Can we do our penances reserved for Purgatory while here on Earth?

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I know that I have confessed my sins to the priest, and the priest would ask me to do a few prayers like Our Father and Hail Mary as my penances. Do you think this is enough or there is still corresponding punishments/time spent in Purgatory?

Can we do our penances for the time spent on Purgatory while here on Earth?
 
I know that I have confessed my sins to the priest, and the priest would ask me to do a few prayers like Our Father and Hail Mary as my penances. Do you think this is enough or there is still corresponding punishments/time spent in Purgatory?

Can we do our penances for the time spent on Purgatory while here on Earth?
The saints all did their Purgatory here in this world.
 
No one can give you clear cut answer as to whether the penance you made after confession paid all the temporal punishment due to your sins. Why? An Our Father, Hail Mary, an entire Rosary or any prayer does not possess a set value -it depends on the faith, hope and love with which such prayers are said. No one can guarantee that any act of penance/s will remit all punishment due to sin, but through faith we can believe, and through hope we can trust that our penances have ‘paid the price’. How?
  1. Remember that our penances our worthless, they only become valuable in remitting punishment when united with Christ’s Sacrifice, i.e. doused in His Blood. If we bear the intention of uniting our penance with Jesus on the Cross, asking Him to pray in, with an through us when we make our penance this ensures our penances our powerful.
  2. Quality not quantity determines the effectiveness of penance. For one Hail Mary said with lots of love and reverence is more powerful than a Rosary rambled meaninglessly. Still, where quality meets quantity - this is good. The more we love, the more effective our penance in atoning for sin, and even for other people’s sin. We can ensure we our making our penance with perfect love if we make God’s Love our own when we make our penances. Such as praying before we make our penance: “My God, I make this penance with your very own Infinite and Divine Love, let it repay for all my sins, and for the sins of all souls, including those in purgatory”.
Finally, there are plenary indulgences click here] which remit all temporal punishment due to sin, as well as the special Divine Mercy grace click here], and if you die without any temporal punishment owed you would go directly to heaven when you die. Also, pray to God for the grace to go straight to heaven when you die. “Ask and you shall receive.” Jesus said to St. Maria Faustina:
“The more a soul trusts the more it receives…I rejoice that they ask for much, very much. On the other hand, I am sad when souls ask for little, when they narrow their hearts.” (Divine Mercy in My Soul, 1578).
We were made for heaven nor for purgatory. Purgatory is a half way place for those who were not fully purified in this life. We are called to be purified fully in this life, we must only ask, trust, love, “carry our daily cross”, seek God’s Will in all things while staying close to Mary (read ‘True Devotion to Mary’).
 
I know that I have confessed my sins to the priest, and the priest would ask me to do a few prayers like Our Father and Hail Mary as my penances. Do you think this is enough or there is still corresponding punishments/time spent in Purgatory?

Can we do our penances for the time spent on Purgatory while here on Earth?
Such may not be “time” as you think of it - see Spe Salvi by Pope Benedict XVI

But yes -it is BETTER for most or even perhaps all of our purification and penance (and indulgences…) happen here on this pilgrimage where we can also merit…
 
Also from the Catechism (see link above)

Satisfaction

1459 Many sins wrong our neighbor. One must do what is possible in order to repair the harm (e.g., return stolen goods, restore the reputation of someone slandered, pay compensation for injuries). Simple justice requires as much. But sin also injures and weakens the sinner himself, as well as his relationships with God and neighbor. Absolution takes away sin, but it does not remedy all the disorders sin has caused.62 Raised up from sin, the sinner must still recover his full spiritual health by doing something more to make amends for the sin: he must “make satisfaction for” or “expiate” his sins. This satisfaction is also called “penance.”

1460 The penance the confessor imposes must take into account the penitent’s personal situation and must seek his spiritual good. It must correspond as far as possible with the gravity and nature of the sins committed. It can consist of prayer, an offering, works of mercy, service of neighbor, voluntary self-denial, sacrifices, and above all the patient acceptance of the cross we must bear. Such penances help configure us to Christ, who alone expiated our sins once for all. They allow us to become co-heirs with the risen Christ, "provided we suffer with him."63
The satisfaction that we make for our sins, however, is not so much ours as though it were not done through Jesus Christ. We who can do nothing ourselves, as if just by ourselves, can do all things with the cooperation of "him who strengthens" us. Thus man has nothing of which to boast, but all our boasting is in Christ . . . in whom we make satisfaction by bringing forth "fruits that befit repentance." These fruits have their efficacy from him, by him they are offered to the Father, and through him they are accepted by the Father.64
 
time spent in Purgatory?
"Some recent theologians* are of the opinion that the fire which both burns and saves is Christ himself, the Judge and Saviour. The encounter with him is the decisive act of judgement. 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 judgement 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[39]. The judgement of God is hope, both because it is justice and because it is grace. If it were merely grace, making all earthly things cease to matter, God would still owe us an answer to the question about justice—the crucial question that we ask of history and of God. If it were merely justice, in the end it could bring only fear to us all. The incarnation of God in Christ has so closely linked the two together—judgement and grace—that justice is firmly established: we all work out our salvation “with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12). Nevertheless grace allows us all to hope, and to go trustfully to meet the Judge whom we know as our “advocate”, or parakletos (cf. 1 Jn 2:1). "

~ Pope Benedict XVI Spe Salvi w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi.html
  • including himself before being Pope
 
I know that I have confessed my sins to the priest, and the priest would ask me to do a few prayers like Our Father and Hail Mary as my penances. Do you think this is enough or there is still corresponding punishments/time spent in Purgatory?

Can we do our penances for the time spent on Purgatory while here on Earth?
That’s what reparation is all about! God Bless, Memaw
 
Yes. We’re supposed to do our Purgatory on earth while alive. If we fail at it, we still have purgatory to do it, but we merit nothing in a higher place in heaven, and we have to suffer more intensely.
 
Yes. It takes a lot of faith and trust to ask for that grace. I haven’t had the courage to invite that into my life on earth.
 
This is a very good discussion that is even better food for thought. It is making me think more of the penances I need to perform to repair my relationship with Our Lord Jesus Christ. He gave His all so I/we could spend our eternity with HIM in His Paradise.

Thank you OP for posting this. 🙂
 
Yes. We’re supposed to do our Purgatory on earth while alive. If we fail at it, we still have purgatory to do it, but we merit nothing in a higher place in heaven, and we have to suffer more intensely.
Good insight, if we suffer now on Earth , it is more meritorious; but if we suffer in Purgatory, it is more hurting and there is even no merit for that suffering in Purgatory
 
The infirmities of old age may indeed be a portion of our purgation if we accept them as so.
 
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