Since it’s one of the most common obstacles to people becoming Catholic, this week we asked our members and readers who are converts to Catholicism or on the journey to share some of the best ways they’ve heard Purgatory explained. We got quite a few creative and interesting responses! Here’s what some of you had to say:
*****
“Someone once said to me that when you die you come face to face with Jesus. At that moment you see the intense love that He has for you. When you experience that intense love, you are overwhelmed by thinking about all the ways that you failed Him. You think about all of the times that you had failed to love, like He loved you. Thinking of these things causes you pain because of what you had done and had failed to do. All you want is to make things right. You keep going over these hurts until you finally are freed from them by accepting God’s mercy. That is purgatory.”
Deacon Marty, via the CHNetwork Blog
*****
“A friend of mine explained it this way… The people in purgatory want to be there. It’s like if you imagine someone you really admire came to your front door early in the morning and you answered the door in your pajamas with your hair disheveled, not having brushed your teeth yet etc. You would ask the person to wait a minute while you got yourself cleaned up, then you would go to them when you were ready. Purgatory is where we will finish getting ourselves ready to meet Jesus if we don’t finish in this life.”
Jessa, via the CHNetwork Blog
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“Since we fall short, I think of Purgatory as tailor-made to each individual, like people getting their G.E.D. if they never graduated… a character perfecting program, which may include instruction, some type of works, and tools I have no concept of as a human being. So, do I think it’s okay to be slack now and make it up later? No. Why would I want to waste one moment away from the company of the Lord and all the saints?”
Demathis, CHNetwork Community Forum
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“Being in Purgatory is like being the crying toddler who knows he’s been naughty so he must be in trouble. He keeps looking down because he’s ashamed to look up. He’s afraid that his Father will be really mad and punish him as much as he deserves. But God is the loving Father standing by with his arms outstretched saying, “Look up, my son.” The Father is waiting to embrace him but the child remains suffering. The Father sees the suffering heart of his child and counts it as being sufficient punishment for whatever he has done. The child wants to look up, but can’t yet bring himself to do so. But the only way out of purgatory, is for the child to end his own suffering by fully accepting the love of his Father without holding any of his own love for anything else back (e.g. our idolatrous love of sin).”
Blind Didymus, CHNetwork Community Forums
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“One of the clearest explanations for me went something like this: if I went to heaven right now, would I really have yet developed a proper “taste” for it? Or do I, even though saved, still carry some baggage, some attachment to sin, some self-centeredness that would dim the light of heaven, at least for me, if not for others? Maybe it’ll be gradual or maybe it’ll be instantaneous, but there must be some kind of process to purge all that junk away before I’d be fit to really appreciate the joy of heaven.”
Greg, via Facebook
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“For me, the best thing I’ve ever heard is what Pope Benedict said in Spe Salvi 47. It’s not about time, because Purgatory is outside of the realm of creation, which means it’s outside of time – rather it’s about purification, like the purification bath that one needed in Judaism to be clean to approach the presence of God in the temple. This is what helped me get past the one thing that always hung me up about Purgatory as a Protestant – the idea of counting days and years. That always seemed kind of petty for God, and in fact I think the idea of counting days and years is based more on a medieval credit model than on Scripture or the Church fathers.”
Dr Jim Papandrea, author of “Handed Down: The Catholic Faith of the Early Christians”
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As you can see, a stumbling block like the Church’s teaching on Purgatory becomes much more surmountable when it’s explained by someone who’s had to come to grips with it themselves, as so many of our members have.
Here’s what the Catechism of the Catholic Church has to say about Purgatory:
“All who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven.
The Church gives the name Purgatory to this final purification of the elect, which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned.” 1030-1031
Essentially, Purgatory is a hopeful place- all who are there are on the path to Heaven. As St Catherine of Siena ponders, “I do not think that apart from the felicity of Heaven, there can be a joy comparable to that experienced by the souls in Purgatory. An incessant communication from God renders their joy more vivid from day to day: and this communication becomes more and more intimate, to the extent that it consumes the obstacles still existing in the soul…”
Is there a way that you’ve heard Purgatory explained, either as a child growing up in the Catholic Church, or as an adult exploring the teachings of Catholicism, where you thought to yourself, “Aha! Now that makes sense…”? If so, please share in the comments below, and be sure to check out other great discussion items like this in our CHNetwork Community Forum.
My priest explained it this way. Purgatory is like the security check point at the airport. You have your ticket and you know you are getting on the plane. But there are certain things you are not supposed to take on. So you empty your pockets and go through the metal detector. When you are ready , you board!
The best explanation I ever came across was when I read Bl. John Henry Newman’s poem ‘The Dream of Gerontius’ in college.
One of the best speeches given by the Guardian Angel to Gerontius:
“When then– if such thy lot– thou seest thy Judge/the sight of Him will kindle in thy heart/All tender, gracious, reverential thoughts./Thou wilt be sick with love, and yearn for Him […]There is a pleading in His pensive eyes will pierce thee to the quick, and trouble thee/And thou wilt hate and loathe thyself […]and wilt desire to slink away […] And these two pains, so counter and so keen,– The longing for Him when thou seest Him not; the shame of self at the thought of seeing Him,– will be thy veriest, sharpest Purgatory.”
