Recently I went to confession and at the conclusion the priest told me that my sins are forgiven and forgotten. Are my sins really forgotten? What happens on my individual and general judgement day relative to the sins I have confessed? Don’t my sins have to be remembered by God in order to determine if any purging (purgatory) is required before entering the pure presence of God?
We speak of God using human terms like “forget” even though the mind and intellect of God are so far above the human mind and intellect. On the one hand, God cannot “forget” something (as we use the word) because that would imply the inability (even voluntary) for God to know something; likewise, God cannot “learn” something, because that would mean that God did not know everything already. God does not “change His mind” because that means God changes, and possibly changes from perfect to imperfect, or vice versa.
But when we say God forgets our (forgiven) sins, what we mean is that He does not hold them over us or linger on them or “have them in the back of His mind” when He considers us. If a friend of yours betrayed your trust, you might forgive them, but you would probably be very careful about confiding in them to the same degree again, and even if you did, you would probably still harbor some fear that they would betray you again. But God does not behave that way with us.
Now, when it comes to the final judgment, and purgatory, God will not, and cannot, condemn anyone for sins that have been forgiven already. But He can show them the effects of their sins; purgatory is about the impacts and effects of sin, which can last long after the forgiveness of a sin.
One final example that I hope brings it all together: you’re playing baseball in your backyard and you hit a ball through your neighbor’s attic window. You apologize to your neighbor, who forgives you for breaking the window; the neighbor still permits you to play ball in your backyard, even knowing that you’ve broken a window before! However, your neighbor’s house still has a broken window, and all the forgiving and forgetting in the world will not change that. Someone has to pay for the window – you, your neighbor, the insurance company, etc. Until that window is repaired, bugs, birds, rain, and cold air will get into your neighbor’s house. And even
after the window has been repaired, there may now be water damage or birds which took up residence in the attic. Purgatory is the remedying of all these consequences of sin, which extend further than we can imagine, but which justice demands be righted.
