Purgatory
November 17, 2024
Jesus Christ: Yesterday, Today, and Forever ~
We are all sinners yet no one in heaven is, yet they were on earth. How does the transformation from sinner on earth to sinless in heaven happen? How are our sins atoned for after death? God has a plan for all this – purgatory – a word derived from Latin, meaning purgation, purification, or cleansing. Purgatory is the process after death, of the saved, by which God’s justice for our sins is satisfied through our remorse (which is very painful), and we are purified by God and prepared to enter the beatific vision of heaven. This process of purgation lasts for various sensations of “time” and intensity depending upon the state of each person’s soul at death. The Catechism of the Catholic Church does a very good job of explaining what purgatory is, as do the websites www.catholicanswers.org and www.newadvent.org.
Over the past 20 years I’ve read much about purgatory. Three books in particular stand out to me as exceptional, as all three have people on earth either experiencing purgatory through a grace of God, or souls from purgatory reaching out to them. Here they are from beginner to advanced (if you read any of them, do not start with number three).
1. The Mist of Mercy by Anne a Lay Apostle.
2. Visions of Purgatory by an anonymous author. Scepter Press
3. Get Us Out of Here!! by Maria Simma and Nicky Eltz.
I’ve started to read the second book again Visions of Purgatory. It powerfully convicts me to be holier, and to do more for these poor forgotten souls, and the ones I do remember. Coincidentally (or not?), November happens to be the month that the Church has historically prayed for the dead. So, I thought I’d write about purgatory once again, hoping that it will help you in your faith, and to inspire or challenge you to help those who can’t help themselves anymore.
Know too, that the holy souls in purgatory (holy because they are no longer sinners) can pray for us too, and they appreciate the opportunity to do so. They are not only aware of our prayers and sacrifices for them, they are also aware of our requests for their help, and their prayers for us are very powerful. There is a caveat though. The holy souls of purgatory have to be asked by name to pray for us and for those whom we wish them to intercede for. So, pray and do penance for your deceased loved ones, and those beyond your family who have no one to intercede for them in death; and ask deceased family members to pray for you or your holy cause. With the assistance of the Church in Heaven (Triumphant) as well as the Church on earth (Militant), let’s help all those who are in purgatory (Church Suffering) atone for their sins, glorify God, and move along into the beatific vision of heaven.
While almost all of Visions of Purgatory is about one person’s encounter with their guardian angel and the holy souls of purgatory, the end of the book has a short chapter entitled: “Theological Note on Purgatory” (pages 183-186). What follows on the next page is most of that chapter. Enjoy.
May Almighty God Bless You,
Fr. Thomas Nathe
Visions of Purgatory: A Private Revelation. By Scepter Press. Pages 183-186.
From its origins, the Church through its prayers and suffrages for the deceased, has clearly shown its faith in purgatory. Later, with wise cautiousness, it defined its doctrine in the Second Council of Lyon (1274), the Council of Florence (1438), and the Council of Trent (Twenty-Fifth Session, December 1563). Let us recall the broad lines of this doctrine, which is so luminous and consoling:
1. In purgatory, the souls of the just pay their debt to Divine justice, suffering purifying punishment. We point out, in the first place, that the purification of purgatory is not focused on the fault, but on its punishment. If God's pardon granted to the repentant soul, erases the fault, it does not make the punishment disappear, then this is the means that man has to repair the disorder that his sins have occasioned. Here on earth the soul suffers punishment under the form of a voluntary and meritorious penance. In the other world it is under the form of an obligatory purification.
2. According to the doctrine of the church, there are two classes of punishments in purgatory. The principal one is the temporary privation of God, accompanied by unheard of suffering. The soul burns with desire to see God, but it cannot attain him, because it did not expiate it sins sufficiently before death. The expiration ends, then, and purgatory, and it takes on a form of suffering that one cannot imagine here on earth. In purgatory there are other pains, called "pains of the senses,” but the Church has never made a pronouncement about the exact nature of these pains. The object is to repair the disordered attachment to creatures.
3. The pains of purgatory are not the same for all souls. They vary in duration and intensity according to the culpability of each one. The souls receive serenely the expiratory sufferings that God inflicts upon them. They do not seek anything except the glory of God, and they desire ardently to complete the one who is, from now on, their whole hope. In purgatory there reigns a great peace and joy, for the souls there have total certainty of their salvation, and they see their pain solely as a means of glorifying the sanctity of God and thus arriving at the glorious vision. The sufferings of purgatory are no longer meritorious, nor do they increase charity in the soul of the one who has suffering.
4. The church on Earth can help through its suffrages the Church “which is being cleansed beyond the doors of death” (Cardinal Journet); they are united by one and the same Love in Christ. This Union creates the possibility of a communication of merits. The souls in purgatory, incapable of procuring for themselves the slightest alleviation, can thus take advantage of the works of expiation that the living carry out in their favor with the intention of paying their debts. These works of satisfaction have the value of expiation for the punishment of the Holy souls, and it is God who regulates the application of suffrages for the dead according to his wisdom.
5. The Mass is the most efficacious help that the Church on Earth (the Church militant) can provide to the souls being purified. Is not the Mass, in fact, the sacrifice offered by Jesus on the cross for the salvation of the world? Alms, prayers, and all forms of sacrifice are also means to help “our good friends who are suffering” (St. Margaret Mary). Be sure to offer Masses that you attend for souls in purgatory.
6. Purgatory will terminate in the final judgment. All souls destined to glory will have satisfied by then, in one form or another, divine justice.
7. For the souls of the just, purgatory is the state and place of suffering in which punishments are expiated that have not been satisfied in this world (i.e., mortal and venial sins that are already forgiven). The venial sins are forgiven in terms of guilt, if they have not been forgiven during one's lifetime.