One must really read the entire poem to appreciate its theological richness. It’s really rather a balanced perspective, as Newman doesn’t shrink from demonstrating that purgation really is a painful process, while at the same time a blessed and even joyous one. Hence he refers to it as “the golden prison.” In fact, as Gerontius is making his way to Purgatory, he says that he will be “motionless and happy in my pain; lone, not forlorn.”
Try CatholicSaints.Info notes about your extended family in heaven Treatise on Purgatory, by Saint Catherine of Genoa . You can find it in Laudate.
I heard a Protestant friend explain that there has to be a “power-washing” upon death. I looked at her and said “so you do believe in the state of purgatory” 😃
Consider one who has freely
chosen to get a tattoo. The important elements from this example are:
1 A willing desire to
undergo the painful treatment for future gratification
2 Acceptance of the discomfort
during and after the process
3 Satisfaction with the
results – it was worth it
In my opinion purgatory is
quite similar. Suffering freely chosen and experienced with a joyful
expectation of the consequences. Joyful? Yes indeed – Saint Catherine of Genoa.
C.S. Lewis little classic, “The Great Divorce” is an analogy of Purgatory. It starts here on earth. If you are heading to Heaven, all the sufferings and development of virtue and holiness are part of your Purgatory. If you are rejecting God’s good grace, and stubbornly sticking to your self-righteous selfishness and sin, well it’s hell — here and hereafter.
I heard this explanation from a wise priest: Purgatory is like the experience of those 33 Chilean miners who were trapped underground for 69 days in 2010. When they were finally brought to the surface, they could not be exposed to the light of day, they could not eat solid food, they could not be immediately reunited with their families. All of those things would have been painful to them. Their experience of deprivation and separation was so profound that they were physically INCAPABLE of immediately resuming a normal life. Their rescue (should we say RESURRECTION) was joyful, they were alive and free, but for a while after their rescue they had to experience continued deprivation and separation until they were restored and able to experience full light, and food, and loving families.
The Compendium of the Catholic Church, which is a simplified version of the Catechism whose section numbers are included with each quotation.
210. What is purgatory?
1030-1031 1054
Purgatory is the state of those who die in God’s friendship, assured of their eternal salvation, but who still have need of purification to enter into the happiness of heaven.
211. How can we help the souls being purified in purgatory?
1032
Because of the communion of saints, the faithful who are still pilgrims on earth are able to help the souls in purgatory by offering prayers in suffrage for them, especially the Eucharistic sacrifice. They also help them by almsgiving, indulgences, and works of penance.
http://www.vatican.va/archive/compendium_ccc/documents/archive_2005_compendium-ccc_en.html#Mans%20Response%20to%20God
The Catechism
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM
Matt 5:8 “Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God.”
Purgatory is getting your heart cleaned so you can stand in front of God.
I get your point but it’s really more like getting that tattoo taken off isn’t it? Purgatory is the removal of a stain, not a sense of satisfaction that we have stained ourselves. I’m told that the pain is much deeper in getting a tattoo removed.
You wear a white robe that gets stained (individual sins) even though you try diligently to keep it clean. When you get it dirty you wash the robe, perhaps even many times (confession and sacramental forgiveness), but due to the depth of the tendency to get your robe dirty (concupiscence) it is hard to keep it absolutely clean. In fact, you’ve dirtied it so many times that the dirt gets embedded very deeply into the fibers of the white robe and causes a permanent dinginess of the cloth, a state of being deeply stained or discolored. When you get ready to go to the Wedding of the Lamb, even though you have cleaned the overt dirt spots out of your garment you are rudely reminded that you cannot be admitted into the Wedding Feast with a dingy garment (see Mt 22:1-13). (Note: when you show up to the Banquet, it quickly becomes very obvious that, when compared to all the other garments that the invitees are wearing at the Wedding Feast, yours is deeply stained and needs a radical cleansing. The rule is that “Nothing unclean shall enter there” – Rev 21:27) But since you are a person who really wants to enter and are willing to make the effort to get your robe clean, you go to a place that specializes in washing all the residue of dirt and all the deeply imbued stains out of your garment so that you can eventually enter into the full and perfect joy of the celebration and into the full joy of the Bridegroom (Mt 25:23). The place where you went to bleach your garment is called Purgatory.
We saw the movie just the other night. We had similar thoughts but of Heaven, their going through a tunnel (the rescue shaft) towards the light (daylight above) to an eventual joyous welcome “home” by their loved ones, like life after death experiences told by many who’ve made the journey. The Purgatory explanation is more accurate, their suffering wasn’t quite over when they were pulled out of the mine.
I read somewhere an explanation from a Methodist woman. ” I know I’m saved, I know I’m not perfect and I know nothing imperfect gets into Heaven. Therefore God has to get me from forgiven to perfect and if Catholics want to call that Purgatory that’s fine with me!”
“[A] stumbling block like the Church’s teaching on Purgatory becomes much more surmountable when it’s explained by someone who’s had to come to grips with it themselves, as so many of our members have.”
Great that people coming into the Church have thought about purgatory, but how many lifelong Catholics could explain purgatory and defend why the Church teaches its existence? It is one of the countless concepts and issues that our priests have failed to teach us about. Almost every homily I hear just seems like a critical missed opportunity.