Another question about Purgatory

[tiggylou]

How does Purgatory work with the parousia? When Jesus comes again…is he going to come and then send us to purgatory before we can go be with him??

 

[Fidelis]

From a great article on the “General Judgment” found on the “Rosary Light & LIfe” page:

We must remember that when the world comes to an end, so will purgatory. All those in purgatory until that final hour will have completed their purification and satisfied their debt of punishment. One might ask a hypothetical question: what if one dies very shortly before the end of the world in the state of grace, but with a considerable debt of temporal punishment and attachment to creatures. Is that debt paid and the purification accomplished in so short a time? St. Thomas asks the same question with regard to those who are still living at the end of the world, and the answer he gives covers both situations. As we stated, he holds that all those still living the last day will be consumed in that fire.

*“There are three reasons why those who will be found living will be able to be cleansed suddenly. One is because there will be few things in them to be cleansed , since they will be already cleansed by the previous fears and persecutions. The second is because they will suffer pain in this life of their own will, and pain suffered in this life voluntarily cleanses much more than pain inflicted after death . . . .The third is because suffering can increase in intensity to make up for shortness of time.” (Suppl. 74,8, ad 5). (This third reason would answer the question regarding souls in purgatory.) *

To see the entire article go here:
rosary-center.org/ll49n6.htm

 

[DavidFilmer]

How does Purgatory work with the parousia?

Nobody knows (this knowledge is not part of the Deposit of Faith).

But we can be fairly sure that nobody will escape Divine Justice. We will make full restitution for our sins either on earth, or in Purgatory, or by some other means that God has not revealed to us.

 

[Vincent]

If Purgatory, as Pope Benedict describes it, is the transformational encounter with Christ, the Judge and Savior, then its relationship with the Parousia is closer than one would think.

Consider his exploration of Purgatory in the ****Encyclical Letter Spe Salvi (edited):

47. Some recent theologians are of the opinion that the fire **[Cf.[/COLOR]*1 Corinthians *3:12-15] which both burns and saves is Christ himself, the Judge and Savior. The encounter with him is the decisive act of judgment. Before his gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves.

All that we build during our lives can prove to be mere straw, pure bluster, and it collapses. Yet in the pain of this encounter, when the impurity and sickness of our lives become evident to us, there lies salvation. His gaze, the touch of his heart heals us through an undeniably painful transformation “as through fire”. But it is a blessed pain, in which the holy power of his love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God.

In this way the inter-relation between justice and grace also becomes clear: the way we live our lives is not immaterial, but our defilement does not stain us for ever if we have at least continued to reach out towards Christ, towards truth and towards love. Indeed, it has already been burned away through Christ’s Passion. At the moment of judgment we experience and we absorb the overwhelming power of his love over all the evil in the world and in ourselves. The pain of love becomes our salvation and our joy.

It is clear that we cannot calculate the “duration” of this transforming burning in terms of the chronological measurements of this world. The transforming “moment” of this encounter eludes earthly time-reckoning—it is the heart’s time, it is the time of “passage” to communion with God in the Body of Christ.
​

**

 

[passus]

Surely, the Great Judgment would be purifying in and of itself.