration include Jesus’ teachings about things that pertain to the afterlife and our eternal salvation. For example:

  • Jesus speaks of the kingdom of heaven as our ultimate goal in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12).
  • Jesus teaches that our righteousness must exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees if we want to go to heaven (Matthew 5:20).
  • Jesus speaks of going to hell for being angry at your brother (Matthew 5:22).
  • Jesus teaches that lusting after a woman incurs the guilt of adultery (Matthew 5:27-28), which of course would merit hell if not repented of.
  • Jesus teaches about the rewards of heaven for acts of piety (Matthew 6:1).

It would be odd for Jesus to give teachings about the afterlife immediately before and after Matthew 5:25 but have Matthew 5:25 refer only to this life. Therefore, I think it’s reasonable to conclude Jesus is not referring to a place of repayment for sin in this life but of one in the afterlife.

A temporary prison

“But,” you say, “just because it’s a place of repayment after death doesn’t mean it is purgatory. It could be hell, right?” There are two clues that suggest this “prison” is not hell.

First, the “prison” in 1 Peter 3:19 was a temporary holding place. If Matthew is using phulake in the same sense in Matthew 5:25, then it would follow that the prison Jesus speaks of is a temporary holding place as well.

Second, Jesus says the individual must pay the last “penny.” The Greek word for “penny” is kondrantes, which was worth less than two percent of a day’s wage for a first-century agricultural laborer. This suggests the debt for the offense is payable, and thus a temporary punishment.

St. Jerome makes the same connection: “A farthing [penny] is a coin containing two mites. What he says then is, ‘Thou shalt not go forth thence till thou hast paid for the smallest sins” (Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels: Collected out of the Works of the Fathers: St. Matthew; emphasis added).

Contrast this with the debt owed by the wicked servant in Matthew 18:23-35. The servant in the parable owed the king “ten thousand talents” (v. 24). A talent is the largest monetary unit, worth 6,000 denarii. A denarius typically is worth a day’s wage.

So a single talent is worth about 16.4 years of daily wages. If the servant in the parable owed 10,000 talents, then he owed about 60 million denarii, which is equivalent to almost 165,000 years of daily wages. In other words, he owed a debt he could never pay.

According to the narrative, the king forgave the servant’s debt. But because he didn’t show the same mercy to those who owed him, the king handed the wicked servant over to the jailers “till he should pay all his debt” (Matt. 18:34). Given the overwhelming amount of the servant’s debt, it’s reasonable to conclude Jesus was referring to the eternal punishment of hell.

The “penny” of Matthew 5:26 stands in stark contrast to ten thousand talents. Thus, it’s reasonable to suggest Jesus is referring to a temporary prison in Matthew 5.

Let’s take stock of what we have so far. First, Jesus is speaking about matters of eternal importance within the context. Second, He uses the word “prison” which in the Christian tradition is used in reference to a state of existence in the afterlife that is neither heaven nor hell. And third, this prison is a temporary state of existence in which one makes satisfaction for his offenses.

So what is this “prison?” It can’t be heaven, since heaven implies all past sins are forgiven and made up for. It can’t be hell, because the prison of hell is everlasting—there is no getting out. It seems that the only interpretative option is purgatory.

The early Christian writer Tertullian (155-220 AD) believed the same thing:

“[I]nasmuch as we understand “the prison” pointed out in the Gospel to be Hades, and as we also interpret “the uttermost farthing”to mean the very smallest offence which has to be recompensed there before the resurrection, no one will hesitate to believe that the soul undergoes in Hades some compensatory discipline, without prejudice to the full process of the resurrection, when the recompense will be administered through the flesh besides (A Treatise on the Soul, ch. 58).”

A Maccabean milieu

The purgatorial twist on these texts becomes even more persuasive when we consider the Jewish theological milieu in which Jesus gave these teachings. It is evident from 2 Maccabees 12:38-45 that the Jews believed in a state of existence after death that was neither heaven nor hell, a place in which the soul could be forgiven of sins.

Whether you accept 2 Maccabees as inspired or not, it does give historical warrant for this Jewish belief. And it was that Jewish belief that Jesus’ audience would have brought to His teachings about the forgiveness of sins in the age to come and a prison in the afterlife where an offender pays off his debt.

If Jesus were not referring to purgatory in these texts, He would have needed to give some clarification for his Jewish audience. Just like a Catholic would immediately think of purgatory upon first hearing these teachings, so Jesus’ Jewish audience would have immediately thought of that state of existence after death that Judas Maccabees’s soldiers experienced.

But Jesus didn’t give any sort of clarification. Therefore, it’s reasonable to conclude that the age to come in Matthew 12:32 and the prison in Matthew 5:25-26 refer to purgatory.

