At the 2nd Coming, do people who are alive go through purgatory too?

[tayloresque]

As people die now, and their soul is separted from their body. They go through the cleansing of purgatory before entering Heaven. When Christ returns their spirit will be joined with a glorified body and those alive when Christ returns will go out to meet Him (which by the way is explained very well by Paul Thigpen in “The Rapture Trap”). Will they face the cleansing in purgatory or will they receive immediate judgement and resurrection upon Christ’s return? Thanks!

 

[Ron_Conte]

my answer to your question is speculative:
those persons still alive on earth when Christ returns for Judgment (in the distant future)
will not die and immediately rise,
nor will they die, go to Purgatory, and then rise,
they receive the benefits of the Resurrection without having to die and rise.
They do not need to go to Purgatory.
Just as the Church can give a plenary indulgence, so can the Head of the Church, Christ, forgive temporal punishment.

 

[lak611]

As people die now, and their soul is separted from their body. They go through the cleansing of purgatory before entering Heaven. When Christ returns their spirit will be joined with a glorified body and those alive when Christ returns will go out to meet Him (which by the way is explained very well by Paul Thigpen in “The Rapture Trap”). Will they face the cleansing in purgatory or will they receive immediate judgement and resurrection upon Christ’s return? Thanks!

When Christ returns, purgatory will end. All souls still in purgatory will go to heaven with their resurrected bodies, and all people still alive when Christ returns will either go to heaven or hell. From the Catholic Encyclopedia:

Augustine (De Civ. Dei, lib. XXI, cap.xiii and xvi) declares that the punishment of purgatory is temporary and will cease, at least with the Last Judgment. “But 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.”

 

[Jerry-Jet]

Paul speaks of us being changed in the twinkling of an eye.

Couldn’t it be that people who are alive at Christ’s coming will undergo all of their purgatory in one second–that is in the twinkling of an eye?

Anyone who has ever boxed will tell you that 3 minutes of a boxing round Seem like much more than 3 minutes.

People could be purified in a second of purgatory–but that second to them would seem much longer!

 

[Joe_Kelley]

There are indications that the last days will match anything Purgatory has to offer.

 

[Naztakuan]

There are indications that the last days will match anything Purgatory has to offer.

Yeah that’s what I always figured. The end days will supposedly be so terrible that it would be like a living purgatory.

 

[Jerry-Jet]

The Catholic Church has never taught how time in purgatory corresponds to time here on Earth.

it is altogether possible that one could experience what might seem to be years in purgatory that would correspond to only a second of Earthly time or as St. Paul says “the twinkling of an eye.”

This thought about the differences between Earthly time and purgatorial time makes complete sense as the Catholic Church no longer gives indulgences that correspond to specific amount of days!

If that is the case then it would indeed be possible for those Catholics alive at the time who had temporal debt that still needed to be paid for–that they could pay for that debt in one second of Earthly time regardless of how long that would be in Purgatorial time.