Conclusion

Contrary to what many Protestants think, the Catholic Church didn’t make up the dogma of purgatory. It’s a belief that comes from our Lord Himself as found in Sacred Scripture. Therefore, the Catholic Church can say in good conscience that it has been faithful to the great commission to teach all that the Lord has commanded.”

Love & truth,
Matthew

Eschatology, Purgatory

Purgatory 2

“Purgatory’s materiality refers to the persistent set of characteristics associated with purgatory that have been a continuous problem from its inception as a doctrine in the thirteenth century to the present. It has been variously described as a location on earth, as a place where souls are at once physical and spiritual, and as a condition that demands bodily mortifications and severe penances. In this sense, materiality is a category that encompasses three important sites where purgatory has presented theological, scientific, and logical difficulties for church theologians, scholastic philosophers, and others who have been responsible for working out the philosophical support for the doctrine: place, body, and performance. From the twelfth century to the present, representations in various sources, including medieval chronicles, exempla, early modern periodicals, and, later, in pamphlets, books, and magazines, and today on websites and in books, have depicted purgatory variously as a location on earth, a place simultaneously spiritual and physical, and, most recently, as a more abstract condition of souls experiencing the pain of loss. The version of purgatory as a physical location persisted into the nineteenth century. Pre-doctrinal representations of purgatory shifted so much with respect to historical context that it is impossible to identify a linear progression from that of a physical place to a condition of soul. However, this progression becomes pronounced in the modern era and by the mid-nineteenth century conceptions of purgatory as a place were subject to anti-Catholic polemicists and were actively discouraged by Church authorities. I have not encountered anyone, currently, who believes purgatory is a place on earth. Taking a “long view,” of purgatory suggests that material representations of purgatory have been discouraged in favor of representations clothed with abstract words such as process, state of soul, or condition. The progression from a “place” to a “condition” has been fraught with dramatic twists and intrigues, and even today the issue of purgatory’s material status is not definitively settled. Contemporary Catholic devotional literature about purgatory focuses on the material locations of place, body, and performance that were the focuses of purgatory devotions in eras past…

…statements about purgatory participate in a long tradition of interpretations of the doctrine that seem to have little in common with official definitions. Papal statements about purgatory, from its official codification as a Roman Catholic doctrine until today, emphasize its status as an afterlife “state” or condition, and deemphasize its material, concrete characteristics. Writing during the Council of Trent (1545–1563), Pope Pius IV insisted that attention to purgatory’s material aspects, such as where it is located and what types of punishments occur there, should be discouraged. “The more difficult and subtle questions, and which tend not to edification, and from which for the most part there is no increase of piety, [should] be excluded from popular discourses before the uneducated multitude.”6 Currently, papal discussions of purgatory, while briefer, are substantively no different. In his General Audience address of 1999, Karol Wojtyla, Pope John Paul II, stated that the term “purgatory,” “does not indicate a place, but a condition of existence.” And, on January 12, 2011, Pope Benedict XVI noted that the fifteenth-century mystic St. Catherine of Genoa did not focus on “purgatory as a place of transit in the depths of the earth,” or “as an exterior fire.” Rather, purgatory was an inner state.7 Shortly after, the Catholic News Service published an article that eliminated any possibility that the pope would be misunderstood as to purgatory’s physical reality. It was titled “Purgatory Is a Process, Not a Place.”8

Despite papal statements about it, authors of popular narratives about purgatory have characterized it very differently. In their reports and anecdotes, purgatory is a physical place of suffering. Souls in purgatory are depicted engulfed in real, not symbolic, fire, the evidence of which include burned charcoal–colored handprints on tables for the living to consider, such as can be found in the Purgatory Museum in Rome. It is tempting to suggest that these narratives are in tension with official, cleric-authored proclamations about purgatory. While in some instances this is the case, in other contexts it was clerics and theologians who wrote about purgatory as a place, and scholastics also wrote about the physical evidence left by souls in purgatory. What persists throughout these various narratives and their historical contexts, however, is the problem presented by purgatory’s materiality. Purgatory’s place, which has been described variously as being in Ireland [Editor: Definitely], or in Italy, in the middle of the earth, or as a place next to hell, has been a problem for those who attempt to locate it, and also for those who have participated in a tradition that downplays its concrete features. The following chapters examine several cases where the physicality of purgatory is its best advocate and its most problematic feature. In other words, this book is a history of the problem of purgatory—it’s characterization as a physical place of real, not symbolic, suffering.

While it may have been more common to associate purgatory with an actual earthly location in medieval Europe, as stated previously this belief persisted into the nineteenth century. For hundreds of years, and contrary to the proclamations of most popes on the subject, purgatory was believed to be either on earth or in the middle of the earth. I was not surprised to hear of (some people’s) belief that purgatory was on earth, and I am certain that her belief is not like the belief that prompted medieval knights to undertake journeys to Ireland in search of the real purgatory. But nonetheless what is important is that (some people) associate purgatory with an earthly place, not a condition. This inclination to attribute spatial and physical characteristics to purgatory, and the problems this creates, is intrinsic to its history. Scholastic theologians of the thirteenth century, who were most responsible for providing the theological support for the new doctrine, questioned where it was on earth, and they rarely questioned if it was on earth. William of Auvergne (1180–1249) posited the existence of two purgatories, one on earth, and the other somewhere else, perhaps near heaven. As recently as 1863, the French periodical “Le Liberateur des Ames du Purgatoire,” edited by the French priest Celestin Cloquet, described how the souls in purgatory resided inside the earth. Purgatory’s place on medieval and early modern world maps, or mappa mundi, persisted even as the Garden of Eden and heaven, the two most mapped religious destinations, gradually disappeared.”

Love,
Matthew

6. Council of Trent, The Canons and Decrees of the Sacred and Ecumenical Council of Trent: Celebrated under the Sovereign Pontiffs, Paul III, Julius III and Pius IV (1848) (Ithaca: Cornell University Library Press, 2009), 233.
7. “Purgatory Inflames Hearts with God’s Love, Pope Says,” Catholic News Agency, Vatican City, January 12, 2011.
8. Cindy Wotten, “Purgatory Is a Process, Not a Place, Pope Says at General Audiences,” Catholic News Service, January 12, 2011.

Eschatology, Purgatory

Purgatory


-Dante and Beatrice in Gustave Dore’s “Submersion in the Lethe”, 1903


-by Br Cyril Stola, OP

“We’re called to become saints. The Father desires that we be united in friendship with him in this life in order that we might forever dwell with him in heaven. The heavenly union with God is a perfect union that can begin on Earth, but it can also be inhibited by sin. Since it acts against this union, sin is the greatest evil of all. In the words of the Catechism, “nothing has worse consequences for sinners themselves, for the Church, and for the whole world” than sin (CCC 1488). When we sin, we cloud our consciences, build vices, and harden our hearts. Sin hurts our relationships with each other and with God. God’s mercy blots out our sins, but it does not automatically fix the ways in which sin warps us.

Over time, growth in grace and virtue can put our inner selves back into order. Throughout the course of life, the Holy Spirit takes repentant sinners and makes them radiant with divine life and estranges them from sin and vice. He especially effects this through prayer, the sacraments, and redemptive suffering. This process is one of purification. Those who fully embrace the Spirit’s actions live with hearts that seek God alone, and they immediately enter heaven when they die. Not all who revere God, however, come to such a point in life. Their time runs out before they’re fit for the heavenly union; they are united with God, but imperfectly so. Hope is not lost, however. In his mercy, God gives us an intermediate state between heaven and Earth where he purges away the sins and impurities that still inhibit our union with him. He gives us purgatory.

In purgatory, God puts men and women face to face with their sins. There, they fully understand how they acted against God, and they cannot grasp for any distraction or rationalization in facing even the smallest things that still separate them from God. Saint John Henry Newman puts this reckoning in stark terms in “The Dream of Gerontius.” In the poem, a guardian angel addresses his charge, an old man who just died a holy death with his sins absolved:

And thou wilt hate and loathe thyself; for, though now sinless, thou wilt feel that thou hast sinn’d, as never thou didst feel.

His state now allows him to see his past sins on a spiritual level; he hates that he committed such acts. This is a painful realization because sin is a painful reality. If we could see sin as it truly is—an offence against God⁠—we would never sin. Purgation is like physical therapy after surgery, it’s painful but ultimately it heals. God reveals sin in order to remove all traces of it and to bind up our injured souls.

Dante expresses the healing of purgatory beautifully at the end of the “Purgatorio”—the second part of his Divine Comedy. There, Beatrice chastises Dante for abandoning the love he had for her and God and for choosing to obsess over futile things instead. Faced with the shame and gravity of his sins, he weeps and then gets plunged into the waters of the Lethe. The Lethe, according to Greek mythology, makes one forget the whole of life. Dante, however, adapts this river to suit his higher vision. His Lethe makes one forget his sins and the warped mentality they gave him in life; it restores lost innocence and heals interior wounds. It makes a person like a little child, ready to enter the kingdom of heaven.

That purgatory purifies, heals, and brings souls to holiness is a great mercy and a source of hope. Even men and women who have struggled with sin all their lives, but not yet reached “sainthood” in this life, can be made perfect after death and thereafter dwell with God. Let us thank God for the gift of purgatory and pray for those who dwell there, that God’s work in them may be complete.”

Love,
Matthew